Accessibility

508 Compliance

The Schoology platform itself is 508 compliant. The VPAT audit of their 508 compliance can be found here.

The design of the courses in Schoology is up to the teacher, and therefore it is the teacher's responsibility to make an effort to make their courses and the materials used in them 508 compliant. There are several best practices teachers should follow to make their courses accessible:

For all images used in Schoology, edit the image and provide an Image Description
Use readable text and specific titles for all hyperlinks. In other words, don't just provide URLs as links.
Any PDF's you post in Schoology should be readable with assistive technology. If you can't select and copy text in the document, the document is not accessible and is likely a scanned image that cannot be read by assistive technology.
Use a Sans Serif font for all online text. The extra lines in Serif fonts can make text difficult to read online. Schoology uses the Arial font by default.
Close-caption all videos, or provide a transcript
Provide a transcript for all audio files
Provide test accommodations to students with disabilities in Schoology. You can save a material (such as an assignment or test) to your Resources in Schoology, then copy it back into the class and assign it to an individual student. The settings for that item can then be adjusted to help accommodate that student, such as providing extended time.

OrbitNote Premium

Student facing resources must be screen reader ready/friendly. Unless PDFs have been run through an OCR, the text is inaccessible for screen readers that help student with and without disabilities.

Speech-to-Text

Using your voice to type works great in Schoology using the Speech-to-Text feature that's built into every Chromebook. Windows laptops and Macbooks also have Speech-to Text feature that can be enabled. To turn on Speech-to-Text on a Chromebook:

1. At the bottom right of the Chromebook screen, select the time
2. Select Settings (the gear icon)
3. Scroll to the bottom and select Advanced
4. Under "Accessibility", select Manage accessibility features
5. Under "Keyboard and text input," turn on Enable dictation (speak to type)
6. Close the Settings window

Now just place your cursor in any text field in Schoology (or any other application on your Chromebook), select the microphone icon at the bottom of the Chromebook screen, and speak to type.

For Windows laptops and Macbooks, this functionality can be enabled from the Control Panel (windows) or System Preferences (mac). Google the directions for your specific version of your operating system.

ALT Text for Images

Alt Text allows screen readers to “read” the description of the picture when a student cannot see the image.

Best practice: Do not take screenshots of documents. Instead link directly to them.

Select your images and put it into a Google slide
Right-click on the image
Click ALT TEXT
Fill out the title and a description of the image
Click OK
Click Control C (copy) that image from slides
Click Control V (paste) to place the image into Schoology

Video- Adding ALT Text to Images

Helpful Documentation: Accessibility Checker

Video Closed Captioning

For 508 compliance, a best practice is to have captioning available in all videos used in a Schoology course. Closed captioning provides access to language for hard of hearing students, staff and families. Likewise, EL students and families benefit from seeing captioning to better understand spoken language.

Closed Captioning with ScreenPal

Click Closed Captioning button in Editor
Click Speech to Text (select language appropriate)
Click Start
Captions will be created based on your audio recording
Go back into the captions to correct and adjust any language, grammar and punctuation to ensure the right messaging is being conveyed.

DCMP

The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP), funded by the Department of Education, has over 7,000 educational, captioned videos that you can use in your classroom. Click the Browse button in the top-right corner of their website to search for captioned videos by subject area.

Membership is free
You can send them video to be captioned
Read their flyer "A Message for Teachers" for more information

Read/Write Extension in Schoology

Any text in the Schoology platform itself can be highlighted and read by Read/Write, but that is not necessarily true for teacher-added materials. Keep the following in mind for materials that you add to courses in Schoology to make sure they will work with Read/Write:

Read/Write will not work when Google Docs are embedded in Schoology. It is therefore best to simply add links to Google Docs so that the docs open in their own window, thereby allowing them to work with Read/Write.
R/W is not yet programmed to read Alt Text in Google Slides. Teachers can add a separate text box (to act like a caption) under the picture since R/W does not currently work with Alt Text in Slide.
Any PDF's added to Schoology should be readable text, and not a picture of text.
The Read/Write Extension will not work on exams that use the LockDown Browser. See the previous section on this page for more details.

Respondus LockDown Browser

The LockDown Browser does not allow the use of any Chrome Extensions, so it cannot be used for students with accommodations for the Read/Write Extension.

Follow these directions for using the LockDown Browser in Schoology to accommodate students who need the Read/Write Extension for tests.

Grackle

Grackle Docs is an add-on that extends the accessibility of Google Docs by automatically checking all aspects of your document and advising you how to make things better. Once you are satisfied that your document is truly accessible, Grackle Docs gives you the ability to create PDF/UA so that you can send your documents on to others. Grackle Training Videos are here to suport you.

Description provided by Grackle on Chrome

Using Google Docs to Make Transcripts for videos created with the native SGY audio/video recorder

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