Monday
November 6, 2017
Quality Matters Webinar
Eight Tips for Addressing Accessibility
12:00‑1:00 PM EST
	
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	CART Disclaimer:  This rough edit transcript, which may contain missing, misspelled or paraphrased words, is only provided for your immediate review and is not certified as verbatim and is not to be cited in any way. 
		
	>> NANCY RAGIAS: ‑‑ make sure you select all panelists and attendees so your discussions can be seen by everyone in the webinar.  
	You probably want to leave both your Q&A and chat boxes open so you can see the questions going through and the discussion, but you can drag those over to the side of your screen so you'll be able to see the presentation.  
	And right now we'll go ahead and turn the presentation over to Catherine. 
	>> CATHERINE ARTAC: Hi, just want to do a quick mic check.  Are you able to hear me, Nancy?  
	>> NANCY RAGIAS: Yes, I am. 
	>> CATHERINE ARTAC: Wonderful. Okay.  Thank you for the introduction and my name is Catherine Artac. And I am a member of the Online Learning Team at Minnesota State University in Moorhead, Minnesota. And my role is to provide Instructional Design support and technology support for my faculty.  I also serve as the Quality Matters Coordinator for my campus and I'm a certified facilitator for a variety of online workshops for QM. 
	Let me go ahead, I don't think I'm sharing my screen here yet.  Let me go ahead and do that. Great. Wonder.  
	Thanks everyone for joining us today.  I'm going to be sharing tips for you on how you can address accessibility in your course design.
Before we get started, I want to make a disclaimer that I do not profess to be a disability expert, however, in my quest to become more knowledgeable, I have learned a lot of tips and I'm hoping to share those tips with you today, some practical things you can do to get started in pursuant of making your courses more accessible. 
	Also, for those of who you are using Quality Matters, using the rubric to inform your course design, I have indicated on my slides, I have made some notations of where these practices align with Quality Matters standards, QM Standard 8 in particular.  So I'm hoping today by the end of the session you'll have just a greater awareness of accessibility in terms of how it applies to Universal Design for Learning and how it relates to some Federal Civil Rights that are ‑‑ some legislation that's been around for a long time.  I'm also hoping you will be able to identify specific ways that you can make your course material accessible, so we'll look at some of the high level topics and then we'll also look at the nuts and bolts and in the end your takeaway will be a greater awareness of accessibilities issues and how you can find resources to help you make your courses accessible. You know, some ideas and practices you can put to use right away.  
	So 11%, does anyone have any guess as to what this represents?  If you have any guesses, feel free to throw that into the chat window if you have any. But what this number represents to me, as of 2012 when these stats were gathered, 11% of students in Higher Ed have a disability. And trends show that number is growing.  It will be interesting to see the new set of numbers when that data is released to see if that trend has continued to grow.  Now from a pragmatic point of view, this is a significant portion of our students with a disability and that could include a variety of disabilities with a variety of accommodation needs. It could include hearing loss, visual impairment, motor or cognitive issues, learning disabilities.  And if you are delivering your course online, you may be unaware of your students’ specific disabilities or even if they have any at all.  
	So as we talk about accessibility today, I'm hopeful that you already have a general idea of what that means. In terms of what accessibility means in education, it has been defined for us, but it's in rather broad terms.  And what that means is that we need to take ‑‑ make it possible for all students to engage in our courses, to be able to have equivalent opportunities regardless of their disability. Today, I am talking specifically about digital accessibility. Now digital accessibility in terms of course design and materials.  So what do we mean when we're talking about digital accessibility?  Well, the first thing that comes to mind for me a closed‑captioning, but it is more than just captions.  It includes ensuring that students, all students, from equitable access to the learning materials we create. It includes documents design and course navigation.  And why are we concerned with accessibility digitally?  Well, we need to make sure that we're serving that 11% of students who identify as having a disability. There are other considerations. Accessibility is considered a Federal Civil Right, so this year actually marks the 27th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act is over 40 years old.  So this legislation is by no means new to us.  And yet there's still many cases where we are not complying with the law in providing accessible digital learning materials for our students.  Because of this inconsistency in complying with the legislation, the Department of Justice has actually come knocking at the door of many institutions of Higher Ed in the past few years. Here I've got a list of several cases that have been brought to the Courts. And yet, despite this, I've heard some folks argue, why should I go to all of this work if I don't know if anyone in my class will have a disability and need an accommodation?  My response is, it only takes one students to file a complaint. The majority of complaints are not by large groups, but rather by a few or even just an individual.  And to that individual, the need for accessible materials could mean the difference between being able to fully participate in the course or not.  
	Those who need an accommodation, the material is also there to help those ‑‑ excuse me, the material is ‑‑ making our courses accessible is also the right thing to do. It's not just meeting Federal/legal requirements. You know, when we talk about accessibility in our digital materials, the conversation also just naturally touches on a concept called Universal Design for Learning. Making course materials accessible does help us work toward meeting Federal Legislation, but it also helps us work toward applying the principles of Universal Design for Learning, helping us to be inclusive in our course, and lowering the barriers to learning. It's true that like Universal Design for Learning, accessible design can benefit all learners, not just those in need of special accommodations for a disabilities. 
	If you are new to the concept of Universal Design for Learning, think of Universal Design in the physical world, which includes things like curb cuts and door opener buttons.  These are designed for accessible use, such as by someone in a wheelchair, but they are also used universally by far more than just those who need the accommodation, they are also used by those who find the design to be helpful, such as someone pushing a stroller.  
	Likewise, in the world of course design, Universal Design for Learning levels it's playing field for learners taking into account different learning abilities and differences.  So maybe what we do to meet an accommodation for one student may also serve as a convenience for another student. For example, I know that when I watch a video, my preference is to turn on the closed‑captioning as the combination of listening to the video, watching the video, and reading the captions really helps me to better grasp the concept if it's something new that I'm trying to learn.  
	In my community where my college is up in northwest Minnesota, we have quite a large population of New American residents and our campus also has a large number of International students. So many of these students also benefit from closed‑captioned videos.  Being able to see and read the words while watching and listening follows the spirit of Universal Design, helping the students to engage with the content by multiple means.  
	It's also true that providing an accessible design upfront helps you to be ‑‑ avoid being reactive. Should you have a student in your class who actually needs an accommodation, if you've provided accessible material upfront, the student won't be delayed in actually beginning the course, while waiting on materials to be made accessible. 
	So for those of you who are already familiar with Quality Matters, Standard 8 from the QM Rubric should come to mind when you are thinking of accessibility and Universal Design for Learning.  QM has identified five specific standards in their rubric that deals specifically with accessible course design. And as we continue on here now, you'll see I've made some notations, as I mentioned, on the slide, where the tips I'm sharing will coincide with helping you work toward meeting Standard 8. 
	Okay, so I'm going to pause for a minute and check the Q&A.  I do see a question in there. If anyone has any questions so far, please post them. 
	So Judy says that: I think we sometimes forget that faculty and staff are students for internal training and professional development. Are there any stats on that population, especially as staff and faculty grow older?  Honestly, Judy, I don't know if there are stats on that. If someone else knows the answer to this, please post information in the chat for Judy to take this on further, but that's a very good point you make. We as the students, faculty and staff, need to learn these things. And that's my job, my role is to train faculty and staff. So this is a really great question and as I said can I don't know the answer, but if someone does, please chime in and help us with that.  
	Are there any more questions right now?  Let me check the Q&A here again. I don't see any, so I'll continue on. 
	Okay, so I've talked in general about what accessibility is. We need to do it because it's the law, we need to do it because it's the right thing to do in terms of Universal Design, helping our students, you know, so to get back on track here, you are at the point where you're like, great, I get it, you are preaching to the choir and it's not just captioning, but what else is it?  And what do I need to be doing?  
	Well, we know that we can't just do things the way that we've done them in the past. We need to start some new practices and form new habits and really when we think of accessibility, for me, it has been forming these new habits of making sure everything I do is an accessible practice.  And eventually, it just becomes something I do naturally and isn't anything I have to think about as much.  Frankly, there are a lot of things to do, but if we start small and make changes bit‑by‑bit until it becomes habit, it does become a part of what we do. As I mentioned, it's new habits, we can't use white‑out on the computer, that won't work.  
	So let's get into specifics of what we can do to make our courses accessible. I want to begin with structure.  And by structure I mean two things. First of all, how your course is structured, how it's organized, laid out. It must be put together in a logical manner from the student perspective. You want your students to be able to easily navigate through your course and interact with the course components and not waste their cognitive energy just trying to navigate through the course and figure out where things are.  So, please, make it a practice to go through your course site from the perspective of a student. And ask yourself: Is everything laid out consistently and logically from the student perspective?  
	Point two on structure, in addition to course navigation, consider the actual structure of your documents in the course. Creating structured course documents that flow logically for sighted readers and for those using Assistive Technology is important. Whether you create Word documents, presentation slides, HTML documents, PDFs, the structure within those pages should be carefully put together. For sighted readers, documents should be chunked, making use of headings and white space so that it is more easily digestible for online reading. 
	And then for non‑sighted readers, your document should make use of structural elements to allow Assistive Technologies to help the reader navigate through the document. 
	Are any of you familiar with Assistive Technology?  You can note in the chat in you are or are not.  
	For those of you who are not, I'm going to post in the chat, maybe, let me post in the Q&A actually. Let me see the chat window here.  I'd like to post a video that I'd like you to watch after the presentation today. The example is an Assistive Technology that is a screen‑reader and it helps someone who has no or low vision navigate through digital content. For those of you unfamiliar with screen‑readers, I'm going to share that link ‑‑ if I can get to the chat window here. And let's see. I'm having trouble. Here we go. Get into the chat. There we go. So in the chat is the link to this video and I would appreciate if you watched it. It's about seven minutes long, so we're not going to play it now, but I think you will find it quite enlightening in terms of what it's like to use a screen‑reader and why it's important to consider the structure in our documents and some of the tips I'm going to be talking about here.  
	All right, let me get back into my slides. 
	Okay, when you are creating documents, such as your syllabus, make sure you build structure into your document. In Word, use the built‑in tools for creating headings and use numbered and bulleted lists when you need to make a list.  You can find these tools in the ribbon to format your document using the headings and lists tools. This will add tags behind the scenes for someone who is navigating through your course using Assistive Technology like a screen‑reader.  
	Heading levels allow readers to skim materials and jump to the section that they wish to read.  Headings and lists are important for sighted readers as well to break up and chunk the material for easier reading on‑screen.  They are vital for non‑sighted or low vision readers who are using Assistive Technology.  As I mentioned, that technology will use the behind the scenes tags that are added when you use the headings and lists that are built into help the reader. They can use it to move through the pages or jump to particular sections of the pages.  
	I used to be guilty of not using the built‑in headings tool in Word.  To increase headings, I would increase the font size and bold it and maybe throw in a splash of color, but I've since learned the importance of heading tags makes that document usable for someone using Assistive Technology.  So in a tip sheet that I've put together, I've provided some direction on how to use and customize heading styles. If that's not something you are comfortable doing in Word, the tip sheet will be provided in the resource site after the presentation.  
	Another consideration when creating documents in Word is spacing.  When you need to adjust the spacing in your document, make sure you do not use returns or enters to add extra spaces between lines of text or to start a new page. Rather, use those built‑in spacing tools, the breaks and layouts and this will allow you to create breaks and adjust spacing in your document while also putting in tags and the important information for someone using Assistive Technology.  
	Additionally, if your Word document is long, I recommend creating a Table of Contents to allow readers to navigate to particular sections within your document. If you have already added heading tags within that longer document, those will automatically be added as items in the Table of Contents.  
	There are dos and don’ts when creating tables as well.  When you initially look at this table, you might not see what is wrong with it, but what it shows in the upper right side is a merged column.  And this is something I used to do quite a bill as well, but I have since found it's not an accessible practice.  It may be more aesthetically pleasing, but it will not give a proper reading order of the table for someone who is using a screen‑reader.  So when you are creating tables, do not merge or split cells, but do designate column or row headers.  Do repeat header rows. And be sure to add alternative text stating what the table will represent so that someone using Assistive Technology can decide if they should tab through the table or if they want to skip it, just like a sighted reader will quickly scan a table before deciding to read through it. All of these things will help someone using Assistive Technology like a screen‑reader.  And, again, I have included these things on the tip sheet that will be available on the resource site. 
	I see quite a bit of questions in the Q&A, so I'm going to take a look here.  The first question says: I believe we need to work closely with our Accessibility and Disability Offices.  For some of the standards, I found it takes all of us working together, Instructor, Designers, and Directors of Disability Services.  Are there colleges that do not have someone within their institution who are specialized in helping disabled students?  Yes, I believe there are some colleges, especially smaller colleges or two year colleges, their staffing may be limited.  There are definitely folks who are not necessarily available to help faculty. But in a case where you do have ‑‑ all campuses should have an Accessibility Office, but usually they are there to help students meet the needs.  If you have Instructional Designers on your campus, they are often the folks that can help you understand how to do some of this.  
	So Heidi Olson asks: What do you suggest for how long a document is worthy of a Table of Contents?  That's a substantive question, but a good question.  I would probably [laughter] say if you are approaching 6 or 8 pages or more. Again, that's a very subjective question, but any time you start to have long pages of text that are going to be read online it's more fatiguing often to read online than on paper.  So usually when I get over 5 pages is when I add a Table of Contents, but I don't know if there's actually an official recommendation, Heidi, that's a good question.  
	There is another question here that says: Do you know whether the screen‑readers work on webpages such as Google Docs?  We use this a lot rather than Word. And the question is yes and no. So screen‑readers do work on webpages such as Google Docs, however, in Google Docs you need to make sure you are doing the same things as in Word. In your tool bar in Google Docs there are ways to add headings and do the formatting and you need to do that as well and it will put in that tag in the background. 
	Okay, well, let's move on here.  So the next item I would like to talk about is font. There are so many choices, hundreds, and if you are like me, you spend far too much time playing around with different font types.  It can be a lot of fun. And it's not that I'm not recommending to not try different font types, but I do ask you to take into consideration, there's a general rule for material that you expect to be read online and that's to use Sans‑serif font. Sans‑serif fonts are generally considered to be easier to read when reading long block of text online, such as several paragraphs. Sans‑serif fonts include Arial. If you are going to have long blocks of text, avoid using the fancy fonts which means avoiding the use of Times New Roman or Bookman.  
	I'm also a fan of adding color to documents.  Color can really add a lot of visual interest to a course, but please be careful when you consider the colors that you are going to choose. Be mindful of using sufficient contrast. Poor contrast can cause fatigue for any reader online and make it especially difficult for a low vision reader.  So you might ask: How do I know if I have sufficient contrast?  One trick is to check the readability by printing the document in black and white. Of course, it's not always practical to print all your documents, so I also suggest a more reliable check. There are tools that are developed for just this purpose. WebAIM has a great online tool called the Color Contrast Checker. You can use it to check the contrast of your back and foreground colors using the hex value of your color. Now you might say, how do I find that hex value?  In comes a tool like ColorZilla. ColorZilla is a tool that can be added on to browsers like Firefox and Chrome. I use it when I need to determine the hex value of a color. It's really simple.  So I would recommend you use those if you are a color person.  
	Additionally, there's people with low vision and no vision, but there's also folks who have some form of color deficiency. According to the National Eye Institute, around 8% of men have some sort of color deficiency.  So also keep that in mind as you choose to add colors to your documents.  If you do use colored font, make sure you've got sufficient contrast and also that you are not using color as a sole means of emphasis.  
	If you want to use color for emphasis, you can, but do not use it as the sole means, also use bold or italics.  Also, do not use underline for emphasis for documents to be read online.  Underlining indicates a link.  So, again, to convey emphasis, use bold or italics. You can use color to enhance it for sighted readers, but please don't use that as your sole means.  
	Let's move on to links. The majority of online courses have a lot of links to different webpages, either within the course or externally. So be sure to format them correctly as what's called a descriptive link.  And I've demonstrated that here on the slide where it says "course schedules." Screen‑readers, someone who is using a screen‑reader can jump from link to link within a page using the descriptive words used for the link.  And those words used in your link will allow that person to know whether the link will take them without actually having to click on the link and go to where it leads to find out what's there. 
	People using screen‑readers can list all of the links on a page.  When they get a link, the screen‑reader will read it out loud for them.  If it's a URL with all the letters and special character, it's going to read that out character by character and who would want to sit and listen to that long, meaningless address, but additionally, they likely will not know where they are going and have to click on it.  So make sure you are using descriptive links.  And they are also more readable for sighted readers.  
	Make sure that the links ‑‑ the descriptive links you use are meaningful. Avoid using the words "click here" or "read more" for your links.  Generic links like that don't tell someone where the link will lead them. So if someone using a screen‑reader and they pull up a list of links and they all say "click here" they will actually have to click on it to find out. If you have a document that will be read both online and printed, you can still include the URL address, but put it in parentheses behind that link that ‑‑ that descriptive link you've made.  
	Likewise, if a link opens to a PDF document or a video, it's also a best practice to include that notation with the link so someone knows it's not going to a website, it's opening another document, or it's opening a video, and how long that video will be so they can decide if they want to watch the video now or at an another time. 
	Images, I'm a big fan of using images in a course. It adds some pizazz and interest.  It also can be very meaningful in diagramming a process, conveying emotion or other ideas.  If you do use images in your course, please make sure you add alternative text, also called ALT text. This ALT text is read out loud by a screen‑reader or Assistive Technology for someone who cannot see the image. The ALT text is to tell the person what you are trying to convey in the image.  So ALT text should be concise, but it still need to be descriptive enough to explain what the image represents.  If the image is not a diagram, but rather something like a picture of people or an event, make sure it has a personal focus so, again, they can feel what you are conveying.  
	And if you are not familiar with adding alternative text, as I've mentioned before, the tips will be in the tip sheet. But one thing to note that if you are using Word or PowerPoint to add, make sure that you enter the ALT text in the description field that pops up rather than in the title field as most screen‑readers use the description field to give the ‑‑ to read the alternative text for the person using the Assistive Technology. 
	You may ask, what about complex images?  Sometimes we use diagrams or something with many parts. And how could you keep this description short, yet still convey the necessary information?  In this case, I recommend that you add a detailed description of this complex figure or chart in the text surrounding the image.  So you provide an introduction in the text before the image and you may also wish to provide a link to supporting text with a detailed description. And that's something you could put in the alternative text. In either case, be sure to indicate that the detailed description and the image are paired.  
	And I have been talking about documents you create, but maybe you are not creating all of your own document, maybe you are scanning in documents.  You may have chuckled when you first saw this image, I don't know, but I actually have encountered something similar to this in a course at one time and even as a sighted reader, I found this troublesome.  Make sure you if you are scanning in documents from another course, that the text is right side up and don't add any handwritten notes or remove them if there are any on there.  I remember years ago when we first started scanning in documents, before we would scan them, we would add the citation to the top of the page by handwriting in the source. Yeah, we can't do that anymore. It needs to be typed in so that a screen‑reader could actually make sense of it. 
	Additionally as you are scanning, make sure that you have scanned in the text as text and not an image.  And how do you know?  It's usually a quick and simple check. If you can select the text individually by words or letters, then it's scanned text. However, if you try to highlight and the entire piece grabs as one block, then you have scanned an image and you will want to rescan it. Most days if you have newer scanner/printers, those newer devices already scan in a way that is called optimized for text or optical character recognition, but if you want, it might be helpful to just check the settings and, again, make sure you are optimizing for text. 
	So after you scan, you can check to make sure whether you have scanned as text or an image. Select and copy and if you are able to copy that text, then, yes, you've scanned it as text. 
	You can also test in Adobe Reader by using something called read out loud.  It's a tool built‑in and if it can read the text, you should be okay.  
	I think is one of my favorite accessibility tricks, Accessibility Checkers.  Use Accessibility Checkers whenever they are available. They can be found in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Some options also exist in PDFs and HTML webpages.  In Word and PowerPoint, the checker used to actually only be available in the Windows version, but it's now, finally, available for Mac users in Office 2016. So I'm pretty excited about that. 
	The checkers will create a report for you of accessibility issues in your document and then they'll provide tips for what to check and how to fix it, actually. So if you have created a Word ‑‑ excuse me, created a document in Word and saved it as a PDF, the tags you've put in there will be retained and you can actually use the read out loud tool I mentioned on the last slide to confirm that the document is readable by a screen‑reader.  
	If you are creating webpages or HTML document, you can use the WAVE accessibility evaluation tool for webpages that WebAIM has created.  
	For those of you who are using Quality Matters to inform your course design, this next one here is a quick fix, it's a quick win, excuse me, for Standard 8.2 talking about VPATS and Accessibility Statements.  So students who use Assistive Technologies, they need to know if the technology that you will have them use in their course are accessible and if they are compatible with their Assistive Technology.  Now you can find this information in something that's called a VPAT, Voluntary Product Accessibility Template. Or in an Accessibility Statement. These are statements created by the developer of the tool that you are using and they provide relevant information on how that product or service claims to conform to the Section 508 accessibility standards. For someone who is accustom to using access ‑‑ excuse me, Assistive Technologies, that document can help them know how the technology in your class will interact with their Assistive Technology. 
	You can often find VPATS or Accessibility Statements for various technologies right on the product's website. Sometimes I'll perform a Google Search and use VPATS and my search term or technology in there. If neither of those produce results for you, you can actually directly e‑mail the product/vendor or creator, use their contact information from their website, and request that information.  
	Additionally, for those of you who have fortunate enough to have Instructional Technologists or Instructional Designers on your campus, if you have one, they may actually already have access to this information and you can check with them or they may be able to help you find that. 
	So whenever possible, you should include a link to the VPAT or to an Accessibility Statement on a webpage for any technology that you are using in your course.  Now this could include the Learning Management System, web‑conferencing tools, publisher materials, some folks will put this information as links within their syllabus, or maybe you want to put it in a separate document that you will in your course that lists the required technologies for your course.  
	All right, before we move on to number 8, I'm going to check out the Q&A here.  I see a few questions.  So there's a question: Is the PowerPoint you are presenting incorporating technologies to increase its accessibility?  Can your PowerPoint serve as a guide to good practice?  I guess I'm not totally sure of what you mean by the question here. I suppose as a guide to good practice I'm talking about different tools that you'll use to create materials for your course. I have tried to make this PowerPoint itself accessible, but I'm not necessarily promoting any specific technologies. I hope that answers your question. If not, please ask again. 
	Someone has asked: What is the effect of using color adjustment tools and settings in a document if a student is already adjusting their computers for high contrast or low vision?  Now that's a technical question that I really don't know the answer to, but it's a good question. You know, if a student is in need of ‑‑ or has low vision, they are likely used to making a lot of adjustments on their computer. What you need to do is try to find the best settings that you can as a regular reader and then from there the student needs to make adjustments on their own computer.  I'm not sure if that really answers your question, but I suppose it's also kind of a case‑by‑case question depending on how they are adjusting the settings on their computer. 
	Someone says: I use a lot of image analysis, ALT text is not enough.  What discussions do you have for actual analysis of images like in art history?  That's a great question. In that case it would be like the complex images diagram that I showed.  You'll want to talk contextually, provide text description of what the image is and how to convey that, whether it's something that you already have on ‑‑ that's already created online and you can provide a linking out to that, or it may be something you need to write yourself.  And in a case like art history where you are analyzing a lot of images, it may be the case where you need to poll your students and find out if someone has need for an accommodation, you may need to work with your Disabilities Services Department on your campus to provide that information to the student to make sure it's sufficient. In other words, you may need to poll your students, but I believe contextually would be a good way to start. 
	Someone noted that they have an accessibility checker in their Learning Management System and that's fantastic.  I don't believe they all do. If you are lucky enough to have one, that's great. 
	And someone asks: Do textbook publishers have the accessibility embedded in their PowerPoints?  And, again, that's a case‑by‑case narrow.  I would like to say they should and do, but I'm not sure.  I have not checked all publisher material.  I know some I have worked with have, but I would imagine there are instances where that's not the truth. 
	Someone is asking what the LMS is that has the accessibility checker, whoever posted that, could you post that in the chat to share with folks what that is?  
	So back to the question about accessibility within publisher materials, I can't say that I guarantee they are, you would have to work with your publisher to find that out for sure.  
	And then I'm going to do one more question here: How would you describe an image in an exam without giving away the answer.  [Laughter]. Well, that's a really good question.  I guess it depends on what the question is and how you are using the image. I'm sorry, I can't give more specifics on that. But whatever it is you are asking and conveying, perhaps you need to change it up if you are not able to provide alternative text without giving away the answer.  
	Again, it's kind of a case‑by‑case scenario and if it's something that you are unable to find a way to do that, I would consult either others in your department or work with an Instructional Technologists or Disability Office to work with that because, again, it's kind of a case‑by‑case scenario.  
	All right, I'm going to move on here and we'll do some more questions at the end.  So I want to talk a little bit about multimedia. At my institution, multimedia used to be the elephant in the room because it was overwhelming and we didn't necessarily know how to address it. There's challenges in making multimedia accessible and we're working toward it, we're trying to find answers. You know, it can potentially be expensive and time consuming and overwhelming and we just don't know how to get started, but we have a work group together trying to address this now because we really know it's worth it for all of the advantages. Making the media accessible enhances learning for all students, like we already talked about. Students with varied learning styles, students who are English language learners. The clarifying audio for someone who may have a thick accent or speech impediment. And, of course, it provides information for students who may be Deaf or hard‑of‑hearing if we are making captions. 
	One of the simplest things I ask my faculty do to if they are going to use videos in their course is to look for video that is have already been made, pre‑existing videos that are already captioned, such as something that is found on YouTube.  Of course, if you do find something on YouTube, be sure to test the captioning.  There's no guarantee that the caption that is are there are accurate. Even though captions can be edited, there's no guarantee that they were edited to improve the readability beyond the initial conversion.  To actually meet legal and usability standards, captions must be almost 100% accurate. Research has actually shown that comprehension rates begin to drop dramatically with error rates, even as little as just over 3%.  So accuracy of your captions is key for someone who actually needs them for an accommodation.  
	So one trick, if you are looking on YouTube for videos, you can actually search specifically for captioned videos, ones that have been human captioned.  As you are doing this in the search field when you add your search term, afterward you can add a comma and a CC and do a search and that will look for closed caption video for you.  However, it's not always possible to find a video that you need out there online and sometimes you have to create your own videos.  If you do, if you can, use a program that allows you to either upload a script as a caption file, or allows you to manual caption the video, or even one that will auto caption and allow you then to clean up the captions.  
	Such options exist in tools like Camtasia, Panopto, Kaltura Media Space, YouTube, these programs all provide some sort of captioning tool, whether it be to upload the script. Many of them do have auto captions, where they are mechanically captioned and then you can go in and edit those captions so they are accurate. In the tip sheet, I have shared some of the how‑to information for creating screen captions ‑‑ excuse me, for creating captions with the screen captioning programs.  
	Of course, if you are fortunate enough, maybe you have funded on your campus and you can hire out a third party captioning service.  There are actually a lot of captioning services. One that we have found to be affordable to use on our campus is Rev.Com. R‑E‑V.com. But there's also captioning services like 3Play Media, Automatic Sync.  There are a lot of providers out there in the field. And some campuses do have support folks that can assist you with your captioning. You may be fortunate to have a system in place where the captions are created for you, or maybe you have a support person on your campus who can train you and assist you in learning how to caption videos yourselves. 
	But if you have never tried captioning some of your own videos, I encourage you to give it a try. Don't be afraid to try it yourself.  Whatever your situation, creating captions yourself is becoming easier and easier with the tools we have out there.  They are continuing to improve. And once you give it a try, it's not quite as daunting as you may think.  
	So I also want to point out that there are a lot of self‑help resources available out there as you work to make your courses accessible and hone your accessibility skills. You can do some Google Searching, if you like, there's a lot of resources, however, I found these resources that I've listed here to be most helpful for me as I have been learning about accessibility. Portland Community College has some phenomenal resources on their websites. As does the University of Minnesota and the University of Washington, as well as WebAIM. I encourage you to take your approach to accessible course design one step at a time. Perhaps choose one or two practices to start with and peruse through these resources and work on making a few things a habit so they become natural to you as you work on your course design and then you can move on to other ways of making your course accessible. 
	These resources will be helpful in guiding you through that process, I hope.  I also hope that some of the tips I have shared today will be useful to you in thinking about how to make your courses more accessible. 
	I'm happy to connect with folks afterwards if you have questions down the road, but, again, these resources I have found valuable in my pursuit of learning. So this sums up tips that I have and I'm going to look in the Q&A.  I see there's a few more in there. 
	And before we do conclude though, I do want to thank all of you that are here today for your time and your commitment to making your courses accessible. It's something that I've learned we have to learn together and work on together and that it's a journey, not something we reach right away. 
	So let's look in the Q&A. I have someone here who asked: Can you offer advice on polling students?  Should this be kept confidential? I'm not quite sure what you mean by the question here.  Do you mean polling students if they have a need for an accommodation?  If that is what you are talking about, then, absolutely, yes, it needs to be kept confidential. If you are talking about polling in a software such as Zoom as we are using today, I think that's different.  I hope that answers your question.  
	Folks can chime in either on the answers or the chat here if someone has more advice on that question.  
	One has asked, we have an issue with screen‑readers mangling algebraic equations, is an MP3 of the images accessible?  Hmm, that's a great question and I do not know the answer to that. You know, math in accessibility, I took a webinar on that last week and I have another one coming up this week because it does present a whole different set of problems and I'm still learning on how I can help my math faculty with that. But is an MP3 reading of the images fully accessible?  I would think it's not an MP3 reading.  If you are talking about an audio recording, I don't know that's fully accessible because again you would need a transcript of that MP3 reading itself.  But, again, that's a question I would bring to your Accessibility Office.  It would depend, I suppose, on the needs of individual students. So I would bring that question to your Accessibility Office. Also, some of the resources I've shared, the self‑help resources, might be a good way of looking into that further. But my first impression is that you would also need a transcript of that MP3. 
	Someone has asked: What is the current best practice for live learning sessions?  That's a great session because that's a really great tool. In the case of this webinar, we have someone who is captioning for us, right?  Live captioning.  Now that is probably not an option for a lot of you. If you have a student who has needs for captions in a live learning session, I would recommend, you know, a couple workarounds could be that you record the session and then it's captioned, but I don't know if that provides the same experience for the student. I'm not an expert in this particular question and I would also recommend you contact your Disability Services Office on your campus to ask if they have some advice for this if live captioning is not available on your campus.  
	Someone asked: Is it a requirement to have both a transcript even if a video has captions?  You know, if I think in terms of Universal Design for Learning, it would be a great practice to have both captions and a transcript available because we all learn in different ways.  As far as the legal requirements, I believe if it's captioned properly, that is a suitable accommodation. However, if you have a script that you are following, you might as well also provide the transcript. But if you don't, someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that ‑‑ I do believe that would meet it. 
	Someone asks: Where am I finding the webinars that I attend?  I follow on social media several accounts that help me. 3Play Media is a captioning service that offers a lot of great webinars. I follow Online Learning Commons ‑‑ or excuse me, Online Learning Consortium. I follow QM.  I also follow Sheryl Burgstahler and she is from the University of Washington.  If you look at the Center for Universal Design in education link, they have great resources there.  Boy, I follow so many different ‑‑ I think the math seminar coming up, hmm, I would have to look, I don't remember who is offering that one, but a quick Google Search could probably find it. But I encourage you to get out and follow some accounts on social media. There are a lot of blogs out there, there's a lot of groups out there that provide webinars and training on accessible course design.  
	I took a MOOCA a couple of years ago from Portland Community College and it was fantastic.  
	>> NANCY RAGIAS: Catherine, I'm sorry, but we have to wrap this up right now. 
	>> CATHERINE ARTAC: Okay. 
	>> NANCY RAGIAS: Thank you so much for attending today.  We appreciate your interest and we want to thank Catherine for sharing her experiences with us.  She has some great tips to help all of us improve accessibility to our documents and our courses.  So we just want to let you know we is a few learning opportunities coming up. We have a full two week online workshop that addresses accessibility and usability that will start on November 30th. And I will post a link to that workshop in the chat here. And that starts November 30th. 
	And we also have a Winter Institute, which is a set of web conference workshops that will also address alignment. I know that's sometimes a big question when we're looking at our courses, so I'll post a link also to our Winter Institute in the chat here as well.  And we will be sending out a recording for this webinar shortly after this ‑‑ the webinar ends today. So if you have any questions or missed some of the resources, those will all be included in the recording we will send to you.  
	So thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the rest of National Distance Learning Week! 
	
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