Ask The Accessibility Expert

As an accessibility evangelist, Scott Ready has served the education industry for 20+ years and worked for 35+ years in accessibility. Ready studied at Columbia International University and the University of Central Missouri. Ready’s first language is American Sign Language, and he has been part of the deaf community through his parents, who are both deaf, since birth. His parents were teachers at the Missouri School for the Deaf.

How can you drive your campus to be inclusive for all students?

Campus inclusivity comes as a result of a cultural shift. Historically, most higher education institutions placed the responsibility of accommodations on one department, the Office of Disability Services. It was viewed as their responsibility to make a course accessible to a student with specific learning needs. Similarly, when considering the physical environment of a classroom or campus, it is often one architect’s responsibility to ensure that the facilities are designed to be accessible. However, making a digital learning environment accessible often requires the ‘buy-in’ of multiple individuals. Inclusion can begin with the basics, such as simply adding alt tags to images shown by professors in lectures, using the correct formatting when creating Word or PDF documents and providing captions for all video content.

In academia, backing up the value of inclusivity measures and investments based on research is often key. No one will disagree that accommodations are ‘nice to have.’ However, ‘nice to have’ doesn’t fund the costs of making an inclusive learning environment beyond the minimum requirements of the law.

Universities, when moving beyond just providing an accommodation, want to understand what the return on investment will be. What impact will an investment have on learning outcomes and student engagement? This is where research comes into play. Instructors select content to be utilized in their courses to meet specific learning objectives. They invest a great deal of time and money into the expertise and design of a course and its content. Wouldn’t it then be a waste if students were not engaging effectively with this content? If we are able to increase the ability of students to engage with course content and gain the necessary knowledge, it’s hard not to justify an investment.

From a bigger picture, inclusion requires that we no longer look at an accommodation as a standalone requirement to fulfill one student’s needs but rather how accessible materials and inclusive courses can benefit all students.

From an accommodation perspective, 60-80% of the students on campus who have a disability are not disclosing their disability to the institution. There are numerous research articles on the benefits of inclusive learning environments for all, not just those who make specific requests. For example, Katie Linder at Oregon State University’s A Rising Tide: How Closed Captions Can Benefit All Students2 showcases a study where captioning was provided to 2,000 students at 15 institutions across the United States. 75.5% of the students noted that closed captions were helpful to them as a learning aid, regardless of disability.

Verbit recently published a blog post showcasing key research on the benefits of accessibility for all. You can read it here to explore how universities are increasing student retention and graduation rates as a result of providing access to all of their students.

How do I know if my university meets ADA requirements?

I would recommend searching for the Digital Accessibility Policy of other institutions. Many are posted online. I’d look to see how others are meeting these requirements and then compare these findings to the WCAG standards and ADA / Rehabilitation Act’s 504 and 508 laws. It’s also important to look into your institution’s individual state laws. There are also consulting agencies that provide a review and assessment by an experienced professional.

What free, self-guided resources do you recommend for educators to learn the basics of digital accessibility?

I would recommend these websites as initial resources:

cast.org

educause.edu

webaim.org

washington.edu

What is the best way to get faculty buy-in and train everyone effectively? How do we get faculty to understand the importance of making their courses accessible?

Institutional factors come into play. Is providing further accessibility being mandated by leadership, or is it a grassroots cultural shift that is taking place? The answer will vary depending on your individual institution. The successful institutions I have worked with have had, as a minimum, executive

or leadership endorsement and support. There is a fiscal component to this, and if that is not supported, then oftentimes it is not successful. Is this part of a larger initiative, such as meeting an institutional strategic plan for inclusion? If so, then show how it all ties together and enables the institution to realize its goals.

If we are just looking at accommodations, then typically, faculty will adhere to the requirement of the accommodation letter they received as long as it doesn’t require too much additional work. If it does, then it is typically referred back to the Office of Disability Services to perform the additional work.

Changing the culture from the top down or bottom up takes time with a clearly established plan. Building in other incentives such as departmental team building, fun competition between departments, recognition of work and effort put forth or faculty and course showcases always helps to promote involvement.

The most important question to answer is the “So What?” from a faculty’s perspective. We have to present the content in a way so that faculty are able to realize the benefits to all the students, as well as to themselves. It can’t be just for the one or two students they teach that have a disability, but for the greater good of the university.

Who is liable if a faculty member refuses to comply with legal accessibility requirements? I just sent an email to my faculty reminding them that all video content presented in class must be captioned. How do I support my faculty while also holding them accountable for access to captioned video content?

The first step is to make sure there is a clear process and workflow for faculty to follow. Do they know how to review content to make sure it meets the accuracy guidelines in addition to being captioned? Some of the auto-generated captioning should be turned off. It creates more harm than good. Do you have subject matter librarians that can assist in locating video content that has been captioned? If purchasing content, are there clear procurement policies and processes in place to evaluate and approve the accessibility of video content? Start by consulting your school’s legal counsel, but the precedence of cases would demonstrate that the institution is liable even if a faculty member or any other employee refuses to comply. This is where your HR policies come into play, and that can vary depending on state law, union vs. non-union, etc. Your legal counsel is best poised to answer these questions as they arise.

Am I correct in telling my faculty that all videos they make and post to their course sites in our LMS must be closed captioned and that the closed captions must be word-for-word and in sentence structure? What about 3rd party videos with closed captions that have not been edited in this manner?

What policies and expectations have been established at your institution with your legal counsel? If the course is a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) where anyone can gain access, then yes, all videos must be closed-captioned. If the course requires the participant to register, then the “requirement” is that the student discloses their disability with proper documentation, and accommodations will be provided. These guidelines adhere to the law but are not necessarily best practices. Regarding word-for-word or equivalent meaning, it is common practice for false starts and auditory fillers to be removed from captions. This eases eye fatigue and accommodates the speed of speech. Captioning should provide an equitable experience. It can go beyond just words to include audible cues, such as an overwhelming “SIGH,” which signifies a specific meaning.

Many faculty are now recording their lectures and posting them to the LMS system to be viewed later. Our recording system contract allows for $1K to be allocated to closed captioning. However, that money is quickly used since so many videos are being created. We want to promote UDL. Do you have any advice on guidelines for producing more accessible video content?

As it relates to lectures being posted, it’s important to consider whether the institutional focus is on accessibility or inclusion – two very different focuses. Considering the benefits for all students (ESL, search capabilities, multimodal engagement and more), many institutions are providing captions and transcriptions of all lectures with a focus on inclusion. With the three variables of accuracy, turnaround time and cost, the focus is often on turnaround time. If you only consider turnaround time and cost, that’s to say that accuracy is less important. Universities often don’t always meet the 99% level of accuracy. A 90% accurate transcript might suffice for an inclusive environment, but it wouldn’t suffice for an accommodation. If the content is provided openly to the general public, such as in a MOOC, then everything must be made 99%+ accurate.

In addition to being inclusive, if there is a need for accessible content to meet accommodation, then ensuring the content is 99% accurate is critical. Some institutions are also taking into consideration that lecture content is generally going to be used more than once, so they’re ensuring that the content meets accuracy requirements for future usage. Many institutions have put together a Digital Accessibility Policy. I would begin by simply Googling the ‘Digital Accessibility Policy’ and reviewing the policy in accordance with your institution’s leadership style and culture.

How can we set up a system for obtaining interpreters for all deaf students wanting to participate in after-school activities, such as sports and field trips? Activity organizers recognize that there’s a responsibility to provide an interpreter as part of their activity budget. We also want to allow students the opportunity to self-advocate and request these services.

This question could be answered from a K-12 environment perspective or from a higher-ed perspective. This is an excellent question since it’s a delicate dance that has been taking place for years.

In the K-12 environment, the first step is to ensure leadership buy-in. Then, it becomes part of the expected process to ensure that access is provided. Depending on the student, there may be activities where they don’t want the interpreter there, allowing them to ‘fit in’ with other students. I love it when I see students working together to make sure effective communication takes place. It’s always the school’s responsibility to provide interpreters if it’s requested and part of the student’s Individualized Education Program. Schools too often create a dependency by making decisions for a student.

For the higher ed environment, if the event is open to the public, such as a sporting event, then it falls under both Section 504 and the ADA. It is the responsibility of the organization to provide equitable access. Regarding field trips and activities that are associated with a student’s class, then it’s just an extension of his or her classroom. In higher-ed, there is a responsibility on the student to self-advocate, but the institution needs to have processes in place. Students must have opportunities to request accommodations for all activities throughout the student lifecycle and have the ability to issue a grievance if services are not provided.

Who should be a captioner for lecture captures: professors, a unit within an IT department or a video service?

The greatest benefit of lecture capture is for a student to be able to return to the content as soon as possible after class – ideally within 24 hours. This capability allows students to review important content points and obtain follow-up assignments. The answer to the question depends on who can produce the captioning with the quickest turnaround time.

On average, it takes a trained transcriptionist four or five hours to manually caption a one-hour class session. I don’t know of many, if any, professors that have the time to do the captioning. Typically, any unit within the institution would not be able to produce captioning or a transcript to scale throughout the institution with a timely turnaround. This reality is why Verbit has incorporated our Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) engine, which we developed specifically for education as the first step to our internal hybrid captioning workflow.

By having technology do the heavy lifting, we are able to cut down on the length of time it takes us to caption a one-hour session significantly. By adding captioning or, as a minimum, a transcript to lecture capture, you now have a content item that can be easily searched and used by all students, and quickly, rather than having students click on captured lectures and then abandon the video when it doesn’t serve them.

How can higher education institutions address the increased demand for support by students with disabilities when the staff does not increase to meet this demand?

This is a common challenge being experienced by institutions nationally. I would recommend you connect with AHEAD (Association on Higher Education and Disability). Within the organization are individuals who have encountered similar challenges and have delivered webinars and white papers on how they were able to expand to meet the needs. Much of it relies on the culture of the institution and the support of the leadership.

I would like to know how to build our budget correctly so it can include ed-tech tools. How do I prepare to push our campus to be inclusive and provide accessibility to all students?

Regarding the budget, great question. We hosted a webinar recently that focused on building a budget from accommodations to inclusion. There are a number of items to take into consideration. Typically when asked this question, the institution is looking to expand its “accommodations”

budget, as well as fund the proactive, more inclusive approaches. Is this a centralized budget approach, a centrally managed but decentrally funded budget or entirely a decentralized budget? With some institutions, anything that is considered “technology” falls under the IT budget. So partnerships with other departments are critical in order to achieve the overall needs. More to come regarding the budget process.

If you have a small web team, what are the three most important areas, other than adding image alt tags, to start with and why?

Three additional areas to focus on to promote greater accessibility are:

Making sure the color contrasts on all images and content is in accordance with WCAG 2.1 “WCAG 2.0 level AA requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. WCAG 2.1 requires a contrast ratio of at least 3:1 for graphics and user interface components (such as form input borders).” WebAIM.

Captioning all video content and transcribing all audio content.

Making sure the navigation is accessible.

How can I afford a captioning service for recorded lectures?

With more than 85% of videos on Facebook being viewed silently and everyone engaging with TV in a restaurant or an airport through captions, captions are becoming the norm in our environment – just like curb cuts and elevators, which were previously only placed to accommodate those

with specific environmental needs. The majority of people I speak with tell me that they prefer to have captions turned on during a movie so they can pick up on everything that is said. Students now expect recorded content to be captioned. So, where do we find the budget? We build it in as a cost of doing business. It outweighs the cost of students who drop out because they were unable to engage with the content or experience inclusive benefits.

What is the easiest and most cost-efficient way for instructors to create captions for the audio materials used in class or with course management systems?

If these are instructor-created audio materials, start with a script. A script will not only help with captioning but will make a more succinct and effective piece of content. The script can be used as the first step to captioning. Scripts are rarely followed 100%, but they provide the basis to add tangents and additional thoughts to the base content. Then, there are three variables to take into consideration – accuracy, turnaround time and cost.

The most cost-effective way to caption is for the instructor to manually create the captions, but the turnaround time may be longer than acceptable. On average, it takes four or five hours to manually caption a one-hour session, which is often too long. If the content is being prepared for the following semester and time is not a factor, then having the instructor manually create the captions might be an option.

I recommend considering the three variables above and weighing the need per scenario. Differing needs and timing requirements are why providers like Verbit offer institutions various captioning service options. For example, the approach of an ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) combined with one human editor that checks the technology might meet the needs for turnaround time and cost, but then it’s up to the institution to finalize the captioning for 99% accuracy. This provides a framework for how to achieve captioning goals while still being cost-effective.

What do you see as the biggest challenge for higher education in terms of digital accessibility?

Viewing digital accessibility as optional is the biggest challenge. An institution would be in an uproar if a student who uses a wheelchair was unable to enter the library because there were steps and no ramp made available. Why is there not the same outrage when it comes to digital accessibility? I know many dedicated educators believe in digital access and want to see more change immediately. Throughout the higher education industry, though, I still see an overwhelming mentality of denial and a willingness to accept minimal accommodations. How many campuses can say there are little-to-no digital barriers in all areas of the student academic experience? These changes need to occur outside of the classrooms themselves as well. Institutions may equip the swimming pools with chair lifts and their gyms with accessible equipment, and yet documents or videos often are not accessible in classrooms or at important student life spaces around campus, including the student union. More university leaders need to take on proactive approaches to enhance all experiences on campus to make every element and every event inclusive for all.

How can higher education institutions recruit and retain qualified interpreter staff, keeping in mind that the content in higher education is different than conversational interpreting needs?

I’d start with securing certified interpreters who have prior experience in educational settings. Connect with both national and local organizations, such as the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID), National Association of the Deaf (NAD) and local interpreting agencies and organizations for the Deaf. Reach out to Interpreter Training Programs that might be in your area. When there are not enough interpreters to meet a demand (which can occur depending on the location), I’d suggest you look to contract interpreter providers. One provider you may find helpful is Access Interpreting, or ainterpreting.com.

How should one approach making large amounts of archived materials accessible?

Many institutions are facing this challenge. Some institutions are first reviewing and evaluating how relevant the archived materials are by conducting an inventory and determining what content is and is not reusable. This evaluation accomplishes two goals – content cleanup and planning for content remediation.

During this evaluation, universities are classifying the types of content items so they can estimate how much time and cost will be associated with the remediation of those items. For example, creating an accessible PDF is much less expensive than captioning a one-hour lecture. There are other institutions that have maintained a strong archival process, and now they need to identify various content item types and volumes so they can build a remediation budget that will accomplish their goal over time. Other institutions are biting the bullet with a one-time allocation and remediating the bulk, if not all, of their archives at once. Most of these schools begin by making the most recent items accessible and then work backward. You’ll need to consider which option works best for your university based on its individual needs and its plethora or lack of reusable content.

We have a student who is blind in a completely online program. Do you have any tips to assist in this student’s success?

Becoming WCAG 2.1 compliant is the first step. Take a proactive approach to all of the basics, including providing Alt Tags, properly formatted documents and clear navigation. Open dialogue with the student is also key. Proactively approach the student to ask about previously experienced challenges in the learning environment and then be prompt in making necessary remediations.

It’s also important to discuss audio descriptions in the academic setting. I am often asked about providing audio descriptions. If we look at a movie that is streamed, for example, it’s easy to know, according to the plot of the movie, what needs to be described audibly. The one performing the audio description can evaluate if the car passing is important to the plot and provides valuable information or if it’s just background noise.

In the academic setting, describing something in accordance with the pedagogical objectives of why that video is being used requires subject matter expertise for the relevancy to be identified. For example, if the topic being studied is the attire worn during the Colonial period and a movie of Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams discussing the Declaration of Independence is used, it would be easy to focus on the Declaration of Independence and all the subsequent visual information. In reality, that would be off-topic for the subject matter (period clothing) being discussed.

In my opinion, until we further define how we are to provide accurate Audio Descriptions in the academic setting, we are doing a disservice to students by describing them in the same way we would for a Hollywood movie. Leaders in the education field, along with consumers of Audio Descriptions should come together and further define needs in the academic setting to find a way to best meet them.

Software like CommonLook PDF (formerly known as PDF GlobalAccess) will turn Word or PowerPoint documents into accessible PDFs, but it can be expensive. What is another software program or set of programs that you can recommend to do the same thing?

CommonLook is an Acrobat plug-in and can be quite costly, but for the volume of items most universities need to remediate, it can often be well worth it. CommonLook allows for quick markup of tables, one-step removal of empty tags, removal of role maps from InDesign styles, an undo feature and the ability to tag something once and then tag all the same text styles in one shot. This feature can be helpful for headings.

CommonLook doesn’t auto-generate tags though and you would still need to do that in Acrobat for a ‘No tags available’ PDF, but it gives you a starting point. Using just Acrobat Pro for PDF remediation, particularly when you don’t have the source document, is often unappealing to professors.

Other individuals use axesPDF “QuickFix”, a standalone software. Similar to Common-Look, it only supplements and augments what you can do with Acrobat Pro. There are key editing functions for PDF remediation that are only available in Acrobat Pro DC. If you aren’t using Acrobat Pro DC, then your cheapest first step would be to upgrade to DC. From there, you’ll want to consider updates to Word365 or 2016 and the latest version of InDesign. These upgrades alone could save you significant time when remediating files.

What are some of the newest technologies that are being offered in disability service programs, specifically for note-taking?

All students, despite having special learning needs or disabilities can relate to the hectic feeling of trying to keep up with note taking. Many technologies allow students to take notes effectively within a lecture environment to help students with special learning needs. Verbit’s transcription capabilities are helpful for those who are deaf, hard of hearing, or simply want to take more effective notes. Our solution allows students to take live notes within the transcription itself that are saved for later reference. More basic tools that universities often suggest as helpful alternatives include Audio Notetaker, Livescribe Pen, digital dictaphones, which are helpful for visually impaired students, and the app EverNote.

What do you do with courses that use a lot of publisher material and/or scholarly or popular articles that are not accessible? Our response from them has been a general “we’re working on it”, but in the meantime, we’re out of compliance, and some faculty are choosing to remove this good content.

There’s no easy answer, but pulling course material that is not accessible is a better alternative to offering it to some students and creating an unfair advantage. I’d also argue that universities should not help to support publishers or scholars who aren’t making accessibility and inclusion a priority. That said, I would exhaust all efforts before removing content that students can benefit from. If professors or others at the university have contacted the publisher and they cannot help to make the material accessible, can professors do so manually?

I’d also suggest reaching out to your typical providers of other helpful technologies like captioning and transcription to see if they have in-house services to provide for item remediation or can suggest additional vendors to help. Providing sign language interpreters, notetakers, audio recordings, additional descriptor slides, large print versions, Braille versions, assistive listening devices that make the sound louder, captioning and telecommunication devices for the deaf can be strong places to start based on your course professor’s or student’s needs.

What is the best way to guide the instructor to make an image accessible when presenting it in front of the camera?

If you’re using images in your slides, describe the contents of these materials in detail as they appear on the screen. Description not only provides context for students or remote learners, but allows those who are blind for example to not get left behind. Instead, present them with a clear understanding of what each image is depicting. In general, it’s also a best practice to use high-quality images and graphics, with only a single image per slide unless professors need to make direct comparisons. I’d also recommend making your images as large as possible. For example, charts and graphs will multiple visual elements should not compete with other information, and should therefore take up the whole screen.

It’s important to recite titles and describe images in detail to help viewers with visual disabilities understand the content. If you’re using a screencast of a software product, it should name the buttons and commands being used, not just say “click here”. According to WCAG 2.0 Guideline 1.2.3, an alternative for time-based media or audio description of prerecorded video content should be provided for synchronized media, except for when the media is a media alternative for text and is clearly labeled that way. All visuals and text displayed should also comply with color contrast guidelines.