Niagara College Canada

How can I improve the accessibility of my course content and activities?

Use Blackboard’s accessibility features

Blackboard is set up to allow for courses to be built in such a way that they offer equal access to all students.  Familiarizing yourself with the options that Blackboard makes available for instructors and students can help you to design a course that meets the needs of diverse learners.

• Instructor information on accessibility features – https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Administrator/Hosting/Accessibility/Accessibility_Features
• Student information on accessibility features –  https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Student/Accessibility

Encourage students to use assistive technologies

Many students who need assistive technologies, such as screen readers and voice-to-text software, may already have them in place.  If your students identify that they are struggling with particular aspects of your course or need different tools, please refer them to Accessibility Services for guidance on available assistive services and helpful accommodations.

• Niagara College’s Accessibility Services – https://www.niagaracollege.ca/accessibilityservices/
• UDL and assistive technologies – http://udlguidelines.cast.org/action-expression/physical-action/assistive-technologies

Create accessible documents

Applying accessible formatting guidelines when developing course documents can help to ensure that these materials are usable by all students. Many programs already have features and tools in place to enhance accessibility.

• Creating accessible documents in Word – https://support.office.com/en-us/article/make-your-word-documents-accessible-to-people-with-disabilities-d9bf3683-87ac-47ea-b91a-78dcacb3c66d
• Creating accessible PDFs – https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/acrobat/using/create-verify-pdf-accessibility.html#make_PDFs_accessible

Inform students about specific accessibility features, like the immersive screen reader functionality in our institutional version of Microsoft Word

We have multiple institutional tools available to us through Blackboard and the Office365 suite that can support accessibility.  For example, the version of Microsoft Word available to both students and faculty through the NC portal page (More Applications; Microsoft Office365; MS Word), includes an immersive screen reader.  When students open a word document within this interface, the immersive screen reader will speak text aloud in a choice of voices and allows users to view the text in a variety of fonts, sizes and background colours.

More information on how to access and use the immersive reader functionality in Word – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHJJCLV-DNg

Use alternative text (alt text)

If you’re using images, graphs, figures, or other visual aids in your course, it’s important that you include an alt text description of the image.  Providing a description of what’s in the image means that a screen reader will be able to describe the image for students with a visual impairment. For a simple image, the description can be brief.  For an image that is complex and conveys a lot of information, the alt text may need to be longer and more descriptive.

• Adding alt text in Blackboard – https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Student/Add_and_Format_Content/Add_Files_Images_Video_and_Audio#add-images-in-the-editor_OTP-3
• Tips for writing good alt text – https://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/

Make accessible videos

If you’re making your own videos for your course, it’s important to ensure that your videos are accessible to students.  At a minimum, this means that your videos should all be properly captioned. MS Stream, which all Niagara College faculty and students have access to through the apps on the NC portal, can autogenerate fairly accurate captions for any lesson recordings that you might produce.  You can easily edit the autogenerated captions to ensure complete accuracy.

Check out our Video Library on making videos using Collaborate and PowerPoint and hosting them on MS Stream.

Locate accessible videos

If you’re using videos in your course which you did not generate yourself, it’s equally important to ensure that they are also accessible to students. At a minimum, this means that they should be properly captioned –  in many programs, automatically generated captions are not sufficient to meet accessibility standards. When searching for videos in certain programs, like YouTube, you can set up your search filters to eliminate any options that are not fully captioned. Other common video sources, such as TED Talks, routinely make accurate captions available in a variety of languages. Please ensure that you check all videos that you plan on using in your course to ensure that the captions are accurate.  If you are looking for alternatives to a poorly or non-captioned video that you are currently using in your course, library staff may be able to help you find what you need.

• Finding captioned YouTube videos – https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/3029103?hl=en
• Watching TED talks with subtitles – https://support.ted.com/hc/en-us/articles/360004232954-Watching-talks-with-subtitles
• NC Libraries – https://nclibraries.niagaracollege.ca/library/contact

How can I apply Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles to make my course content more meaningful for all learners?

Include information in formats that can be easily adjusted by students

Providing students with content in Word or PDF format allows them to adjust the size of the document to improve its legibility.  Even when you have created a narrated PowerPoint recording, also providing students with a link to the original PowerPoint file means that they can change colours and font sizes in ways that support their learning. Ensuring that images, charts, and graphs are high-resolution so that they don’t pixelate when blown up is also helpful.

UDL and customizing how information is displayed – http://udlguidelines.cast.org/representation/perception/customize-display

Offer a variety of formats

Where possible, make an effort to provide your content to students in multiple formats so they can rely on the formats that work best for them.  For instance, if you make a video for your course, ensuring that the video is fully captioned and is accompanied by a text transcript will allow students to engage with the content through a variety of means.

Check out our Video Library for more information on how MS Stream can support the captioning of lecture recordings and how videos that exist within MS Stream can be easily linked into your Blackboard course site.

Include multiple ways of getting the same information

If there are different opportunities for students to access the same information, providing multiple options reinforces what’s important and allows students to choose what works best for them.  For instance, you might offer students an article, video, and infographic as different approaches to understanding the same concept.

UDL and illustrating through multiple media – http://udlguidelines.cast.org/representation/language-symbols/illustrate-multimedia

How can I apply UDL principles to make my assessments more meaningful for all learners?

Give students some control over the format of their work

It’s not uncommon that we default to particular types of assignments in our classes and expect that all students will show what they know in the same way.  Allowing students more options to show what they know allows them to demonstrate their knowledge in a way that works well for them. For instance, if the focus is to have students plan a process, allowing them to write a paper, develop a presentation, make a video, draw a poster, or design an infographic to show their process allows them to demonstrate what they know in a format that works for them. The fundamental focus on developing a process is the same, but students have choice in how they demonstrate it.

• Multiple tools for construction and composition – http://udlguidelines.cast.org/action-expression/expression-communication/construction-composition
• Multiple media for communication – http://udlguidelines.cast.org/action-expression/expression-communication/use-multimedia

Give students some control over the topic of their work

When possible, allowing students to choose how they focus their work can help them to build a sense of ownership and increase their interest and engagement. If the focus of an assignment is on a particular kind of output – such as writing a report or creating a business plan – allowing students to choose a topic of interest for the report or a kind of business they might want to start one day can give them more control while still demonstrating that they can do the necessary work.

Individual choice and autonomy – http://udlguidelines.cast.org/engagement/recruiting-interest/choice-autonomy

Use UDL rubrics for grading

Assignments that offer multiple ways of completing the work can be graded using UDL rubrics. These rubrics often focus on things that can apply to many different assignment formats, such as the quality and innovativeness of the idea, clarity of expression or presentation, relevance to course concepts, and depth of evaluation or application.