Do you think about student success, and what we might be doing to reduce that success? Khaled Musa will introduce the topic by illustrating the different ways inaccessibility impacts academic success, and Angela Carter from MN Transform will describe how people experience disability on campus and the role of the Disability Resource Center (DRC).
This presentation will provide instructors and students with strategies to improve engagement and accessibility in college coursework. Through Universal Design for Learning, barriers to traditional instruction are broken down, and instructors build learning activities that provide multiple means of engagement, representation of content, and methods to demonstrate and assess student understanding.
When discussing accessibility, digital or otherwise, there are a lot of things to consider—legal compliance, technical needs, standards, etc. However, at its very core, accessibility is about people. The reason that accessibility is important is because of the people who are affected by inaccessible content.
On April 29, we were very fortunate to have a group of University of Minnesota students who identify as people with disabilities who were willing to discuss their experiences and share how inaccessibility affects them in their lives, careers, and education.
Much of what makes documents accessible to people with disabilities and their assistive technologies boils down to the file format. Every format comes with benefits and drawbacks when it comes to accessibility. Which format or formats should libraries choose to best benefit their patrons and the needs of archives and discovery? While our current efforts focus mostly on the long-in-the-tooth PDF format, innovations in newer formats, such as EPUB3, have great promise for improved reader experience and accessibility.
This presentation will introduce how ableist behaviors and attitudes are the roots of an inaccessible society for people with various abilities. It will outline how elements of Universal Design, Universal Design For Learning, and Inclusive Design provide pathways to inequity in higher education.
Join the Accessibility Ambassadors on Thursday, May 28, for a presentation by accessibility ambassador Khaled Musa of Academic Technology and Kristina Cibuzar of LATIS.
The session will cover the Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDOIT) accessibility checker in Canvas.
If you are motivated by accessibility or would like to know more about this tool, this presentation will help you discover common issues in your canvas course and help you address all the issues in an easy overall summary dashboard.
To make instructional content more accessible and inclusive, consider how you format, organize, and distribute content, as well as how you design in-class and online activities.
Include a personalized accessibility affirmation on your syllabus. The syllabus itself should be formatted for accessibility in the same manner as any other digital document. See our example accessible syllabus.
When developing course materials, incorporate the core skills of accessibility in your course design. Consider common barriers students experience. As you modify or update course materials, identify and correct any materials that are improperly formatted, inconsistent, or disorganized.
To create accessible and inclusive classrooms, start by eliminating barriers to information when you develop or modify course activities. Barriers to information are the primary causes of inaccessible classroom situations. Acknowledging students’ gifts rather than what may be perceived as limitations helps create inclusive spaces.