 Anna Marie mentioned this is the first one in our series but we have a series of talks that cover various aspects of accessible IT and mine's the most general and probably the least technical. But it's an overview of some of the things you need to think about in order to make your online learning opportunities accessible and inclusive. And so it'll cover some technical things but also some non technical things and include 20 tips, most of them very easy to do that can help you make your course more inclusive. I go with she and her I'm Cheryl Bergstahler here in UW it director of the accessible technology services group. So the access technology services has two units, the IT accessibility team, and that started in 1984 is just part of another team, but it's fully funded by the University of Washington and here we have a group of IT accessibility that can that focus on making sure that the university procures develops and use uses accessible technology that would be for faculty student staff and also in the case of websites etc. For visitors to our campus, but in 1992 I started the do it center where we take a more holistic approach of in increasing the success of students with disabilities and even employees with disabilities. So in order to generalize in that way it was important for us to get our own funding, as many people do when they want to do extra make extra efforts in a particular area of application. And so we started grant writing, and the National Science Foundation has been our primary funder, but also the US Department of Education, the Department of Labor, Microsoft and other core corporations, and even private funds have been used to fund these activities. We have a do it Japan program starting in 2007, and funded by the US Department of Education, we have the Center on Universal Design Education, which they funded this center, starting in 1999 but we continue to maintain it with our other projects. So the basic approach we take within our IT accessibility team but you see it even more so within the do it center is we have a as an individual focus but community building model, where we look at stakeholders like yourself, if you're teaching a class or you're just here to learn more about this topic, but they contribute to a success of individuals with disabilities so these various groups can direct barriers from people with disabilities or they can help make things more inclusive of people with disabilities. So we have at the, the center of this spoke the wheel, the success of people with disabilities and higher education careers, and then some of the stakeholders we work with our people with disabilities. So in our IT accessibility team we work with students with disabilities to help them gain access to technology, but also family members in the do it center will work with family members, parents particular, primarily of young teenagers with disabilities, and then peers and near peers and adult mentors and allies and other sorts. Community groups special program service providers like our own disability resources for students and disability student services offices on our own campus here. K12 teachers to help students be prepared to come to college post secondary administrators of course faculty and staff, employers technology vendors to make it more inclusive of and accessible to people with disabilities, legislators policymakers and funding agencies we work with all these people. What we find is sometimes some stakeholders are not really doing their share. And so that can include faculty, or it can depend on the faculty member and so this presentation will help faculty members get more engaged in making sure that courses are inclusive of people with disabilities. We have two basic approaches and all that we do when we're working with students with disabilities, we're promoting self determination, and that's just a very broad term which means the tech that students with disabilities will have access to the technology, the skill set, the mentoring, the networking, the things that they need to be successful, all of those tools that we all need in that case. So we're working with faculty and staff and institutions and technology company, the companies the broad approach that we have is universal design so I'll be talking about that framework. So by an inclusive environment in the class or some other campus offering. I think about meaning that everyone who meets the requirements with or without accommodations is encouraged to participate. Everyone feels welcome and is fully engaged in accessible and inclusive environments and activities. And so, just a quick example if your introductory video in your online course, where you spend three or four minutes, welcome in your class is not accurately captioned. Then it's not going to be accessible to some people, including people who are deaf. And it's not going to make a student who is deaf feel welcome in your class. It's pretty clear to them that you haven't thought about accessibility in a proactive way. So just a quick things we'll talk about is just really quickly history legal basis for accessibility, and then the two approaches accommodations only, or universal design for gaining access for students with disabilities principles and practices resources and q&a I mentioned we're going to have some tips some very specific tips that you can use to make your course more accessible. Here's a little one minute history lesson of the evolution of responses to human differences, including disability. And in earlier days, there were many efforts to eliminate or exclude or at least segregate people with disabilities. Then in the middle of last century a big effort as far as curing and rehabilitating and even accommodating students with disabilities. The World War two really contributed to this when we had individuals who had suffered from injuries in battle, but actually survived multiple industries of these injuries and came home with an earlier wars they would have died on the battlefield. But the other big factor was they also came home with the GI Bill. And so a lot of these veterans went to college and so our colleges and universities had to really take stock of this and make their, their programs more inclusive with a focus on accommodations which I'll define in a minute. But now we're in the age of social justice in so many different ways and with so many different groups. But there's been a civil rights movement for individuals with disabilities, as there have been movements for racial ethnic minorities and women and other marginalized groups. And so in this particular era, then the focus is on inclusion and universal design, both proactive approaches. And then the message why should we be surprised when a student with a disability shows up in our classes and act. Oh no what am I to do when we know they have a right social justice in that they have a right to be part of our class so we should anticipate them coming. The legal basis goes way back to 1990, 1973, which surprises a lot of people, particularly when it's online learning because we didn't have the internet back then. So this is section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a similar act but much more broadly applied is the Americans with Disabilities Act. And that act, which was provided that some power here, which was which was enacted in 1990, and it's 2008 amendments is very similar to 504 but more broadly applied to transportation and just about anything in society. These two laws are not laws that are full of a lot of standards or anything. They are civil rights legislation and so they don't say what the rules are and making your website accessible what they do say is if you have a website or you have a course or whatever you're offering. You must make it inclusive of individuals with disabilities must make it accessible to them. And then the final thing in our state is we have Washington state policy number 188 and it really reiterates section 504 and the ADA. And basically just provide some detail about how we need to implement those laws within our own state the whole state of Washington like you have to have a coordinator of it accessibility, which I am here at the university things like that. So for most of us we're not working in the disability services office and so we don't need to know all the definitions of disability, and what they imply as far as a person's functions. I think it's easier just to think about ability on a continuum that everyone in this room and elsewhere has an ability, we may not have a disability but we all have an ability in certain categories. We have a double edged arrow from not able to able on the right hand side, and a list of abilities. So just a couple examples, the ability to understand English. Someone in this group might rate themselves a little low in this category, and it might be because English is not their first language and so they don't feel that there is as competent as maybe the average person who who where English is their first language. It might be related to a learning disability that they would think that they're where their ability to understand English is affected. So the point is for rating and ability, it isn't just the opposite of a disability. But in a particular ability level can be for multiple reasons. Same with social norms, a person might have a disability that affects their ability to really pick up on social cues and communicate in small groups and so forth. They might rate low low on this category then, or it might be because they're, they're growing up in a different culture than the one one that's common here in the United States. So we can go down this list the ability to see could be related to a disability if you rate yourself low, it might be because you, you're, you're in a shaky internet connection you have the visual turned off, and so you don't have an ability to see the screen. If I give a talk like this I just imagine that one of you is calling in by phone and doesn't see the screen. And so that prompts me it reminds me that I have to use the words I have to describe what's on the screen. I can't just say look here or according to this list and not say what the list is the ability to hear or walk or read print right with a pen or a pencil, the ability to communicate verbally to tune out distraction to learn and to manage physical and mental disabilities is just a short list of the many abilities that we all have. And my guess is I, if we passed around a little Google Doc or whatever and you needed to rate yourself on a scale in all these areas. There are probably no two of us that would rate ourselves exactly the same way. When you look at the whole collection. A couple other things that's worth thinking about when you're working with students with disabilities is races races and ethnicities gender identities and disabilities. Characteristics may not be obvious. Some faculty also will be having students with disabilities in your class and they say well no. Well, how do you know that well I just look around the room or look in the zoom windows and nobody seems to have a disability. Well, most disabilities not show certainly things like learning disabilities attention deficits and health impairments and so forth so we can't trust our judgment on who has a disability in our class by the way that they look. Another characteristic is that fewer than a third of students with disabilities report them to the disability services office on any campus. The reason for this is personal. So I can't speak for anyone else but I can tell you what I heard from students with disabilities over many, many, many years. Some are embarrassed about the disability. Some worry about discrimination of a faculty member if that faculty member knows that they have particularly a learning disability or mental illness things that have some stigma associated with them. And so you also can't expect you can't rely on those letters you get from disability services to tell you what accommodations are approved for a particular student and say well that's I have three students with disabilities because I have three letters. Well, you have to multiply that by three to make a good guess of how many students with disabilities in class. So the point I'm making with these two first items is, is you don't you do not know who those people are who have disabilities in your class and so universal design will see kind of is an approach that helps you deal with that issue. So campuses primarily offer accommodations to individuals after an inaccessibility is discovered. And so it's like, well, you know, we don't think about accessibility too much we kind of design our classes for the average student. And then, while a student with disabilities in the class and you have to kind of scramble to redo the documents and caption the videos, or whatever needs to be done for that particular student. So that doesn't create an equitable opportunity for that student when they have to maybe wait for their syllabus. Because it's in an inaccessible PDF document, or they have to wait for videos to be captioned for them, or other accommodations to be placed in effect. And so that makes it unfortunate for that student all of a sudden all of a sudden on day one they're already behind. And it's important to consider intersectionality. So the students with disabilities don't always just have one disability so they can have multiple disabilities are dealing with, and there's that interaction between those two issues. But they also might have other characteristics that place them in underserved populations of race ethnicity gender and so forth that can affect their performance in your class as well. And so that really fits in with what we're trying to do around campus here at the University of Washington to deal with diversity, and really support a diverse student body. And we in our group and many others but really promote the idea that disability is is just one diversity characteristic and so should be considered in those efforts. Even efforts that may focus on one group like efforts that are reaching out to black students. It's important to remember that there are black students that have disabilities as well. And so we don't want to discriminate against the subset of the group that we're working with. And so there are quite a few accommodations that are coming up in increasing in numbers, because of going online with the pandemic, and to that really have kind of are kind of breaking the back of disability resources for students here on our campus is making accessible documents accessible, mainly reformatting PDFs in this Wednesday, third, third, third Thursday at three o'clock sessions like I'm doing today, one of them is focused on PDF files we reformatting PDFs. And another one actually is focused on looking at for alternatives to PDFs. Can you make PDFs accessible, absolutely. But you should invest some time and learning how to do that. And there can be issues related to whether you're using a Macintosh or a PC. And so you have to invest some time to make that happen. I teach online. And I don't use any PDFs often people use PDFs for their syllabus and I don't. It's harder to make it accessible and not really necessary I create my, my syllabus and word and then I also copy and paste it in the pages of the learning management system. So those are the two options I give students to read the syllabus and I don't have to deal with the complications of making accessible PDFs. And then captioning videos and this means accurately captioning videos, not just using the caption feature on YouTube that is not very accurate and calling it good. And so many people do that that it just makes me, I feel like they just don't know that there is an editing feature within YouTube, or they can go in and correct those misspellings and the punctuation so forth. And when you think about it for a minute. It's not kind of a mean trick. If you have a student who is deaf in your class, or even an English language learner, who rely on captions. That don't have the right punctuation and spelling. That's kind of a mean trick, I think, I think we'd all agree. And there are other ways that you can make your videos captioned accurately as well. And that's the focus of one of our Thursday afternoon sessions coming up, which you can find on the accessible it website. I'll put a URL here up in the last slide. So rather than focusing on accommodations only were after the fact we mediate documents we give extra time on tests and so forth, we should think about some of these accommodations that maybe we should think about how we could build these accessibility into the design of the product or environment, which in this case is an online course. And so we should consider that. And that leads us to the definition of universal design, it is that exactly that that you're doing. So universal design the designer products and environments to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible without the need for adaptation or specialized design. So we look through some of those accommodations we give, like inaccessible documents perhaps that we have we mediate, could we have made that document accessible and so that student would need that, wouldn't need that accommodation or captioning the same thing could we make our videos have them with captions, and, and have them accurately presented. And then they, a student would need that accommodation. And then the questions, particularly the end of the talk I was why you know I use PDF so that I link to and I, I use videos that aren't mine and so forth. You can work on getting captions on videos that don't you don't own. And you can, you can, you know, work on making PDFs that someone else creates more accessible. But for most of us that teach classes I think that's beyond what maybe we'll be willing to do invest in as far as time. So, the point is throughout this talk today is you don't have to do everything. But if you do some things, even just some things where you avoid creating a barrier, then your course is going to be more accessible. We don't after all want to put the disability resources for students office out of business. So they'll have plenty of work to do still, but they won't be redoing accommodations over and over again. So I have an example of a, a universally designed product on the screen. Remember those old days when I used to go to conferences in person. Well, and then we get name tags. So the image on the screen is of a name tag. And you can see there's a lanyard connected to it. And it's a little bit different than your typical lanyard at a conference. So that's probably the most popular way people like to have their name tags. I don't know about you but one of my complaints about name tags that are lanyards is they just fall too low on your body and you can kind of jerk them up then it's almost like a little bit. And so I'm not really, I'm not really liking that because I feel like the name tag should be about your showing your name to someone else because I already know who my name is so I don't have to look at it. Another frustration too is if you turn the, if you're in the reception hall, and everyone has a lanyard about 50% of them seem to be turned backwards. And so there's a blank. And so we set about and do it coming up with a good name tag holder for our events within our programs. And this is what we came up with people like lanyards and so even though I personally don't we provide a lanyard because people like them. So under the lanyard, there's a there's a ring, and then we attach to that ring of the plastic name tag holder, which has a clip on it, and a pin. And so within our product there's the flexibility that you can choose how you want to affix the name tag on your body you can use the lanyard, you can clip the lanyard off, and use the clip to connect to a collar. Again, if you don't have a collar you can use that particular one. And also we put the name of the person on the name tag on both sides. And so if you if if you're using a lanyard and a flips over in the reception, your name still shows. So this isn't rocket science here. This is a commercial product these name tags that we order for ourselves. But it's this idea in universal design that you at least make some attempt to please more people by by incorporating flexibility in the product you create, rather than creating different products so this is different than going to a conference and they say would you like a lanyard or a pin or a clip name tag, because knowing me I may want a choice of one of those one day and something else in the second day of the conference. So that's an idea of how you apply universal design you think how can I build into flexibility and what I'm doing. And so we're talking about then applying that idea to online courses. So the characteristics of the university design product then is encoding a course is it's accessible. And so you can technically can access it, including people with disabilities with the standard technology, you can access the content, which would mean like the content in a document, or the content presented in a video and so forth. But it's also usable. We have someone on our staff hotty, who will sometimes report about products he's testing for accessibility since he does a lot of that. And what the company did is they created a product that's not really accessible to someone who's blind as hotty is, and using a screen reader to read aloud the text. But instead of really building an accessibility from the get go, they have created a lot of shortcut keys sequences of keys where. Where hotty and someone else who is blind could, could just click those keys and get to all the functions of that product. Well, I think you would probably agree that that's not really very usable for hotty. It's technically accessible, but it's not very usable for him to what is going to do memorize all these they could be, you know, 50 100 of them. They could print something in braille like a little table to have by his computer. I don't know how you do that, but any of those solutions do not result in a usable product. So you want your course to be usable as well as technically accessible, and then inclusive and that may mainly means that people are using the same product in a online class they can interact in small groups together, and do other activities in the class together they can have a whole different thing that they do like an alternative assignment. Sometimes an alternative assignment is necessary, but should be after you've investigated if they might be able to participate in the other class activities that the other students are doing. Now the good news is we've actually applied universal design very broadly. And the example of curb cuts on the screen right now is a picture that appeared in the daily are University of Washington student newspaper in 1970, part of an article, and there's a young man in a wheelchair. And on the back of his wheelchair he has a sign that in capital letters says ramp the curves, get me off the street. And so he's a protester of one probably of several back then in 1970. And there was a lot of pushback on that. Can you imagine facing University of Washington all the curbs we have hills and so forth and going. Going through all of those designs and building in the curb cuts, and people claimed it was prohibitively expensive and after all how many people would really use a curb cut anyway, you know how many people who have a wheelchair. But as you know, long story short, we have adopted curb cuts as a standard practice in sidewalk design would be unusual if someone put a sidewalk in your neighborhood and it didn't have curb cuts in it I think there would be people protesting wouldn't be people with disabilities probably the people that use those curb cuts for delivery carts and baby carriages and maybe even skateboards. So this is an example of a universal design practice that has been widely accepted, particularly in the United States, but in other countries as well. Now if you look at the universal design of it of technology, which like I said in the, the next series, part of the series of this Thursday afternoon program, you'll get to get into these details. So basically two things to think about. You want to make sure that your technology builds in accessibility as much as possible, as regular features. We see this in our smartphones. Your smartphone you can actually change the color of the foreground and the background and change the size of the characters on your screen. You can even have the phone talk to you actually mine talks to me a little bit too much, but that's another problem. So that's what you would like to do but some things are not going to be built into a computer system for example, like a Braille embosser that is person is blind can use to produce Braille using Braille translation software. And so in that case what you want to make sure is that you in the it design that you ensure compatibility with assistive technology. So someone using a screen reader can use your it all the functions of it, and so forth. And so that's universal design of it and a brief, and then we talked about videos for all universal design including universal design of your course. There are a lot of beneficiaries. And so if we just take a look at captioning the beneficiaries include people who are unable to hear the audio. People who are English language learners, people in a noisy environment like the airport, or a noiseless one like in a baby's room all the baby sleeping. It's a slow internet connection. Someone who wants to know the spelling of words that's kind of everybody I think. And then people that need to find the content quickly because if you have the right tools, like we do in the do it website where we have a lot of videos, you could search through all those captions and find in our large collection of videos where the word blindness is is used, you could use some other search term of it because they're in a text based format. And so that's the idea of universal design where it can benefit more than just people with disabilities, where an accommodation as I mentioned early is for one person, you're not just mediating a document for that one person, and a faculty member may if they put some effort into it, use accessible documents in the future, but many times and I would guess to say, I think most faculty members don't they go back to disability services will will remediate those documents again in a future iteration of the class if someone needs accessible documents. I'm not going into this in detail but I just want you to know that there's a rich history, and a lot of principles and guidelines and practices that are part of the universal design framework. And so, I just am going to briefly say what they are not the principles but there are seven principles for the universal design of everything. They're from the 1990s, they've been around a long time, first applied to physical environment, when you'll hear about universal design of homes. So people can age in place and so forth so a lot of applications in the physical environment or even to to appliances and other tech technology like how can you design a microwave oven so elderly citizens can use it pretty easily and building in those features within the product and then came along universal design for learning, which comes from the cast center, and they developed three principles of universal design for learning that really zero in on pedagogy in a course particularly a curriculum development and making sure that the principles are followed to make those materials accessible to people with disabilities. And then, as far as it for the best principles I think to look toward for guidance in online learning are the four principles that underpin the content web content accessibility guidelines, and even though it says web. It can apply to other design of other it as well. And even though it says accessibility is really more universal design, because it isn't just about disability they have guidelines for addressing issues related to English language learners and and slow readers and so forth and people in different languages. So anyway, if we're doing a workshop we can go through these it's kind of fun to see what they say, but rather than do that today in a nutshell what does this mean, what does it say to me. So this might not be a perfect translation if you put all these principles together. But if you follow these two principles, you'll be a long way to making your course accessible and usable. So the first one is to provide multiple ways for participants to learn. So what multiple ways they can learn like using a video and then maybe a document as well or a website. So two different ways they can access the content or more, and to demonstrate what they have learned and that would be making sure that you test students in multiple ways, give students credit for their communications within them. The bulletin board system answering questions along the way, have some other small assignments that will they'll have a chance to show what they've learned and then maybe a large project or two. So just thinking of different ways that students can demonstrate what they have learned, and then multiple ways to engage. I in an online course in my syllabus. I at the very beginning and welcome them and, and tell them I'd love to meet them if they want to talk to me about their learning needs or anything else related of course. I suggest to them that they choose, you know how they'd like to meet, and that could be using the learning management system could be via email, it could be on zoom. And it could be Skype or whatever they can choose. And if we can make that happen will make that happen. Personally, I like to meet with students on zoom, but I have to remind myself as that it's not about me. It's about them so just giving them that agency where they can actually choose how to communicate with you. And my experience in the past as students that want to communicate via email. I think I don't know because they don't have to give me a reason it might be because they're a little embarrassed about their English skills or they have a speech or they have a learning disability that makes it difficult for them to get their thoughts out. But the point is that anybody can make the choice for themselves and ensure that all technologies and facilities and services and resources and strategies are accessible to individuals with a wide variety of abilities and other characteristics. Are you going to ever be perfect about this. No, but at least you can think about it. Think about the variety of people that might be in your class. And so we're focusing on online classes today but we also have a lot of checklists and other resources for physical spaces. I'm going to give you the URL for the do it website. I'm going to give you a quick presentation, but you can go there and find a checklist for instance on how to make a maker space. So it's more inclusive of people with disabilities, or design a stem lab science technology engineering mathematics. So you, or even a recreation facility so we have a lot of checklists that have been developed over the years in consultation with people with disabilities, and also service providers from other campuses. So you just give people multiple ways to do things, and then you ensure accessibility. The first example I gave about using a video and a written material, as a two ways to, to learn. If you look at the second principle then you need to make sure that that video is designed in an accessible way, and the document or website is also designed in an accessible way that that that's what the second condition implies. I came up with this in part because I actually think universal design for learning should imply that things are accessible. I tend to go to a lot of talks at conferences and so forth and I go to talks on universal design for learning and often they don't talk about accessibility. And so, and some actually would think that well as you have a video and you have written material that's enough, if they can access one of them but not necessarily both. Well but it's ideal if they can access both some people will watch the video and read the, the written materials both out of me that was kind of student I was. Okay, so whenever you're developing a course, then you should consider the characteristics of students who might enroll. And the assistive technology that they might be using could be multiple keyboards and so forth all types. And so I like to think of four people I know when I'm teaching a class online. And that and if I make my class accessible to them, then it's going to be pretty accessible to lots of other people as well. So you should think about English language skills and cultures and interests and comfort using technology. Some people are more comfortable than others so how can you keep that, you know, the need for knowing about how to use technology kind of at a minimum because you want to teach the content in your class. So the first one on three four pictures here is Zane. And these are all people I know, usually through their do it program that we can see the body on there works for us. And he also happens to be deaf. And so she's one that will really benefit if you make accurate captions on your videos. Anthony has multiple physical disabilities. And he also does not have a usable voice. And so he can. Select keys on a touchscreen if they're large. And he also uses software that will help create macros and so he can get his full name and his address and so forth into written form quickly. And so there are other technologies he uses in that that department. He also uses a telephone, because he did he provides phone support technology support for parents of children who've been diagnosed with conditions similar to his own, in many cases. And so how does he do that. Well, he can use a voice synthesizer. He can compose his thoughts, and then the computer will read aloud what what he composed, and he has a phone connected to his computer. And so he can any method for dialing and so forth. And he can that make phone calls, and then he can can talk with his computer generated voice. And there are literally thousands, thousands of products assistive technology that people like Anthony can use to get access to computing. Some people think in order to have a student like that in your class you need to know about all this technology they're using. Well, not really. People in my it accessibility team can can tell you about that. But really there's one main thing to think about when as an issue with Anthony. And that he all that he has there can emulate the keyboard. And so you can assume that assistive technology will emulate everything on the keyboard. So if you use a standard keyboard, someone with all that technology can do everything that you do on the keyboard. But you can assume that they will, it will fully emulate the mouse. And so that comes into play, not real often with using instructor, but if you're using it other than in your learning management system or, or websites and whatever, you can test to see can that website be accessed with a keyboard alone. Can that it be used without using a mouse. So set your mouse away and you can tell whether that was being violated. There are a lot of other accessibility rules as well but that's one thing you can actually test for. Anthony and she has multiple learning disabilities, and she has difficulty getting her thoughts down on paper or even with the keyboard, and also reading. So the, the multiple learning disabilities result in that combination of challenges for her. And so actually dictating to the computer is not something that's difficult for her to do, no matter how your course is designed. But then she needs to read back the content of documents that you're presenting and website content and so forth. And so in order for her to read aloud for a computer to read aloud, what's on the screen, she needs to have access to the text. And so for instance if you're using a PDF and it's just scanned in all her computer can't read it can't decipher exactly what that content is now there's some translation software and so forth that can help do that. But basically to think about students with learning disabilities that one thing they may have a challenge with is accessing the text. This is a value to English language learners because there are some English language learners that might choose to use text to speech software. So it might be more efficient for them to read things it might be more efficient for them than just reading them in the printed format. And then there's hearty already talked about hearty a bit. And so imagine hearty I have to imagine him my teaching might be teaching the class that I'm teaching because he teaches online. And so his, his basic access issue is similar to Jesse's, even though their disabilities are quite different. He needs access to the text. So his screen reader can read it aloud to him. And so text that's embedded in an image for instance, his screen reader is not going to pick up on it, unless you use alternative that can be entered in, and his screen will be able to pick that up. But he also needs some formatting because you can imagine if he's reading a 25 page paper, and he has access to the text, but it's not in formatted in a way that he has access to, it'd be like reading a big single string, maybe like one sentence. And so he can't tell where there are lists, can't tell whether the headings that level one heading or level two heading or whatever it's we can't really skim through the document to the party wants to to access. And so that's very difficult for them for him. And so what he needs is formatting of that PDF for that word document or that website that would format say the headings. And so that would point out to him heading one heading to and so forth, but also would warn him that he's coming up like a bulleted list. And there's, there are also formatting requirements for tables and, and so forth, but the idea is to use those formatting features within your, your, the system that you're using for creating a document like Microsoft Word. You can add to images alternative text. And you also can format your, your headings and your lists and stuff by using the styles that are provided already. It's not a lot of extra work. But sometimes it just seems easier to just put it, you know, select the text and put it in bold and call it good. But that's not going to work well for haughty. So those are some things to think about kind of on a high level of what students might be facing or instructors in a course. And so the idea here is to really focus on the product and not on the, the, the, the limitations of the person so when you're your course, when you look at your course, you can compare to when you look at the lettuce. If it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce, you look for reasons that's not doing well. That may need fertilizer, it might be water, how about sun. I mean I am very poor in this department I don't blame the plants in my house for dying it because I just tend to forget to water them. That's not a good quality of someone who has plants in their house. This was a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. So I'm not sure he was thinking about universal design, but this is what universal design is like. So in the course, you might think well some students are going to do very well on this, but you want to minimize that by looking at your course on seeing what you can do on your end to make it more inclusive. Even this presentation today I thought of some things. I'm using standard template. And so you can get access to this PowerPoint from a website, and it's designed in an accessible format. The standard template often those standard templates either offered in Word or the university templates are designed to encourage you to make your slides accessible rather than just starting with a blank slate and selecting a text box or something to put your text in. I use clear and consistent layouts, not a very fancy layout, but not distracting to someone let's say who has attention deficits. I use a large sans serif fonts can help someone with the visual impairments but also can help students with dyslexia and other reading related disabilities, be able to read the text better. I have uncluttered pages, high contrast, I spell out acronyms, and I speak the content presented visual visually, and it turned the captions on. And some of the things you might come up with that you could do in a presentation but there's some simple ones that you can just end up doing routinely to make your PowerPoint and zoom presentations in your course or otherwise accessible. So now I'm going to share 20 tips for teaching an online accessible course, an accessible online course, and you'll find this I'll give you the URL at the end. As a document that's part of the do it collection was created with a lot of input from instructors, but also from students with disabilities. We often will host panels of students with disabilities and I pay particular attention to what they say about challenges they're facing and working online and some of them are really simple things that anybody could do. And so sometimes faculty members get caught up in what they can't do, because they don't know enough about technology or whatever. They're pretty simple things in this list of 20. I hope you get started. I'm not saying if you do these 20 things you're done, but anything that you do in that list is making your course more accessible and may have results in reducing the number of accommodations students with disabilities have in your class. And so there's a fair amount of amount of research that's out there so I reviewed articles and reports from online instructors and the students, and actually have gone through and, and updating this list periodically as I work with with teachers and students to come up with ideas but trying to keep it to 20. So here's one of the ones that's very simple tip and also a big complaint of students with disabilities is it's not real clear with how the course is organized and how you get one from one part to the next. Like if you go into the learning the modules, you know it doesn't tell you at the end of a module what do I do next it might be better for instance at the end of that module to say, Next, go to the discussion board and answer this question, or something, you know that doesn't guide you through the class. And then also inconsistency I'm sure that happened in a lot of the courses that went online because the pandemic as faculty members are quickly throwing the things that they have online, but now it's time to go back and see if you can make them a little more consistent. I have consistent fonts and organizational schemes. Use a text format talk to under talked already about why that's important and how he would really benefit from you structuring those headings and your lists and your tables and so forth. And so you can learn how to do that. There are standard practices you can Google it, depending what software package you're using. Even in your learning management system. We have a software ally that combines with canvas to give you hints on accessibility, but also you can look at the Q&As about how to make certain things accessible descriptive wording for hyperlinks. This is also beneficial for someone who's blind using a screen reader. If they go to a website or your content in a learning management system one of those pages, and you have links to resources. They can use their screen reader and skip through all those links and have them read aloud to them. And so they can see what pages to that they can link to without reading all the surrounding text to explain what the link is to. So if hot he goes to a page and you've got a whole bunch of links from your website or your learning management page, a bunch of them and he just wants to see what it's linking to. And you name them all the same because it looks kind of pretty inconsistent for them all to say click here, click here, click here. That's what haughty hears if he wants to look and see what links there are. So he'll just hear click click here click here click here. So he has to go back to the beginning. And he has to read all that content so he can get that surrounding text to see what he's linking to or he can just randomly go through these links and you know see what they look to. So that's a very easy thing to do takes a little work to go back in your class now and have descriptive wording so you'd say do it website or UW website, rather than click here click here. So just descriptive keep it pretty short. But so a person has an idea what they're linking to. As I've said this is my personal opinion anyway avoid using PDFs or learn how to make them accessible and we can teach you how to do that. So we have a lot of these sessions are, and we have even resources online for helping with that. Don't use scan image PDFs. And so accessible HTML is ideal. And that's what is, if you put something in your content page that's HTML kind of language of the web. And that is easiest to make accessible. But even if you want to have a document Microsoft Word is easier to make accessible so you can keep it pretty easy. And that's an attachment for a document only once in the classes I teach online, and that's for the syllabus. Everything else is in the content pages or it's linked from there. But the reason I have that document in it's in the case of the syllabus, it's the one case where I really want the students to be able to download that that document, and make it their own. So they can go into that syllabus and they can make notes in the timeline area to break down some of the assignments and so forth they can take out content in my syllabus that doesn't really apply to them. So they don't have a disability for instance they can take out that whole section and some other things. And so they can slip simplify that that syllabus. Some faculty members have pushed back on that was saying well it's intellectual content that's mine you know I'm the owner of this company you are. But I have, I have never found anybody that wants to steal my syllabus frankly, and if they wanted to it doesn't really matter what format it said you can easily steal it anyway. And then the text descriptions of content and images. We talked about that. And that's for screen readers to pick up on also very easy thing to do and in canvas and blackboard and other learning management systems. The system will prompt you. If you put an image in it'll ask for the alt text but now you know what it's why it's there. People ask me well what's you know what are the rules we can find some, some resources about alternative text online particularly long descriptive text like an image or you need to break it down in parts and so forth so this can get really complicated for a complicated image, but for your standard image, keep it short. Imagine what a person needs to know in order to follow your instruction. And so that name tag that I gave us an example while back. So you can describe that image so you didn't have to actually see it. And hopefully I described it well so you can follow along if you didn't have access to it. So that's what I'd say, think about what would you tell somebody on the telephone. What, what's on the screen that's important that's relevant to the topic of discussion. People will tell me all the time people were blind that sometimes people make their alternative text too long and too detailed. They just want to be crisp. Let me know what I'm missing. And also you can put in there whether it's just decorative content too. So they don't know that they just that they didn't miss anything by not knowing the content in that image. So that's fairly easy so far, used large bold sans serif fonts, uncluttered pages playing backgrounds, we talked about that as far as my PowerPoints here. There are two contrast color combinations and problematic ones for those who are colorblind avoided. There are color checkers you can check and see if colors are used on a page can be distinguished by individuals who are colorblind. There are different types of colorblindness as far as which colors and how severe it is. I actually prefer to just make sure that that the what whatever I'm providing or asking people to do doesn't require that they distinguish color. And so I might even use two buttons where one is red and one is green. And those are really difficult for many people with with colorblindness to distinguish, but I might have the green one as a triangle and the red one as a square. And so a person can talk about the green triangle and a person that they can't tell the color it doesn't matter because they can tell it's a circle. So anyway, that's, that's, that's something to think about. Make sure videos are captioned and audio described audio description is adding some audio content in for someone who's blind watching the video. Is it done as commonly ideally we do that with all of our videos, or create videos that where you speak all the content, and then you don't need the audio description. Avoid using a large number of technology tools. There's so much cool technology out there it's really out there it's really tempting to use it. But remember that some people are not don't find using new technology all that much fun. And some of these smaller products you might find out that are really cool. Do not have accessibility features they haven't thought about accessibility. How do you know where you can go. And you can try using the software without with the keyboard alone. And in other words just go to their website and see if they have an accessibility page. If they don't my guess is it's probably not designed to be very accessible. So but it's just a general guideline for everybody because you don't want to make the technology using a big part of your course in most cases unless you're teaching about technology tools. So you don't want people to be being hampered by a lot of technology that you really didn't need to use address a wide range of technical skills, pointing to resources to gain skills. Imagine in your canvas course that you have a student in there that this is the first canvas course they've taken. Most of your students have probably done many campus campus courses by the time they're in yours. But for that just give some guidelines to that particular student not individually but in your syllabus, or an announcement to say, if you're new at using canvas I suggest you, you watch this video or go to this q amp a to get started, because there's so much in the resources pages they don't know where to start. And you know what you're going to be doing in the class so you know which resources good to start with. So make sure the contents presented in multiple ways that we get into the universal design for learning and multiple ways we offer multiple ways to communicate and to collaborate. If I have small groups. This is in online or on site, and make sure to give them instructions on how I expect them to work together. Participate multiple ways demonstrate what they've learned lots of different ways to test for learning, and address a wide range of language skills just using plain English, filling out acronyms and, and defining jargon things like that. Make your instructions and expectations clear one of the other top things that students with disabilities complain about students on the autism spectrum and students with some types of learning disabilities are particularly benefit when you make your instructions really clear. So a lot of people do a disability or not, make sure examples and assignments are relevant to a diverse audience, and use outlines and scaffolding tools kind of help students get through the content, provide adequate opportunities for practice, and adequate opportunities provided for activities one way to, to do that is to put all of your assignments in the class particular big projects and so forth in the syllabus clearly defined. And so students can get started on those right away, allowing them to have more time essentially and giving feedback on parts of a big assignment, and maybe corrective opportunities. So using the accessibility checkers, you can Google to find out where they are if you can't find them for Microsoft Word PowerPoint PDFs and learning management systems and so forth. Use those checkers that could point out some things that are not accessible and now that you've been in this presentation you should understand why why they're giving you the direction that they are. And when you are choosing it tools to use check for accessibility of on the page of the website as I mentioned, the voluntary and product accessibility template. You can look that up but that's the federal government's template that software companies need to add hardware actually have to put in to talk about accessibility but sometimes the marketing people that are putting them up so you might want to check with them with my team on that for particularly important product you're using. And so also there's a discussion list of an organization called Athens that has handles a lot of these Q&As and they have archives where probably the product you're using has been discussed at one point in time. So, so some things and I'll point you to the do it website for details like how do I create math and science documents that are accessible to students with visual impairments details like that. What are some of the standards and guidelines for providing captions and things like that. So in summary universal design is an attitude or framework a goal of process. It values diversity equity inclusion promotes best practices does not lower standards, it's proactive can be implemented incrementally is for the benefit of everyone and minimizes the need for accommodation so let's do that. So, good teaching is good teaching so what universal design provides are accessible design, everyone look at it is a lens to look at all of your teaching practices and say is there's something I could modify this particular practice. In order to be more inclusive of people. And so it doesn't require that you change your teaching practices a lot. So we have resources on the screen and we're going to put the URLs in chat that are UW accessible technology page. And then we'll also put in there the do it center, where you can find the Center for Universal Design and Education and access DL which has a lot of resources not just our own on how to make distance learning or online learning accessible. So you can contact me at share Cheryl be at UW dot edu that's sh er y lb at UW dot edu. So we have time for a quick question. And we're running out of time here but I'm not running away anytime soon so if you have a question you would like to stay a few, a few minutes after our session I'll still be here. So do we have any questions that have popped up in chat. Well, you can unmute yourself and ask a question as well. It looks like gave me has answered most of the questions in the chat I'm just looking through here to see. And gave you by the way is the one that teaches these PDF sessions in this series. What one question I often get is well where do I get started it can seem a little overwhelming. And I might answer to that is always the same which is start somewhere, whatever you do to make your course more accessible, it's going to be more accessible, and it's going to be less need for an accommodation. And even if it's not something that would be accommodation it's going to make it more inclusive of your students. Another way to look at it is think about what you're doing the first two weeks of school. I really focus in that area so the student with a disability that does need accommodation has some time to work with disability resources for students to get those accommodations they need. And so they get their documents or other accommodations when the other students get access to those things. I do see one question that has not been answered. Can you please recommend a solution for situations when PDF documents cannot be avoided, for example, in some courses we need to upload images of court documents. Well, I would first look to see sometimes you can find that those documents have been also made available online in an accessible format. Otherwise, I would as an instructor probably leave that as an accommodation so you would have to do the remediation yourself, but the disability services office should be warned enough, given enough time ahead of time to remediate those documents for you. But you're thinking along the right lines and so there can be some things that are easy to do and something that's things that are hard. And so the question is always along the way could I do this myself and do it now or later. And what things will I rely on the disability services office for at least now. And sometimes the, the library can help you with some of these to they have an accessibility person, Andy Andrews but other staff that know about looking for accessibility because again you might be able to find a document that's a presented PDF but also isn't all is in an alternative format. So I want folks to know that this recording will be available on our website as soon as we get the captions back, and we will have the PowerPoint posted there for you to. I just put a link in the chat and that's the page on our webinar archives page is where you'll find that when it's available. Thank you for joining us. I give me the opportunity to talk about something that I feel pretty passionate about. And so I would encourage you to do one thing just one thing and then go from there to make your course accessible. Cool, thanks for joining us today everyone. I'm going to stop the recording now. Great.