Embedded Files
Accessibility for Academics
Lecturing
Lecturing
One of the most common activities that an instructor uses to impart knowledge to students. Lecturing, however, is not inherently accessible or even universal. There are plenty of different pedagogical ideas on how to do lecturing successfully. Portions of these ideas can be used to make lecturing accessible. Some of these tips can be found in several COLI resources, including the Pedagogy Primer Podcast episode Note-taking: Help Students Take Better Notes and the wiki page Note-taking and Studying for College. However, Indiana University Bloomington (n.d.) and Ontario's Universities Accessible Campus (n.d.) both highlight the following:
Describe images explicitly. This can help students that are hard of seeing or students simply in the back of the classroom and having difficulty seeing the board. Additionally, this will allow students that are writing notes to catch up without disrupting your flow.
Avoid sarcasm, idioms, jokes, double-meaning phrases, etc. when lecturing. Some students may not be able to tell when you are joking or may take your sarcasm the wrong way. This takes away from the class as a whole and can take away from individual students' learning as they try to decipher the meaning of what you just said.
If possible, try to keep each lecture to one topic (or two, if the topics are interrelated). Additionally, put the lecture into context for students by connecting it to the Big Picture (i.e., a Learning Objective) and previous knowledge. You don't necessarily have to do this during the lecture either. Instead, you can provide an outline (lecture notes, slide decks, worksheets, etc.) that are not only a good summary of the lecture but help students connect the dots.
Repeat questions that are asked of you. Especially if you are on Zoom/recording the lecture for future use. This will give you time to formulate your answer and provide context when you give it, especially if the student who asked was not picked up by the microphone/recording.
Did you know?
Often, part of the planning of the classroom is the physical space itself. The Media Center created the Whats in my classroom? wiki page to help instructors. This page allows you to see the room's capacity, the technology in the room, instructions for using that technology, and more. While this does not replace seeing the classroom in person, it can help make immediate determinations and considerations with respect to student needs and your personal teaching style. If needed, you can then request a room change.
Digital Tools
Digital Tools
Digital tools and software are an unavoidable part of today's classroom. Whether it is software, like D2L or Zoom, or programs such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and other, specialized software, digital tools have become the expectation rather than the exception. Some of these tools are seemingly arcane and incredibly intimidating to students.
In some cases, you may be considering adding a new digital tool to your class. Olague (2022) cautions that, when determining whether or not to use a digital tool, you should focus on the ease of use, simple navigation, and how the user can log into the tool. Further, Olague (2022) posits that instructors should be looking at the legibility of text, be wary of any and all distractions, and how the learner can access the content. This includes determining if the text gets lost in the background, whether or not the font is dyslexic friendly, any ads or animations that can take away from the consumption of the learning resource, and how the learner can consume the resource including options for audio/visual, print/transcript, text magnification, alt-text, etc.
Is the Content Accessible via Assistive Technology?
Is the Content Accessible via Assistive Technology?
Creating course content can often be difficult. But once it is done, it can be used over and over again, tweaked here and there as needed. As we are creating course content, we need to ensure that it is also accessible, and more specifically, can be used by assistive technology. Assistive technology is used in many different ways and includes but is not limited to closed captions and descriptive audio on video, reading alternative text on images, and more. We provide two examples below and some ways to make them more accessible. Use these examples to think about other software in terms of accessibility.
Screen Readers
Screen Readers
Screen readers are software programs that read out content on the screen. They are often used by the blind and the hard of seeing.
Creating text for screenreaders is talked about more in the Accessible Text lesson. However, Olague (2022) provides a few useful tips for creating course content for screen readers. First, when creating text-based content, make sure you use headings. Headings are used in screen readers to traverse and move around in the document. Secondly, if you use images, ensure that non-decorative images should have alt-text and/or captions. Such non-decorative images include diagrams, graphs, tables, and so on. As a previous tip suggested, you may want to describe the image when lecturing or in the recording. Additionally, video presentations and audio recordings should have closed captions or at the very least a transcript available. Some screen reader users may choose to download the captions or transcript and use their screen reader instead of listening to you. It can be faster for these users for one thing (users can set the rate at which the screen reader reads) and for another, it can be easier (in terms of a transcript, you can add headings, stylize text, etc. Using this, the user can traverse the transcript to where they need to or want to be).
Finally, you can try out accessibility tools for yourself. Windows Narrator and Apple's VoiceOver are in-built screen readers in PC's and Mac's respectively. You can also try out NVDA, a third-party screen reader that is more widely used. If you plan on using NVDA, contact COLI first.
Accessibility in Zoom
Accessibility in Zoom
Zoom is a tool used by many instructors in both synchronous, asynchronous, and hybrid courses. However, by default, Zoom is not entirely accessible. The University of Texas at Austin (n.d.) provides a few tips. First, make sure that you have your video on and that you are speaking clearly. Second, read aloud any image captions or describe images (again, these include graphs, tables, diagrams, etc.). Third, read aloud any comments in the chat and save the chat for later dissemination. This provides context to your answer while also providing you time to think. Fourth, Zoom meetings can be captioned in real-time. This can be extremely useful for those that are hard of hearing.
Page updated
Report abuse