1. Getting Faculty buy-in through simple solutions
Kirsten Behling, MA
Tufts University

2. Faculty lack training
Left to themselves, most faculty cut and paste their materials into their LMS with no attention to course design or accessibility.
Faculty often use software and websites that are not institutionally supported.
If course design assistance is offered, accessibility may be absent from those conversations.
Poorly designed courses, with regards to content and access, lead to higher drop out rates.

3. Faculty responsibility
The following presentation is information you might provide to faculty to help them own their role in accessibility.

4. How do you get faculty to own that responsibility?
Two pronged approach:
Discuss why they teach and who their students are
Make access easy to do
The following presentation is information you might provide to faculty to help them own their role in accessibility.

5. Why teach?
Use these questions as openers when working with faculty around accessible course design.
Why do you teach?
Ask faculty to reflect on this for a moment, most will have a quick answer around a love for the topic or a desire for others to learn about their topic.
What do you want your students to take away from this course?
What are you goals and objectives?
Are they listed in the syllabus?
How will you make sure that they have the knowledge you want them to?
How do you teach?
How do you teach to diverse students?
How has your approach to teaching this course changed over time?
The following presentation is information you might provide to faculty to help them own their role in accessibility.

6. Who are you teaching?
Help faculty understand who is in their classrooms.
Ask them to describe the students
Who are they? Describe their characteristics. Are they full-time? Part-time? Working? Taking care of dependents? Tech savvy? ESL? Commuters? Tech addicted? Have disabilities?
Always bring up disabilities last
Ask your admissions office for the latest demographics of the university’s students. Share this with faculty.
Administer a learning style survey in your training.
Was there any surprises?
Do faculty do this in their class?
Based on the results have they ever redesigned or tweaked their course?
The following presentation is information you might provide to faculty to help them own their role in accessibility.

7. Validate the work that they are already doing
New “asks” or concepts may be overwhelming. Simplify things by:
Finding examples of accessible design that they are already doing
Uploading their syllabus to a course website (paper and electronic versions)
Posting PPT slides ahead of time
Using an online discussion board
Choosing videos with captions
Creating templates/ directions for them to use going forward
Reminding them that after they create an accessible document for the first time all they have to do going forward is copy and paste
Simplify everything to keep the momentum going
Allow them a chance to practice these skills in your company
The following presentation is information you might provide to faculty to help them own their role in accessibility.

8. The importance of keeping it simple cannot be stressed enough
Minimum accessibility considerations that faculty can/ should handle on their own:
Word documents
PowerPoints
Excel
PDFs
Audio/video
Tips for how to do this follow….
Placeholder for formatting

9. Word Documents Potential uses Potential problems
Informational handouts
Exams, quizzes, assessments
Method of highlight certain links that a student might need to access
Used for convey messages through images
Handouts are inaccessible
Poor format, difficult to read through
Links may break, be unexplained or inaccessible.
Images are unreadable or are difficult to relate to the course w/o explanation

10. Checking previously made/ used Word docs for accessibility

11. Let’s test one….

12. Quick tips for creating accessible Word documents
Simple Changes to Improve Accessibility
Make sure that color and formatting are not the only means of conveying information.
Use Styles and Headings.
Use standard and sans serif fonts (Ariel, Verdana, or Calibri), preferably at 12 point or larger.
Make your text with high color contrast (i.e. black and white, or dark navy and light grey).
Write alternative text for images, tables and equations.
Use bullet points or numbers for lists.
Only use tables for data or comparisons, not for formatting text.
Make hyperlinked text descriptive when other context is removed (i.e. avoid ‘click here’ instead say ‘accessibility web form’).
Place images in line with text rather than wrap text. Avoid using watermarks.
Use the tutorial in BB for this.
Frame this as these are the down and dirty tips that you can give to faculty so as not to overwhelm them but to help them work towards developing accessible habits.

13. PowerPoint Presentations
Con’s of PPTs:
Pro’s of PPT:
Reliance on a stand-alone tool
Concern that PPT can over simplify material into bulleted lists
Can be designed poorly, difficult to understand the message
Graphics that are unexplained are difficult to comprehend without guidance
Graphically interesting
Students can come back to it as needed
Helps faculty to organize their teaching
Allows for more of an interactive experience given the online environment
Does PowerPoint Help or Hinder Learning?
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD

14. Checking previously made/ used PPTs for accessibility
Follow these steps:  
Open up your PowerPoint  
Click on “File”  
Scroll down to “Info”, which will bring up an option menu on the right titled “Information about the XXX (the tile of your PPT)”  
Select the third option, “Check for Issues” 
Select “Check Accessibility” 
You will see the results of the accessibility check to the right.  
In this document, there are three errors and two tips for the author to consider. The errors indicate that the smart art and pictures do not have alt-text tags. The tips for making this document more accessible include a duplicate slide, which could confuse a student as to why it is there. The “Reading Order” tip is PowerPoint’s way of suggesting that you review the material on that slide to make sure it is correct and logical. Depending upon how you want to structure the slide you may be able to ignore this tip.

15. Let’s test one…

16. Quick tips for creating accessible PPTs
The top 5 items to consider when creating a document are:
Accessible backgrounds:
Strong color contrast from font color(dark background and light font)
Avoid background graphics and theme based slides
Font style and size guidelines:
Choose one font and stick with it
Avoid serif fonts (fonts with an extra stroke on the letter). Examples include: Ariel, Corbel and Tahoma.
Avoid fonts smaller than 20pt., headers and subheadings should be two to three sizes bigger

17. Quick tips for creating accessible PPTs
Spacing, bullets, transitions:
Consistent spacing
Use bullets if possible
Break larger content into two slides
Hyperlinks
Provide students with a copy of the PPT electronically
Clearly describe where they will go once they click the link
Graphs/ charts/ images
Avoid too many images on a page
Make sure all images have alt-text tags

18. Excel Documents
Excel is being used in increasing frequency in college courses
Across subjects, no longer limited to math and business courses
Some courses actually teach students how to use Excel
Faculty argue that most careers will have some type of exposure to Excel, hence it’s importance

19. Checking previously made/ used Excel docs for accessibility
Follow these steps:  
Open up your Excel document 
Click on “File”  
Scroll down to “Info”, which will bring up an option menu on the right titled “Information about the Document”  
Select the third option, “Check for Issues” 
Select “Check Accessibility” 
You will see the results of the accessibility check

20. Let’s test one…

21. Quick tips for Tips for creating accessible Excel documents
Font style and size:
Choose one font and stick with it throughout your document.  
Avoid serif fonts 
Avoid fonts smaller than 12pt.
Appropriate labeling:
The first cell should include some descriptive text on what they are looking at.  
The sheet tabs should also be labeled with details of what is on that sheet.
Graphs (color, labels, and alt-text tags):
Color distinctions are not always readable. use a patterned line  or symbols, to distinguish in addition to a strong color contrast.
Label the data in your graph.
Use alt-text tags on any graph, image
Hyperlinks:
Use descriptive text for each link

22. PDF Documents Native PDFs: Scanned PDFs:
Native PDFs are generated from an electronic source - such as a Word document, a computer generated report, or spreadsheet data.
These have an internal structure that can be read and interpreted.
These PDFs are typically accessible or can be converted fairly easily.
Scanned PDFs are documents that have been digitally captured.
The quality of these documents may be questionable.
These documents are largely not accessible.

23. Checking previously made/ used PDFs for accessibility
Method 1:
Open up your PDF.
With your mouse, try to select and highlight an individual word in your document. If you can select an individual word at a time, than the document is most likely readable.
Method 2:
Under the “Edit” tab scroll down and choose “Accessibility”.
Choose “Quick Check”. This will give you a very quick overview of where access issues may lie in the document.

24. Let’s test two…
Inaccessible
Accessible

25. Quick tips for Tips for creating accessible PDFs
The 3 key things to consider when creating an accessible PDF are:
Transitioning from a Word document to a PDF:
In Word use the “Styles” and “Headings”
How to handle pre-made PDFs:
Test it for accessibility
Try to find a clean version to use
Use Adobe OCR software to transfer the file into an accessible format
Tagging PDFs:
Make sure all table, images, graphs, etc. have alt-tags on them.
The University of Central Florida resource:

26. Audio/Visual Content Instructor benefits: Student benefits:
Focus on a module
The ability to demonstrate a concept
Stimulate online discussion
Provide a common base of knowledge among the students
Research has shown that classes with some video components lead to:
Improved tests results
Higher scores on writing assignments
More active class discussions
More creative approaches to problem solving
Chris Riedel, 2012
Chuck Jones, 2014

27. Checking previously made/ used / chosen audio/ video files for accessibility
It has a transcript associated with it
It has opened captions
It has closed captions
It is a descriptive video

28. Be cautious of audio-captioning
YouTube Automatic Caption FAILs refer to erroneous closed captions that are sometimes produced by Google’s automatic speech recognition technology for videos on YouTube. Since the release of the automatic captioning feature in March 2010, various screenshots of absurd or humorous YouTube mistranscriptions as well as photoshopped instances have been circulating online.
Faculty think this will work, but there are limitations

29. Quick tips for tips for using accessible audio/ video files
There are a number of factors to consider when you are thinking through access in regards to audio and video files. They include:
Where is the file from?
What is your time frame?
What is your expertise with captioning and descriptive video?
What is your budget?

30. Questions?
Included on this slide is a picture of me, Kirsten Behling.