Accessibility Resources

Need a document converted quickly? Take a look at our database of helpful resources:

• 247 Accessible Documents – On-demand Accessible Documents. Upload a Document and receive an Accessible PDF, Accessible Word Document or an Accessible PowerPoint that meets Accessibility Standards & Guidelines 2.0 in 5 days.
• BrailleWorks – Braille Works is a solution for repair or remediation of your documents so organizations can meet WCAG and 508 compliance standards. WCAG and Section 508 document compliance can be difficult and navigating these waters is not a job for the inexperienced. Elements of a document such as paragraph structure, tables, charts, lists etc, need to be properly organized and tagged to provide true accessibility.
• CommonLook – NetCentric Technologies, a global leader in document accessibility, provides software products and professional services enabling faster, more cost-efficient, and more reliable processes for achieving compliance with the leading PDF and document accessibility standards, including WCAG, PDF/UA, and Section 508. CommonLook software makes the creation, remediation, and management of accessible PDF and Microsoft Office documents easier than ever before.
• Equidox – Equidox is an automated solution that simplifies the process of discovering, converting, and publishing PDF documents to WCAG 2.0 compliant HTML.
• Microassist - The entire Microassist team invests time in understanding a client’s needs and the desired outcome of their training and learning strategy. Microassist creates, delivers, and hosts custom training for our clients’ internal and external learners with a special emphasis in usability and accessibility.
• inclüd – Accessible content conversion, creation, and consulting services, inclüd provides institutions with a path to accessible information, ensuring that those with exceptional needs can access content tailor made for them.
• PubCom - PubCom has been developing accessible materials since the mid-1990s, before the US Sec. 508 amendment was passed and put into effect in 2000. They offer a suite of services from custom designed accessible templates to an audit of public-facing documents.
• RoboBraille - RoboBraille is accessible 24/7 as a self-service solution and is available free of charge to individual, non-commercial user not affiliated with an institutional setting obligated to provide support (academic institution, organisation, association or similar). Users need not register in order to use the service. The objective is to support and promote self-sufficiency of people with special needs socially, throughout the educational system and on the labour market. As an additional benefit, RoboBraille helps to protect the privacy of of those who need material in alternate formats.
• SensusAccess (Powered by RoboBraille) – SensusAccess is a self-service, alternate media solution for educational institutions. SensusAccess allows students, faculty, staff and alumni to automatically convert documents into a range of alternate media including audio books (MP3 and DAISY), e-books (EPUB, EPUB3 and Mobi) and digital Braille. The service can also be used to convert inaccessible documents such as image-only PDF files, JPG pictures and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into more accessible and less tricky formats.
• T-Base Communications – T-Base Communications takes one digital file and converts it into every accessible format you need: braille, large print, audio or accessible PDF. Guided automation and QA by our subject matter experts ensures a high-quality end product, consistently.

~Anna

 

Anna is the Educational Technology Coordinator for Emporia State University. She can be reached at acatters@emporia.edu or by phone 620.341.5107

New to Learning Technologies

Makers Lab - 3D Printer

Good Morning, my name is Selayoa Lovett and I started my first day in Learning Technologies on August 27^th, 2018 as an Instructional Designer. My first month in Learning Technologies has been everything but slow and boring.  Within the first week, I assisted with training material for Jumpstart Design and Delivery, met with numerous faculty, and started my training on making documents accessible per Section 508 refresh.  By the next week, I had embarked on my journey in becoming Quality Matters Certified; within two weeks, I had completed the Applying the QM Rubric class and was enrolled in the next part starting October 9^th, Becoming a Peer Reviewer. On top of completing the first part of Quality Matters, I also met with 6 new faculty, assisted with 3 class tours, started my Makerbot Certification, made my first 3D printed Corky, assisted a faculty with Kahoots (free online game quiz), discussed possibilities with a graduate student on a research project, attended a few embedded session with co-worker Anna Catterson, recorded Dr. Joyce Thierer performing at Constitution Day with 3D cameras, took on my first huge project with one of our new faculty, Melissa Gerleman, to make her classes interactive and engaging, helped another faculty with a video for a nonprofit organization they volunteer with, held a breakout box activities for the McNair Grant, attended my first conference, met with numerous other faculty on topics like Canvas, Panapto, Kaltura, and Zoom, and advised our Information Technology administrative team with their budgeting tool (which is the fields I came from before I moved to Learning Technologies) just to name a few things I did this month.  So on a whole, I think this first month could not have gone any better. But I would say, it is a good thing I love being busy! I look forward to the next month and what it has in store!

Canvas Update

PRODUCT RELEASE NOTES and SCREENCAST

·         The February 17 Canvas update includes enhancements to Assignments, Conversations, the New Gradebook, People, and more.

ACCESSIBILITY

·         Automatic Transcriptions. Zoom now supports an automatic transcription feature. We’ve enabled this great new tool administratively, so you can start using it immediately.

·         Making Accessible Hyperlinks: This is a very easy change you can make in your courses immediately. Rather than copy > pasting a long URL, highlight the text you want to hyperlink and use the Insert > Hyperlink command. This is because screen readers will attempt to read back each and every character in a long URL string, rather than reading back the linked words. This document explains the process, or you can note what I’m doing within this email.

·         Making Bullet Points Accessible. Always use Word or PowerPoint built-in bullets and list formatting features, rather than creating them manually using tabs, indents, asterisks, dashes, and other workarounds. Screen readers are fine with bullets provided they are added using Office’s built-in features.

·         Making Text Bold and Oblique. Some screen readers do not recognize Bold and Oblique.  To make something bold and/or oblique, use the Strong style command or Emphasis style command instead.

·         UDOIT. This might be a great time to mention again that within every Canvas course is a sidebar feature called UDOIT. This utility, which stands for Universal Design Online content Inspection Tool, will scan your course for compliancy concerns, and provide suggestions for corrections where it can.

·         Accessible Syllabus. Making your course syllabus accessible is easy. Watch this short video developed by Dr. Catterson on how to make your course syllabus accessible for screen readers.

ESU STUDENTS AND TECHNOLOGY

·         We recently completed our annual survey of students and technology at ESU. Some surprises and some expected findings. A few highlights:

o   Students want more use of Canvas and more consistency in where content is located across courses and departments.

o   74% Students requested more use of Open Educational Resources (OER).

o   98% of students have a Smartphone and the majority of them use it to check Canvas content daily.

o   58% of students requested more use of lecture capture.

o   80% of students are satisfied with Canvas and its features.

CANVAS TIPS & TRICKS

·         Use Modules! Without a doubt, Canvas Modules are absolutely the best course design tool you can employ. Modules organize content into discrete, identifiable units, such as chapters, weeks, subjects, etc. Within the Modules you can add your assignments, quizzes, discussions, files, etc. relative to that topic and in the sequence you want students to progress. Then, you can defeat assignments, discussions, quizzes, etc. from the sidebar as they are essentially redundant and create visual clutter. Turning them off on the sidebar does not affect their availability inside the module. As the course progresses, float the most current Module to the top of the list and migrate the retired Module to the bottom.

BLOG AND TWITTER FEED

If you want more information about anything you read here, check out our blog at Blogspot or follow us on Twitter @esulearningtech.

Canvas Updates

PRODUCT RELEASE NOTES and SCREENCAST

The January Canvas update – to be released on the 27th – includes enhancements to the Rich Content Editor, the new Gradebook, Accessibility, and more.

VERICITE

• Vericite can now plagiarism check papers submitted in Spanish! When the report is generated, locate the Language Toggle

PANOPTO and KALTURA

• Both Panopto and Kaltura now support 360 video! 
• Panopto Release Notes
• Kaltura Release Notes

ZOOM

• Zoom has several new enhancements and releases

ACCESSIBILITY

• Each Canvas update we send will now include an Accessibility/Universal Design for Learning (UDL) tip/trick. This week we’re sharing Five Tips for Creating Accessible Word Documents

BLOG AND TWITTER FEED

If you want more information about anything you read here, check out our blog at http://emporiastate.blogspot.com/ or follow us on Twitter @esulearningtech.

Spring 2018 Updates

PRODUCT RELEASE AND SCREENCAST

·         A new Canvas product update is scheduled for this Saturday, January 6th. This update includes enhancements to the Gradebook, Speedgrader, Rubrics, Accessibility, and more. Note that much of this release focuses on the new Canvas Gradebook. Hence, we’ve enabled a setting in Canvas that allows faculty to opt in/out of the new Gradebook. (Settings > Feature Options > New Gradebook (on)). You can revert to the old Gradebook at any time provided you’ve not enabled late policies.

GENERAL ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES

·         This document from Instructure provides some helpful General Accessibility Design Guidelines. Note that both UDOIT and the new Canvas Accessibility Checker will identify and even provide corrective assistance for many accessibility issues. However, documents created in Word, PowerPoint, Acrobat, etc. may require additional accessibility formatting. Refer to Learning Technologies Accessibility for more information.

TIPS/TRICKS: VANITY ZOOM URL

·         You can create a vanity Zoom URL by logging into Zoom > locate My Profile > locate Personal Link > Customize. You can use your name, for example, but it will need to be contiguous. When you want to schedule a Zoom meeting, you can then simply use your Zoom vanity URL rather than the Personal ID number.

BLOG AND TWITTER FEED

If you want more information about anything you read here, check out our blog at http://emporiastate.blogspot.com/ or follow us on Twitter @esulearningtech.