TLP Blog

An “accessible syllabus” is highly usable by all students including those with disabilities, more easily updated by the faculty member, and is created using best practices and organization with software faculty already commonly use, such as MS Word. Dozens of faculty have attended TLP’s workshop to make their syllabi accessible, and three of those faculty members were kind enough to share their experiences working with their own syllabus, adopting a syllabus template for a new course, and getting feedback from students on their new syllabus. Presenting on February 26, 2009 at our TILT Symposium about accessible syllabi were Laurel Hill-Ward (Special Education), Kathryn Schifferle (Marketing) and Julie Schneider (Nutrition and Food Science) .

Watch the archive online through Wimba here.

See our new web page answering your frequently asked questions: http://www.csuchico.edu/tlp/accessibility/faq.shtml

Provost Flake announced in December that the short-term goal for our campus is to have all course syllabi accessible to all students. TLP regularly offers a one-hour workshop on how to do this called “Make Your Syllabus Accessible with Microsoft Word”. This past summer, TLP hosted a two-day institute for 60 faculty who learned how to create an accessible syllabus, Universal Design for Learning, and how to use Vista to enhance accessibility for all users. This fall semester, another 14 faculty members took the one-hour syllabus workshop, and during the winter intersession another 26 attended. It’s best to learn in a group! Group workshops for your departments are available, by appointment. Faculty Symposiums for TILT and CELT were offered in the fall, with faculty demonstrating how they are applying these new strategies to their courses.

Confused about how to begin working with ATI? Start by making your syllabus accessible: training, tutorials and a checklist are online at http://www.csuchico.edu/tlp/accessibility/syllabus.

For more information about how TLP is supporting the Accessible Technology Initiative for Chico State faculty, see our Accessibility Page: http://www.csuchico.edu/tlp/accessibility.

NOW ON ARCHIVE

Original Date: October 21, 2008

Title: Current and Evolving Accessibility Practices: Practical Advice
from Two Institutions

Facilitators:
Afsaneh Sharif & Donna Scalzo, Office of Learning Technology, University
of British Columbia
John Louviere & Neal Legler, Faculty Assistance Center for Teaching,
Utah State University

Description:
Online learning environments hold great promise for expanding access to
education for students with time and geographic challenges. Providing a
supportive learning environment involves considering the needs of a wide
range of learners and instructors, including those with physical and
cognitive disabilities or technical limitations. The ability to do this
can be somewhat challenged within the structure of a course management
system such as Blackboard (WebCT) Vista, as full control of the web
interface may not be possible. In response to student and faculty needs,
educational developers from two institutions, the University of British
Columbia and Utah State University have worked to determine how some of
the issues may be addressed through instructional design, rigorous web
design methodologies and some technical applications. Please join us as
we share current and evolving practices in this important area of online
learning.

View the ARCHIVE

Since we’ve set up some high-speed document scanners in the TLP Faculty lab and started using optical-character recognition (OCR) software, we’ve seen a huge increase in the quantity and quality of scanned, accessible Acrobat documents which are being uploaded to Blackboard Vista courses. But many faculty are still using PDF files which lack even the basic level of accessibility, simply because they were created long ago or gleaned from sources which aren’t aware of modern PDF document practices.

Find out more about accessible PDF files at this free public webinar hosted by EASI, Equal Access to Software and Information:

Title: Improving Accessibilty of Troublesome PDF Files
Date/Time: September 24, 2008 at 11 AM Pacific
Information link | Registration link

Remember that the TLP staff offer help for faculty scanning or converting documents to accessible PDF!

CSU, Chico has a goal of making all course syllabi “accessible” this fall, in accordance with the Chancellor’s Office Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI). What does this mean for faculty? If a syllabus is “accessible,” it is in an electronic format such as Word, a Web page, or Acrobat PDF that makes it usable, readable, and even searchable to all students.

TLP offers one-hour workshops called “Make Your Course Syllabus Accessible“. In this workshop, faculty will learn how to create a well-designed syllabus which is more usable and accessible for students with disabilities as well as students of every ability and learning style – and faculty will be able to do the same for all instructional materials they create with the same software.

For more information, see TLP’s Accessibility page which has links to tutorials and even a sample accessible syllabus which faculty may use as a template.

one possible workflow:
1. ExpressScribe (free mac/pc) to help create transcription – need audio file version of video
2. Captionate software to create synchronization file (DXFP format XML)
3. Flash 8 to integrate FLV, SWF, XML for progressive download video with captions on 2-line lower third – this uses some ActionScript cut/pasting. Joel Bennett will provide the script with his presentation.

The real advantage here is that Captionate is able to directly import and play the FLV asset during caption sync, where other programs require using an alternate or intermediate format like AVI or MPEG.

A Flash CS3-based process using Magpie caption synchronizer software is another alternative with more flexible caption location (outside video frame) and the software solution can be cheaper if you already have Flash CS3 (which we do) – refer to CATS knowledge base for more information on these practices.

Further excellent resource on Flash Video captions: http://www.automaticsync.com/caption/flash_captions.htm.