Starting with Accessibility: Reflections from an Online Math Instructor

Image by Денис Марчук from Pixabay

Accessibility is an important part of teaching online and, at times, it can benefit students, as well as faculty.  Early on in my career at MiraCosta, I recall watching a colleague photocopy problems out of the book, cut the problems from printed pages with scissors, and tape them to a new piece of paper to create the problems. He would make a handwritten note or use whiteout to modify a problem. He had files of these tests in his office - decades worth. But he never used the same test twice and this process would continue every term. His process was time consuming and, at times, frustrating to students who struggled to read the problems. Imagine being able to save your own time and help students too! 

Most faculty use typed exams but may not spend time thinking about how these materials create challenges for some students. While it is common for math instructors to spend time adjusting font size, making itemized lists for parts of a problem, and producing handouts to increase understanding, it is less common that we think about students who rely on screen readers, accessible technology devices used by people with vision impairments.  

Many faculty also make videos for their students, even short videos like the one above. If posted to YouTube, the captions are created automatically – but be careful! Those captions are pretty good, but aren’t perfect. Imagine a video where you described a new algorithm for “sub track shin” or “Polly know meals”. If you’re a math teacher, the intent was ‘subtraction’ and ‘polynomials’ but those misconceptions will confuse students who are following the automatic captions. It is time well spent for all students to update the captions by adding punctuation, capitalization, and fixing these incorrect translations.  Learn how to edit your YouTube captions for accuracy (a 7-minute video by Katie Palacios). 

Making Accessibility Part of Your Course Content Workflow

In the video embedded above, which is just over 200 seconds, I share some quick tips to save you time while making documents, PDFs, or Canvas pages accessible to students who use screen readers. It takes a lot less time to format pages with lists automatically rather than typing them manually. I will also show how following accessibility guidelines helped when a student who was blind needed a Braille version of the course materials. We were able to provide this quickly and without much additional work (it even included Braille graphs) because the content was made with accessibility guidelines in mind. 

Striving for Accessible Courses

Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash

One of my earliest memories is sitting on the couch, pillows on either side for support, as I held my baby brother. I can remember putting my lips to his little head, and soaking in the baby smell of his downy head as if it were yesterday. Soon after, we would learn that my brother suffered a traumatic brain injury at birth, leaving lasting cognitive and physical echoes. And so my personal journey with disability awareness began. 

In college, I had the honor of working as an embedded writing tutor with a cohort of deaf students, and later, I worked with two students who experienced short-term memory loss due to car accidents. By the time I started teaching online, I had a lifetime of experiences working with people who have differing cognitive and physical differences, so embracing making my online course accessible should have been easy--a piece of cake. 

Accessibility Is a Team Effort

Instead, what I found was that training and tutorials on digital accessibility were convoluted, complex, and often confusing. I rarely knew if I had achieved the level of accessibility I was hoping for, so (like many online instructors) I often simply ignored broad components of accessibility. 

During my work with @ONE and the CVC-OEI, however, I decided to tackle accessibility, and what I discovered is that some parts of accessibility are more difficult, and require collaboration with our campus IT and disability resources--like testing software integrations with Canvas to ensure they meet standards--but other things are simple, and when practiced become muscle memory. Since that time, it’s been my goal to share what I have learned about accessibility within Canvas to as many faculty as possible--to straighten out, simplify, and clarify how to make our content in Canvas accessible. 

Take the 10-Day Accessibility Challenge

So, as Disability awareness month comes to a close, and we begin prepping for Fall courses in the era of COVID-19, where all of our students have been forced online, I’m happy to introduce a new series--the 10-Day Accessibility Challenge--focused on making your Canvas course accessible. The challenge is comprised of ten brief videos ranging from 2 to 4 minutes each that cover the six most prominent accessibility strategies for online courses:

The video playlist is shared with a Creative Commons license on YouTube, so feel free to share, embed, and encourage others to join in, too! 

Accessibility does not have to be shrouded in mystery and should be part of our daily routine. As a matter of fact, I’m positive you’re up to the challenge!

Go to the 10-Day Accessibility Challenge