Accessibil-IT: Who Wants Free and Personalized Accessibility Support?

If you said, “I do!” Sean Keegan, Director of the California Community Colleges Accessibility Center, and his team can help. Implementing accessibility can be a bit difficult sometimes. Keegan elaborates in his TechEdge blog, “Changes in technology capabilities, including that of assistive technologies for students with disabilities, can create confusion and uncertainty as to what is considered accessible or the best practice for ensuring access.” Fortunately, the California Community Colleges (CCC) Accessibility Center launched the Accessibility Center Help Desk in October. Help is here!

What Type of Accessibility Questions May I Ask?

The Accessibility Center Help Desk can answer accessibility questions such as:

Why do I need to include headings in a Canvas page?
What is the difference between a tool tip element and alt text?
Is there a difference between captions and subtitles?
How can I check accessibility in my MS Word documents?

How Can I Get Started?

To get started, users need to sign in to post questions. To register, you may create a new account, or use an existing Google or Facebook account. When you join, you receive the benefit of joining a community of learners who are just as committed as you are! Learning in isolation is difficult, and takes a tremendous amount of dedication and time (something we all have limited of!) Learning in a community is much easier, especially when it is your first time taking a deep dive into implementing accessibility. You can learn and share strategies to address accessibility in different scenarios, and have meaningful discussions with others.

Help! I Need Somebody

Help is in the form of a community-based forum that allows you to ask questions publicly, or privately by checking the “Post this Conversation Privately” option. The conversations are monitored regularly, which is helpful when you need assistance. Once answers are posted, you will conveniently receive an email notification. No need to wait on the phone or follow-up via email, your answer will be automatically delivered into your mailbox. In addition to the convenience, you receive support straight from an accessibility specialist versus searching the web for the answer!

Learning More Via Browsing the Conversations for Answers

Is there a question you would also like to know the answer to, but it is still awaiting a reply from an Accessibility Expert? Use the Follow button, and this will notify you of any updates via email. Curious to learn more about strategies to implement accessibility? You can subscribe to the Help Desk to receive newly asked questions and updates.

Learning how to apply accessibility elements such how to effectively describe images with alt text is like driving a car for the first time. Initially, it may be overwhelming as there are new ways to format your document or Canvas content page. With practice, time, and gaining additional knowledge, accessibility becomes easier to apply. When I was initially learning more about accessibility, I spent a lot of time researching. I browsed articles and forums, watched many videos, and taught myself how to use several screen-readers. Luckily, learning more about accessibility is a lot easier as faculty now have this convenient resource to provide prompt and helpful answers.

Take advantage of this free resource!

For more information, read Sean Keegan’s Accessibil-IT: Get Help From Accessibility Help Desk.

One More Canvas Tool to Make Your Life Easier: Accessibility Checker!

Good News

Spring is around the corner and you are developing your course. Need something to speed up course design and improve the student usability experience in Canvas? Here’s a nifty tool to help create an inclusive environment for all students: the Canvas Accessibility Checker.

Located in the bottom, right-hand corner of Canvas’ rich content editor is a button with a picture of a stick figure. Its arms are spread wide with pride – finally, Canvas has integrated a built-in accessibility checker! Faculty, fret no more - the Accessibility Checker is here to help.

Inclusive environment for all students? Yes please.

Student usability is essential in online course design. How we build the course, from using colored text, to applying heading styles, to adding meaningful URL descriptions, affects student usability:

What tasks are students expected to complete using Canvas?
How easily can students complete those tasks?
What is the most effective way for all students to access information?

I like to say, “Save time and build with accessibility in mind.” Retrofitting a course for accessibility can feel like tearing a home down, adding a new foundation, and then building it up again. It takes time. Now imagine needing to retrofit a course in the middle of a semester – no thank you, right? Designing courses is not an easy task, but the Accessibility Checker can help streamline the process.

Accessibility Checker - verifying common accessibility errors such as:

Table headers: Tables should include at least one header.
Sequential headings: Heading levels should not be skipped (e.g. H2 to H4). The title of page is designated as the H1.
Heading paragraphs: Headings should not contain more than 120 characters.
Image alt text: Images should include an alt attribute describing the image content.
Image alt length: Alt attribute text should not contain more than 120 characters.
Large text contrast: Text larger than 18pt (or bold 14pt) should display a minimum contrast ratio of 3:1*.
Small text contrast: Text smaller than 18pt (or bold 14pt) should display a minimum contrast ratio of 4.5:1*.
*Text contrast calculations match those used by WebAim tool.

Try it in your course!

The Canvas Accessibility Checker has great potential to support accessibility efforts in course design. Here is an action screenshot of the Canvas Accessibility Checker:

The screenshot above shows the Accessibility Checker report tell us what we need to focus on and why it is important to remediate. In this instance, for example, the Accessibility Checker notifies us which picture needs alt text, and why we need to add alt text to a picture. Instead of manually checking each Canvas content page after page, we have a tool that gives us an extra pair of eyes.

Remember that automatic accessibility checkers need an extra pair of human eyes to make sure all accessibility elements have been addressed! Similar to using the Microsoft Accessibility Checker or the Accessibility Acrobat Checker, these checkers offer valuable guidance. For example, accessibility checkers will let you know if a document or site is formatted with accessibility elements, for example, if you have added headings. Though accessibility checkers cannot verify if the heading levels are in order or if the headings are effectively structured to help connect related ideas. This is where you come in!

In course design, we need all the support we can get - try the built-in Accessibility Checker today! Learn more about how to use the Canvas Accessibility Checker.

Chunking Content & Using Headers

Accessibility can be an overwhelming topic for online instructors. Kim Pippa-Tonnesen, who teaches English at Columbia College, learned a few key accessibility strategies through her experience in the OEI Online Course Review process. In the 7-minute video below, Kim reflects on the importance of designing pages in Canvas with short "chunks" of text and ample white space. When pages are designed with these principles in mind, students are less likely to feel overwhelmed and more likely to process the content. Kim also demonstrates what header text is and explains how it supports students with vision impairments who use screen readers.

How to Write Great Rubrics & Why You'll Love Them!

Let’s start with the $6-million-dollar question: with so many other teaching tasks calling for your attention, why take the time to write a great rubric? (Because, while anyone can dash off a mediocre, not-very-useful rubric, it does take time to write a good one.)

Here’s why. A well-constructed rubric is a powerful communication tool that will result in a clear, measurable preparation process for students and a time efficient, consistent grading process for you. That means less time grading, fewer questions or complaints, and improved student performance in meeting your assignment standards and learning objectives.

What’s not to love?!

Canvas’s rubric tool makes using rubrics simple, easy and (dare I say it?) fun. There are three parts to the Canvas rubric grid:

Criteria: These are the big-picture categories for grading. In a Discussion, for example, your criteria might be “Initial Post” and “Replies to Classmates.”
Ratings: These are the explicit descriptions of the levels of performance that might be achieved within the specific criteria category.
Points: This is your rating scale.

Criteria are best determined by considering which learning outcomes are being assessed. What, exactly, do you want to grade for this assignment? Use these guiding questions to help identify your criteria:

What skills will students need to have or develop to successfully complete the assignment?
What, exactly, is the assigned task?
What are the component parts of the assignment?

Ratings, or descriptors, detail the measurable evidence that the student has achieved your criteria—or not. “Knowing” and “understanding” aren’t easily measured. Instead, describe the evidence students can provide that shows they’ve accomplished what you’d hoped they would. Think of this as the feedback portion of your rubric. What are the highest expectations you have for student performance on this assignment? What is the worst execution of this assignment you can imagine?

Points are pretty self-explanatory. It’s a good idea to weight criteria appropriately. For example, is “few grammatical/spelling errors” really worth the same as “clarity and originality of thought”? Points should reflect the effort being asked of the student.

3 Tips for Effective Rubrics

Choose between three to seven criteria.
As much as possible, omit negative wording. Be encouraging; indicate what you’re seeking rather than what you don’t want.
Use clear and specific language. Words like some, several, perfect, and boring are all subjective evaluations.

Examples

Here are a few example rubrics from several institutions. Some are better than others, but you’ll get a sense of the structure, variety and languaging.

Rubrics are an assessment tool, a means to improve learning and a communication tool all wrapped up in one neat little package. When done well, they can be an asset to both you and your students!