Five Easy Wins for Making your Brightspace Courses more Accessible to Students with Disabilities

Five Easy Wins for Making your Brightspace Courses more Accessible to Students with DisabilitiesBarry Dahl, Sr. Community Manager

FUSION – June 22-26, 2015

www.brightspace.com/fusion

Source of the Five Easy Wins

1. Captioned Videos

Most people recognize the importance of having captioned videos for their online courses.

It’s becoming easier all the time to create captions for videos.

However, you also might be able to find useful videos that were created by others.

Don't be fooled by YouTube's machine captions. YouTube uses voice recognition software to automagically create a video transcript and captions for almost every video uploaded to YouTube.

To find human transcribed captioned videos on YouTube:1. Enter your search term in the YouTube search field.2. Add a: , CC (that's a comma, CC)3. Hit Enter or click the magnifying glass icon.

1. Searching for captioned videos on YouTube

1. Example of poorly captioned video

2. Little-known PowerPoint tips

What are the a11y concerns about the following?a) Slide titlesb) Adding alt text to an imagec) Adding content to a slided) Built-in accessibility checker

2a. Ensure that all slides have unique titles •Slide titles are used for navigation and selection by people who are not able to view the slide.

•Look at Outline View to review slide titles

2b. Adding Alt Text for Images in PowerPoint

Alt text: “Long waiting line for free coffee and doughnuts on a cold day during the Great Depression.“

1. Right-click image2. Format Picture3. Size & Properties, click ALT TEXT4. Use Description field (not Title)

2b. Adding ALT TEXT

2c. Adding Content to a Slide

A common accessibility error in PPT is an improper reading order for the content on a slide.Reading order refers to the order in which a screen reader will announce various slide components.

To check the “Reading Order”

1. Go to Home Menu

2. Click the “Arrange” drop-down

3. Choose “Selection Pane”

4. Review order, from bottom to top

2c. Check Reading Order of Content on a Slide

2d. Run PowerPoint Accessibility Checker

The built-in a11y checker will help identify errors and possible errors, called warnings and tips.

To use the checker1. Go to File Menu

2. Click “Check for Issues” button

3. Choose “Check Accessibility”

4. Review possible issues in newly opened pane

2d. Check for Accessibility Issues

2d. Check the Possible Accessibility Issues

3. Create text links instead of unreadable URLs

What does screen reading software say when it comes to this?

http://brightspace.com/tlc

What does screen reading software say when it comes to this?

Teaching & Learning Community

3. Other unreadable URLs

What does screen reading software say when it comes to this?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-x1OOBQg3N-J9pT_6IoD25t6tyb6c1ODE5nUlXsfv6U/pub

What does screen reading software say when it comes to this?

Link to this Google Doc

4. Use free, automated testing tools for HTML pages

• Consider installing the WAVE toolbar from WebAIM, for Firefox or Chrome.

• For a D2L Content page:• Open the page in its own window by clicking on the

Open in a new window icon.• Right-click on opened content page and choose

“Errors, Features, and Alerts” on the Quick Menu.

5. Consider the A11Y Features of External Tools

Using external (usually web-based) tools is popular in education.• Is the tool built to allow users with disabilities to

create content?• Is the output created by the tool web accessible?• Do you have alternatives or work-arounds in place

for students who cannot participate?

Two sites for a11y information on external tools

www.web2access.org.uk/product centerononlinelearning.org/resources/vpat

The End