Overview

This page will address how to engage our students in this work and how to ensure our students are creating accessible content that their classmates can enjoy.

Scenarios & Suggestions

Accessibility in the Classroom

It's easy to promote accessible practices without even calling them out as accessible practices. A lot of the steps we take to make our materials accessible are lessons that we would have benefited from long before! These practices increase our efficiency, effectiveness, and help us to look closer and more critically at the content we're creating and distributing.

My first tip is to never, never, have students do x, y, or z, because a student with a disability is in their class. Telling students to caption their videos so that their classmate who is deaf, let's call him Greg, can watch them may be well-intentioned, but think about how Greg now feels. If the students see this as extra work that they must do because of Greg, they may be willing, but they're not being taught to do this in a proactive manner. Instead, you can point out that captions make their videos searchable, help people watching in public spaces, will give them more experience in/appreciation of post-production editing, etc. And if Greg feels like it, he may add that captions help him out as well.

Word & PowerPoint

Many of us make the mistake in assuming that all of our students are digital natives and already know how to use PowerPoint and Word. If you're requiring use of these programs, take some time to show students how to use the programs and how to use them correctly.

In Word, point out the headings and explain how the headings can be used to create a table of contents or outline (great tools for them to look at the structure and organization of their papers!). For longer papers, require that they use headings so that you can use the navigation tool to assess the organization of their writing. Even if the final draft doesn't need headings, have them use headings to identify their Introduction, Body, and Conclusion in their rough draft (it's the rough drafts where they do peer reviews, correct?).

Point out the layout templates in PPT. Explain that these templates ensure their presentation is clear and easy to read.

In either program, show them how to add alternative text to images. This can be helpful in case an image does not load properly.

Presentations

If students are giving presentations, have them submit their slideshows and/or handouts before they have to present (if using something like PowerPoint). This will allow you time to get the file to any students that may need assistive technology to access the PPT.

Also, have them write a script and practice what they will say. This script can be used to create captions later (if filming the presentations), or can be sent to any students that missed the presentation. It's also a good evaluation tool if you are not recording the presentations to review later for grading.

Go over good presentation skills:

Face the audience.
- This ensures anyone reading lips can see the speaker, but it also shows confidence and helps the audience hear the speaker.
Speak clearly and slowly.
Describe images and graphics used in the presentation (if it conveys info, ignore if decorative).
- Many people tend to skip over the content on the slide and assume the audience will understand it's relevance, or they'll reference a diagram and not explain the relationships between the parts of the diagram. Taking the time to explain the image and the purpose it serves will be beneficial to everyone, as well as students that may not be able to see the image.
Keep the room well lit and minimize busy patterns.
- Again, this helps ensure everyone can see the speaker clearly. Minimizing patterns can also help

Provide Resources

If you want to encourage your students to make accessible content, share the resources you are using. The lessons from this course are publicly available at: http://bit.ly/a101public or you can use the resources provided from this training to build your own toolkit for students.

Accessibility in Your Discipline

Explore whether or not your discipline is one that aligns with the lessons in this training. If you're teaching Office Administration courses that cover using Outlook and Word, make sure you're showing how to create accessible emails and documents. If you're teaching web development, make sure accessibility is addressed early on and not as a last minute add-on. If you're teaching a media course, require that your students explore post-production work like captioning or audio description.

Lastly, even if your discipline doesn't directly hit on these areas, think about how students without disabilities can learn valuable skills by following the lead of people with disabilities in their discipline. For instance, think about what film students might learn about a movie score by following blind movie critic Tommy Edison (watch a short clip about Edison on YouTube). Sometimes we tend to forget how all of our senses play a role in navigating the world and people with disabilities can often remind us that there is more than one way to get a job done.