1. Documents in the Classroom
A Strategy to Support Accessible Course Material

2. Presenter Jeff Buhse Assistive Technologist
Student Accessibility Services
University of Manitoba

3. What To Expect Today U of M Institutional Overview
Policy and Legislation
What have we done and what worked?
Questions

4. University of Manitoba
Western Canada’s first university, founded 140 years ago
~30,000 students (full-time, part-time, distance)
~8,900 faculty and staff

5. Student Accessibility Services (SAS)
Provides support and advocacy for students with disabilities on campus
2016/2017 data (yet to be published):
1311 registered students
Over 6400 scheduled tests/exams
8 full-time staff, over 100 casual/part-time staff
Supports 3 separate campuses and satellite offices

6. Alternate Format Production
numbers – PDF, .doc, .txt, Braille
Alt Format Tests – 519
Alt Format Textbooks – 491 (for 74 different students)
Alt Format Documents – ~2000 pages
Video/Audio Transcription – 99 requests, 3369 total minutes

7. Alternate Format Increases
Changes in the previous 5 years
Test requests increased over 500%
(97 – 519)
Textbook requests increased over 1300%
(37 – 491)
Document requests have remained similar (no detailed stats prior to 2015)
Transcription requests since 2013 increased from requests, 679 minutes – 3369 minutes
(detailed stats were not kept prior to 2013)
The need to get instructors to do things on their own has increased tremendously!

8. Why have we seen so much growth?
The Cooper Commission
The Accessibility for Manitoban’s Act
Educate, Educate, Educate

9. The Cooper Commission
Recommend how to balance the University’s legal obligation to offer reasonable accommodations to students with disabilities while protecting academic standards
Types of accommodations
How decisions made, who must be consulted
Evidence of disability
Timely decisions
Protect privacy

10. Accessibility for Manitoban’s Act
Made Law, December, 2013
5 Standards
Customer Service
Employment
Information & Communication
Transportation
Built Environment
Required the U of M to create an Accessibility Plan, created with departmental Accessibility Audits

11. “7th Inning Stretch!” Take a moment to stretch Ask your neighbour
what their favourite
alternate format is?

12. How we used to educate the university community
Documents on our website
Courses educating faculty
One-on-one training as requested
NOT EFFECTIVE OR EFFICIENT
Relied on “keeners”

13. How we educate the university community NOW
Much of the same educational opportunities
Since the Accessibility Audits most departments come to me directly
No longer relying on people to “do the right thing”
Way more need and curiosity by faculty
Created much more detailed documents online
Created a grading rubric for documents – “speak their language”

14. What was most effective?
Faculty feared the legislation
Speaking their language, faculty hated not receiving an “A” for their documents
This opened the conversation of how to utilize accessible documents for more than accessibility (efficiency and consistency)
*Right now they still have time before it is legislated so focus on new documents only, makes the job seem smaller

15. Thank you (thank you)