Online courses and accessibility

[Hegemony]

If 20% of your students need accommodations, how come "In my 10 years of teaching at Big Urban College, I have had only a single instance ever where a student needed these sorts of accommodations"?  Or do you mean accommodations for hearing loss, or for sight impairments?  If you never have students with those disabilities, I'd suggest it's because they go elsewhere, in part because you don't provide the necessary accommodations as a matter of course. I have certainly had both deaf students and blind students in my classes, and as well as students with partial impairments of both those types.

I remember coming upon a mostly blind student with her ear up against her laptop. I asked her what she was doing. She was listening to her machine reader reading a syllabus to her, trying to find one specific part that gave one piece of information. The syllabus had not been formatted according to Universal Design. So to find the part she was looking for, she had to listen to the machine reader read the whole thing, much of which was gibberish because of formatting the machine reader couldn't negotiate, and hope to catch exactly the right part as it went past.  She was on her third or fourth try.

[Caracal]

College is most decidedly not broken on this issue. Micromanaging curriculum to this extent is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Existing policies for ADA compliance and other student's special accommodations are highly effective, and arguably superior to the new guidelines. People needing special treatment get special, individual treatment. Treating this as another No Child Left Behind solution scenario drops the bar on curricular flexibility, curricular innovation, and academic freedom.

To be clear, I think Universal Design for all kinds of back end systems makes a lot of sense. Of course the CMS should be functional for people with visual disabilities. If they wanted to strongly encourage the use of a few different screen share/recording programs which did a good job of captioning and were functional in other ways, that would be wonderful. You want to create a system that doesn't require people to be asking for something at every turn.

What doesn't make sense is expecting every individual faculty member putting content up online to essentially do this all themselves. This isn't just an argument about workload, although that part is certainly relevant. There's this idea that gets expressed on here that faculty who don't like the idea of taking on some task like this must be lazy, or aren't willing to do their job. It would be like expecting me to fix an electrical short in my classroom. The question of whether or not I ought to gladly help the institution by taking on this responsibility which seems outside of my job description, is sort of beside the point. You probably don't want me in the electrical room flipping some switches and seeing what happens.

I'd be perfectly happy to do my part to make things work, but it can't be that I'm expected to read giant document located somewhere in the bowels of The Center for Teaching and Learning's site and then figure out which program is accessible from all the options that aren't and convert everything thing myself. Whether I should be expected to, isn't even the point, if you'd like to have classes that meet some standard, this isn't going to accomplish that goal.

[polly_mer]

I'd be perfectly happy to do my part to make things work, but it can't be that I'm expected to read giant document located somewhere in the bowels of The Center for Teaching and Learning's site and then figure out which program is accessible from all the options that aren't and convert everything thing myself.

Somewhat true.  The HLC assumed practices include "The institution provides its students, administrators, faculty, and staff with policies and procedures informing them of their rights and responsibilities within the institution."  Thus, you should be able to know and not have to dig too hard.

However, some of the complaints voiced on this thread about the difficulty being put on individual faculty to be compliant sound a lot more like ignorance combined with a refusal to even consider changing more than valid complaints akin to asking English faculty to deal with electrical shorts.

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2017/05/03/tips-designing-ada-compliant-online-courses

we recommend beginning with ensuring all hyperlinks are text within a sentence to foster readability.
...
a sans serif font is easiest to read
...
The best option for readability is a black font with a white background. If instructors want to use color, they need to avoid using extremely bright background colors, such as red.
...
the only text that should be underlined is text that is hyperlinked to meet ADA compliance. 
...
Images and graphics should be relevant to the content, visibly easy to see and in high resolution. It is best to avoid animated or blinking images. 
...
Alt text stands for Alternative Text and is a word or phrase that can be added to describe the image or graphic.
...
Clear audio requires minimal background noises, clear word pronunciation and consistent volume. Clear video has minimal movement to avoid blurred refocusing and high resolution in rendering. 
...
Including transcriptions with lectures shows due diligence towards ADA compliance, and so does providing transcripts of audio feedback.
...
All text in a course should be searchable, which allows learners to search for words or phrases within a document. If a PDF document is not searchable, an accompanying plain text version should be available. When linking documents within a course, the label of the link should have the file extension type at the end
...
Any table or chart needs to have identifying headers and labels as well as summaries.

People who are using Word or some other common software package can easily do this.

People who put a little thought into where the hyperlinks go and into how a image is captioned can do this.

The only part of those steps that can be arduous for faculty is a lot of transcripts/closed-captioning for video/audio.  Bigger institutions have services for faculty as part of their accessibility services.  Even Super Dinky with a disability services office of one person could get me transcripts for video with sufficient notice.

As advocates have pushed for compliance, more and more video/audio from various sources already comes with captioning/transcripts.  When I was doing science outreach with a lot of movie clips, turning on the captioning before taking the clip using my editing software was an extra 30 seconds of work.

Compliance with the ADA requirements isn't asking for the moon.  However, it is asking for better than blurry scanned handouts, first-draft-equivalents of recordings, and ton of cutesy images* that do nothing to add to the content of the course.

*Yes, in my role as reviewer of online courses, I've seen some sad, sad things that people did to try to make the course "more visually appealing" through excessive use of clip art.

[downer]

I use voice-over with my slides. I've found very little about how to make them ADA compliant.
There is stuff about speaking clearly, no background noise, and consistent volume levels. But seems that is not going to do it all.

[Caracal]

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2017/05/03/tips-designing-ada-compliant-online-courses

we recommend beginning with ensuring all hyperlinks are text within a sentence to foster readability.
...
a sans serif font is easiest to read
...
The best option for readability is a black font with a white background. If instructors want to use color, they need to avoid using extremely bright background colors, such as red.
...
the only text that should be underlined is text that is hyperlinked to meet ADA compliance. 
...
Images and graphics should be relevant to the content, visibly easy to see and in high resolution. It is best to avoid animated or blinking images. 
...
Alt text stands for Alternative Text and is a word or phrase that can be added to describe the image or graphic.
...
Clear audio requires minimal background noises, clear word pronunciation and consistent volume. Clear video has minimal movement to avoid blurred refocusing and high resolution in rendering. 
...
Including transcriptions with lectures shows due diligence towards ADA compliance, and so does providing transcripts of audio feedback.
...
All text in a course should be searchable, which allows learners to search for words or phrases within a document. If a PDF document is not searchable, an accompanying plain text version should be available. When linking documents within a course, the label of the link should have the file extension type at the end
...
Any table or chart needs to have identifying headers and labels as well as summaries.

Parts of this are perfectly simple and already what I generally do anyway. Other things are workable, although again, a bit more clear guidance, like on the CMS page would be helpful. I really liked the captioning in Kaltura, which was quite accurate. I would have kept using it, except it was dreadful software in every other respect and it was taking two days to upload to the CMS. For teaching in the summer I may see what else I can do.

There are other things that I couldn't do without changing almost everything about my teaching. My lectures are based on fairly sparse notes, there is no written version. Audio transcripts are more doable.

It is important to realize that for some classes, some things actually aren't possible. To take an example, I'm teaching a class this summer where a major part of the class is going to involve looking through a bunch of court transcripts uploaded onto a site. These are image files and they aren't indexed. And no, there really aren't any comparable indexed versions. The idea isn't just to give students an assignment to read but to have them explore these databases and select documents to look at more closely. We then all end up reading a few documents more closely, but these can run up to 300 type written image pages.

There's really no way I could meet these guidelines in terms of universal design for the assignment. I'm not being obstinate, I'm trying to teach students how to operate like historians and get them to do original work.

Now, if I had a student with accommodations that made it difficult or impossible for them to read these images, I could figure out ways to make it work. I'd probably just figure out an alternative assignment for them to do instead of searching through the database. Once we got down to reading discrete documents, I guess it would be possible for someone to type out a transcript of three hundred type written pages? Maybe there is software that could do this? Obviously it would be my job to work with people in disability services to figure out ways to make this work. That would be my responsibility, but Universal design isn't workable.

[Caracal]

I use voice-over with my slides. I've found very little about how to make them ADA compliant.
There is stuff about speaking clearly, no background noise, and consistent volume levels. But seems that is not going to do it all.

I will say that Kaltura's closed captioning was quite good. If I could figure out a way to separate that functionality out from all the other things about the software, that would be great...

[Katrina Gulliver]

I use voice-over with my slides. I've found very little about how to make them ADA compliant.
There is stuff about speaking clearly, no background noise, and consistent volume levels. But seems that is not going to do it all.

This is why I'm sourcing material online rather than making my own. I've found podcasts (produced by academics) that already have transcripts available.

[marshwiggle]

Source: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2017/05/03/tips-designing-ada-compliant-online-courses

...
Alt text stands for Alternative Text and is a word or phrase that can be added to describe the image or graphic.

The problem here, which has been raised previously, is when images are used to show how to visually identify something. At the very least, the alt text would have to be paragraphs long. Even if a visually impaired pesron were going to have a non-visually impaired person describe an object to them so that they could identify it, if the non-visually impaired person hadn't seen the original image they'd probably have a hard time describing the object meaningfully.

I remember either here or on the old fora someone talking about having to make those accomodations in a visual marketing course.

What would a music course need to be adapted for a deaf person?

(FWIW, I had all of my own web pages compliant years before the university did, so I'm a supporter of things like universal design and accessability, but there are situations that are beyond any rational description of what should be done, and why a student with a particular disability would even choose to take a specific course and what they'd hope to get out of it.)

[Caracal]

I use voice-over with my slides. I've found very little about how to make them ADA compliant.
There is stuff about speaking clearly, no background noise, and consistent volume levels. But seems that is not going to do it all.

This is why I'm sourcing material online rather than making my own. I've found podcasts (produced by academics) that already have transcripts available.

That only really works if the topic is discrete and the larger context of the course isn't a problem. Might make sense in particular for some STEM and related courses where there's no need to create your own description of how photosynthesis works. In my humanities discipline, I'm putting things within particular contexts and I'm emphasizing certain things. I couldn't have a very coherent course If I just turn all that over to someone else.

[saffie]

Once we got down to reading discrete documents, I guess it would be possible for someone to type out a transcript of three hundred type written pages? Maybe there is software that could do this?

If the original pages are typewritten, OCR software might do a decent job in creating a plain text version.  That's essentially how books get added to Project Gutenberg. The original source is a set of images of scanned pages, OCR software turns those into text. (There's a lot of volunteer work to review the OCR output and additional work to create html/epub formats for PG, but if the source is good, the software generally does a good job with the initial conversion to text.)

[Caracal]

Once we got down to reading discrete documents, I guess it would be possible for someone to type out a transcript of three hundred type written pages? Maybe there is software that could do this?

If the original pages are typewritten, OCR software might do a decent job in creating a plain text version.  That's essentially how books get added to Project Gutenberg. The original source is a set of images of scanned pages, OCR software turns those into text. (There's a lot of volunteer work to review the OCR output and additional work to create html/epub formats for PG, but if the source is good, the software generally does a good job with the initial conversion to text.)

Cool, that's good to know should I have a student who needs it. If only somebody was making software that would do the same for 19th century handwriting...

[downer]

I use voice-over with my slides. I've found very little about how to make them ADA compliant.
There is stuff about speaking clearly, no background noise, and consistent volume levels. But seems that is not going to do it all.

I will say that Kaltura's closed captioning was quite good. If I could figure out a way to separate that functionality out from all the other things about the software, that would be great...

Your school needs to subscribe to Kaltura, right?

[Caracal]

I use voice-over with my slides. I've found very little about how to make them ADA compliant.
There is stuff about speaking clearly, no background noise, and consistent volume levels. But seems that is not going to do it all.

I will say that Kaltura's closed captioning was quite good. If I could figure out a way to separate that functionality out from all the other things about the software, that would be great...

Your school needs to subscribe to Kaltura, right?

Yeah, its linked in through our CMS. Perhaps given more time, I could figure out how to use it better, but I found it difficult to use because it all goes onto a cloud server. That seems like a fine idea, but casques all sorts of trouble. The interface is weird and it will drop the connection and never bother to tell you.  I gave a whole lecture talking to nobody in my office. It also meant it just took forever to get from their servers to the CMS. That might have just been about their overloaded servers and my slower than normal internet speeds.

[kiana]

The problem here, which has been raised previously, is when images are used to show how to visually identify something. At the very least, the alt text would have to be paragraphs long. Even if a visually impaired person were going to have a non-visually impaired person describe an object to them so that they could identify it, if the non-visually impaired person hadn't seen the original image they'd probably have a hard time describing the object meaningfully.

Or for example, "estimate the instantaneous rate of change of this graph at x = 4" or something like that. If it's an in-person class we can do something with a tactile graph, but this is not really conducive to description with alt-text.

[Hegemony]

Yes, there are clearly some fields where it's an incredible challenge, and some where it's downright impossible. But I think it behooves the rest of us to design things accessibly where it's easy and straightforward. No question that it can be extra hassle. For instance, I take the point that PDFs are non-searchable. So by that standard, a syllabus should not be in PDF form. But then there have been cases when people load syllabi in Word on the LMS, students download them and are able to change them and claim that the syllabus never said so-and-so, or that the syllabus they downloaded says so-and-so, or whatever. So we are told to use PDFs for syllabi so that students can't download and change them. Or we could post two syllabi, one in PDF form and one in Word form. And then students would read the two and try to figure out why there are two syllabi and if they are different and which one applies to them, and so on. Or we could use the Syllabus page of the LMS, which doesn't seem to be downloadable, and therefore is trouble for students who have poor internet access. So many concerns, so many variables...