Online Accessibility for Students with Disabilities

Synopsis of “How to Session” for Accessibility. Hardware, software, and techniques to use in creating an online course were discussed.

The technologies presented were:

1. Screen Readers:
   • Kurzweil 3000
   • JAWS-PC
   • Voice Over-Mac
2. Speech to Text
   • Dragon Naturally Speaking-PC
   • Dragon Dictate-Mac
3. Screen Magnification and Color Contrast
   • Zoom Text-PC
   • Mac Screen Magnification
4. Braille Reader/Writer

Accessibility Techniques:

1. Alt Text –Alternative Text for picture, charts, graphs, and other visual images.

1. Right click on image
2. A Menu will pop up
3. Select the last entry on the Menu “Format Picture”
4. In the Dialog box select “Alt Text”
5. Type in description of what is happening in the picture and how this is important to the course content. For Example: Rather than saying, “A band at a party.”

Alt Text addresses 80% of web accessibility issues.

2. Creating heading in Word documents by using Headings feature in Word rather than using large font size to indicate a Heading.

3. To format PowerPoints use the Layout templates.

4. Do NOT use color as the only way to indicate emphasis. Use special symbols in conjunction with color to show emphasis.

5. Writing for the Web:

• Use intuitive headings and links – “Quiz” NOT  “Click Here”
• No more than “1” important idea per paragraph.
• Use Bullets
• Use Numbers if sequence is important
• Use simple, declarative sentences.
• Use conversational language, “I” and “you” rather than “the instructor” and “the student”.
• Identify document type in link – “Identify Formats (PPT)”

6. Specific Accomodations

• Extended Time-Most common accommodation
• Inaccessible Exams-Create Math equations for Screen Reader:
  • MathType
  • Math ML
• Alternate formats:
  • Braille Reader/Writer
  • Screen Reader

7. Resources

• Alt Attributes http://webaim.org/techniques/alttext/
• Accessible Tables  http://webaim.org/techniques/tables/
• Accessible Forms  http://webaim.org/techniques/forms/
• Creating Semantic Structure  http://webaim.org/techniques/semanticstructure/
• Captioning Multimedia http://webaim.org/techniques/captions/
• Accessibility Evaluation Tools:
  1. WAVE  http://wave.webaim.org/
  2. Fangs  http://www.standards-schmandards.com/projects/fangs/
  3. W3C’s MarkUp Validator  http://validator.w3.org/
  4. W3C’s CSS Validator  http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
  5. Laws and Standards  http://www.section508.gov/
  6. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)  http://www.ada.gov/
  7. Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) http://www.w3.org/WAI/
• Universal Design
  1. Universal Design in Higher Education: From Principles to Practice,

  Edited by Sheryl E. Burgstahler and Rebecca C.Cory http://www.hepg.org/hep/Book/83

  2. National Center on Universal Design for Learning: http://www.udlcenter.org/research
  3. Center for Applied Special Technology: http://www.cast.org/about/index.html

The information in this document was presented in the webinar “Online Accessibility for Students with Disabilities” by Jenny Dugger and Dan Allen of Drexel University.