Web Accessibility Resources
SOU Disability Resources
Web Accessibility Resources
Disability Resources aims to provide students with equal access to all of SOU’s classes and programs. Increasingly, technology provides both increased opportunities for independence in equal access and barriers to equal access. Below are some resources to help faculty and staff learn more about how to promote new opportunities and how they can help remove barriers.
The Basics: What is Web Accessibility and Why Should You Care?
Essentially, Web accessibility means the ability of people with a variety of disabilities to perceive, understand, and use the Web and its related information and technologies. It is the practice of designing and developing websites and web applications in a way that ensure equal access and usability for people with disabilities. Looking at some examples: how will a student who is blind be able to perceive a diagram illustrating a chemical process posted on a Blackboard site? How will a student who is Deaf perceive an audio-only podcast? How will a student with a visual-processing learning disability understand a two-page narrative process of steps? How will a student with a mobility impairment use a live chat room when typing with a headstick?
SOU’s student population averages over 450 students who have registered with Disability Resources as having one or more disabilities. This translates to around 10-13% of the student population, making the students with disabilities subgroup larger than any student ethnic subgroup. By comparison, 18.1% of the general population in the United States has a disability (2002 SIPP, U.S. Census Bureau ).
There are some simple reasons to ensure equal access to Web information for these students:
- It’s the right thing to do. Each student with a disability has paid tuition and works toward the same degree expectations as any other student of SOU. We, as faculty and staff, may need to make adjustments in how we deliver our programs, classes, and services, but these are students like any other students.
- It’s the legal thing to do. As a public university, SOU must comply with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). This states:
Subject to the provisions of this title, no qualified individual with a disability shall, by reason of such disability, be excluded from participation in or be denied the benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, or be subjected to discrimination by any such entity. [SEC. 202. Discrimination, 42 USC 12132]
To do this, we use WCAG 2.1 Standards. The sections below will help you make sure your information is accessible to everyone, regardless of ability.
Need a Quick Guide for Accessibility?
The National Center on Disability and Access to Education has a concise and helpful guide. Similarly, WCAG provides a quick checklist to assess your web materials conformance.
Moodle
Moodle is used across campus for both on-campus and distance education courses. Find out about Moodle’s accessibility . A newly adopted feature in Moodle (2022) includes the Brickfield Accessibility Tool kit that helps augment and automate, in many cases, the accessibility of materials on your moodle site.
Equally important is the content that is put on Moodle. When selecting content to post, take a look at the accessibility of that particular content. The information below can give you a great deal of help in figuring out how to do so. There’s also helpful information available from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL).
Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
Microsoft has developed excellent guides to making documents in their Office suite accessible.
Microsoft has also made available a very handy Accessibility Checker for their products. It is available in the most recent versions of Word (both Mac and PC) and in Office 365. SOU has a site license for Office 365, so it can certainly be used. Here’s a guide to using the Microsoft Accessibility Checker for Windows, and one for using the Microsoft Accessibility Checker for Mac.
Google Docs
Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms can all be made accessible in many of the same ways that Microsoft Office products can be made accessible. Google has put together a helpful guide for G apps accessibility.
GrackleDocs is a free Chrome extension to make sure that your Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are accessible.
Table
Tables need to read in logical (left to right, top to bottom) order, with no merged cells. For data tables, make sure the top row content describes the content of each column. Then mark it up as a header, as follows:
- Select the row
- In the Joomla formatting tools, select the Table Cell Properties icon (it’s in the third row of tools; icon is a table with a single cell highlighted). Alternatively, right-click, select Cell, then select Table Cell Properties
- from Cell Type: select Header
- Click Update
Depending on your table, you may also need to mark up the cells in the first column as a header; just select the cells in the first column and use the instructions above. This allows the data cells to be read with both the column and row header information for context. For example, this fictitious table of course enrollment in three terms:
| Course | Fall | Winter | Spring |
|---|---|---|---|
| 101 | 30 | 28 | 27 |
| 102 | 26 | 25 | 30 |
| 103 | 21 | 25 | 28 |
Reading this table visually, you would follow the headers in both the columns and the rows to understand that Fall enrollment in 101 was 30, Winter enrollment in 102 was 25, etc. Table column and row headers allow this information to be read in that same way by screenreaders.
PDF Files
PDF files come from several sources. If you…
- …created the PDF from an accessible Word file (see above), do not use “Print to PDF” – it does not bring the accessibility changes you made over. Instead, use Microsoft’s directions to convert to PDF.
- …scanned a document to an image-based PDF, or don’t know the source of your PDF, use Acrobat’s built-in Accessibility Checker to find and fix accessibility issues.
- We’ve also created a handout for a Word to PDF workflow based on the instructions provided by Microsoft and Adobe.
- Using complex tables that need merged cells? It’s a little complicated, but you can make this work using the Touch Up Reading Order tool in Acrobat Pro.
Videos
Videos can be extremely helpful in showcasing talent, describing processes and skills, and many other purposes. Make sure that everyone has access to the information by thinking about the following when choosing or creating a video:
Captioning
Captions create access for people who are Deaf or hard of hearing. They’re also very helpful for people in noisy environments, people whose first language is not English, or when difficult-to-spell technical terms are used.
- Learn to search for captioned YouTube videos. Caution: Check the captioning before showing the video. Automated captions are often inaccurate.
- You can submit a transcript for YouTube videos. If you own the video, it will automatically synchronize for you. If someone else owns the video, it will notify them that a transcript is available so they can easily create the captions.
- Amara.org is an incredibly useful tool when a captioned version is needed of a video that isn’t yours.
Audio Description
Audio description creates access for people with visual impairments. It provides information about the visual portions of the video that are not repeated in the audio. This tool is far less better known than captioning.
- Perkins School for the Blind has created a great support page for how to create and find audio described YouTube videos
Services for Faculty
If you have a student in a course that requires accessible audiovisual materials, you’ll be notified on the Accommodation Letter. Disability Resources can assist faculty with locating or creating accessible versions of the audiovisual materials they plan to use. There is a link in the Accommodation Letter email to request this assistance. Alternatively, log in to AIMS for Faculty and enter your request(s).