Accessibility

ADA Compliance

Accessibility applies to the idea that our materials need to be accessible for everyone, and may require further modifications to make them so for people with physical, cognitive, or learning disabilities.

There are four federal laws which require accessibility of all digital resources. Some states, including Illinois, also have laws mandating the accessibility of digital resources for institutions of higher education.

• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973
• Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
• 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act (CVAA) (2010)
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (2018)
  • Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act (IITAA 2.0) (2018)
    • Sample of Case lawsExtra Resources

These laws mostly point to the current WCAG accessibility standards

OCR Investigations by Year

Data from: OCR Fiscal 2017 Budget

Accommodation or Accessibility

Need to Consider

Our Approach

Year 1

• Tip of the week
  • Meetings with: Deans, departments, individuals
  • Training :Campus-wide, departments, and external
  • Develop Digital Accessibility for Educators certificate
  • Student workers

Year 2

• Work with units such as HR, Financial Aid, Library
• Increase physical office accessibility
• Video player tools for LMS
• Accessible html editor for websites

Cost

• $.41 per minute of video
• $.36 per page/slide (PDF/Word/PPT)
• $90.00 per class

Audio Description

We often think of providing closed captions or written transcriptions for students who can't hear. But audio descriptions are need for the students who can hear, but not see. Disney's Frozen clip provides a fun example of audio description.

Frozen: Trailer with Audio Description

Universal Design for Learning

• Perceivable
• Operable
• Understandable
• Robust

To help all learners, we need to offer several ways to engage in material, not rely on one form of assessment, and making them accessible for all.

ADA Compliance for Online Course Design Report takeaways

• Provide multiple ways for students to gain or demonstrate knowledge, and to interact.This goes a long way toward making a course accessible to all students.
• Accessibility efforts benefit students with disabilities, and also students who are English language learners and those working in noisy or quiet environments.

Links to Further Resources on making websites and files accessible (at bottom)

Further opportunities to learn.

We offer a 4 course program for a Digital Accessibility for Educators Certificate through ION.