Sharing the responsibility of accessibility

You are an amazing instructor. You have designed a brilliant online course. The semester is about to start. You click that “make course available’ button in Blackboard and you have never been more ready.

Then you find out that one of your students is blind. You realize some of your readings are scanned images of book chapters. You have required videos that feature minimal narration or description of on-screen content. Your syllabus section titles are bolded text, not structured headings. And the course starts tomorrow. You hear that sound effect from “Inception’ and wonder what you are going to do.

If you are teaching this online course through eCampus at UAF, you have a clear support structure to provide reasonable accommodations to this student, as well as resources to address these kinds of accessibility issues proactively during the course design process.

To help publicize and clarify this support, UAF eCampus and UAF Disability Services have created a chart titled Who’s Responsible for Accessibility in Online Courses at UAF?

Responsibility for the accessibility of an online course is shared between instructors, eCampus instructional designers and Disability Services. eCampus and Disability Services are committed to increasing accessibility and empowering instructors1 in the design and accommodation process.

This graphic details these responsibilities and is available as a printable, accessible PDF.

References

1 Lederman, D. (2017, March). Understanding the Faculty Role in Digital Accessibility. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/03/15/digital-accessibility-experts-discuss-how-they-approach-faculty

Further resources:
UAF Disability Services
Accessibility pedagogy resource on iTeachU
How to improve course accessibility with Blackboard Ally
Apply Universal Design to your course

Download the PDF for this Teaching Tip.