The Ohio State University

accessibility

Implementing Universal Design for Learning

| cecil.106

A wheel showing the different component of "Universal Design for Learning". The title of "Universal Design for Learning" is in the center and surrounding the title are topics such as accessible = fair, straight forward and consistent, flexible in use and presentation, readily perceived, explicitly presented, learning space accommodates students and instructional methods, provide a supportive learning environment, and minimize unnessesary physical effort.

Universal Design for Learning: Breaking Barriers in Education

Transcript

Inclusive Teaching Workshop

| Sarah Rusnak

Craft Your Curricula to Reduce Bias and Increase Accessibility

Diverse group of adult learners seated in a library, working together

Workshop materials

Inclusive Teaching Endorsement

This workshop counts towards the Drake Institute’s Inclusive Teaching Endorsement.

Upstate Bias Checklist Resources

CDC Resources

University Resources

Adobe Stock for Images

All Adobe Creative Cloud products are available to faculty, staff, and students at Ohio State.  Among their offerings, Adobe Stock is a terrific resource for finding images already licensed for use by the university.  The filter options to the left of the search results make it easy to find precisely the type of image you need.

If you have any difficulty accessing Adobe Stock, you can also review this list of stock photo sites that provide images labeled for re-use. Several of these sites are created and maintained by marginalized communities, such as Nappy, Disabled and Here, and The Gender Spectrum Collection.

LinkedIn Learning

Ohio State faculty, staff and students have free access to LinkedIn Learning. Go to LinkedIn Learning Login and enter your Ohio State email address using the format, name.#@osu.edu and follow the prompts. You can also download the LinkedIn Learning app for iOS and Android for phones and tablets.

Getting started with digital accessibility

| Sarah Rusnak

Computer with a script Ohio desktop background sitting on a white desk. A small green plant is next to the keyboard.

Don’t know what you don’t know about digital accessibility? These two BuckeyeLearn trainings are a good place to start when learning about making digital content usable and useful to all audiences. And remember to also complete the required course on Digital Accessibility Policy.

Document Accessibility: Microsoft Word

Creating accessible Word documents is fairly straightforward when you begin with accessibility in mind.  This BuckeyeLearn course covers how and why to use styles for text formatting, how to create meaningful links, adding alternative text, why reading order matters, and lots more.  Many of the best practices for accessibility also make document creation and editing faster and easier – spoiler – you will never again make a table of contents manually!

  1. Login to BuckeyeLearn using your lastname.#
  2. Search for the training Document Accessibility: Microsoft Word
  3. Launch the class to begin
  4. This course should take 75 minutes to complete

You can check the accessibility of your document at any time in the creation process using Microsoft’s accessibility checker.

Document Accessibility: Microsoft PowerPoint

For instructors and many other roles, PowerPoint is a big part of our work.  Using PowerPoint templates and university provided resources can dramatically cut down on the time spent creating accessible slides. Just as with Word however, it’s easiest to create accessible content from scratch, rather than retrofitting old slides.

As of this writing, the BuckeyeLearn MS Word training is a required prerequisite to completing PowerPoint training.

  1. Login to BuckeyeLearn using your lastname.#
  2. Search for the training Document Accessibility: Microsoft PowerPoint
  3. Launch the class to begin
  4. This course should take 30 minutes to complete

For more, here is a roundup of all posts that address accessibility on this site.

Presentation resources

| Sarah Rusnak

Splash of rainbow colors of paint falling from above

WOW your audience with your next presentation

Here are the slides, resources, and references from my workshop on PowerPoint.

Learn practical and creative use of Microsoft 365 PowerPoint to create effective presentations that will grab your audience’s attention and meet accessibility standards.

Downloads

Branding and templates

  • brand.osu.edu for university templates, art, photography, fonts, and more
  • BrandSource for resources specific to the College of Medicine and Wexner Medical Center

Images

Recording

PowerPoint tips and tricks

Additional trainings

Presentation skills

Digital Accessibility

References

Colorsplash

Meaningful links

| Sarah Rusnak

Have you ever read a document, come to a lengthy URL in the text, and skipped right over it? Including meaningful links in your writing allows for greater ease of reading and more importantly, improves the experience for people who use screen reader software to listen to text on webpages, documents, and any other digital content. Eliminating long URLs from your writing is an excellent start, and choosing your words carefully enables you to create meaningful links that convey the purpose of the link.

Avoid sentences such as: Click here for a list of additional keyboard shortcuts.

A screen reader would begin the above sentence by stating “Link: click here for a list…” which already does not convey to the listener why they may wish to click on the link.  And note, screen readers will indicate when a hyperlink in included with text so there’s no need to call it out with phrases like “click this link” or “click here”.

Instead, write sentences such as: Learn more Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts to help you save time.

Screen reader software would read this sentence by stating “Learn more link Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts…” which allows the listener to decide as they’re hearing the description of the link whether they want to click through to the resource or would rather continue listening to the words on the screen. Screen reader software also allows users skim through the hyperlinks on a page, just as a sighted user might do by looking for the underlined or color coded words. Imagine skipping ahead to a hyperlink and hearing only the words “click here”.  Why bother clicking on the link if you do not know what you’ll find at the destination?

Create a meaningful hyperlink using keyboard shortcuts

  1. Highlight the text that will be the link and press Ctrl + K on the keyboard.
  2. Paste (Ctrl + V) the URL in the dialogue box that appears.
  3. Click OK or press Enter.

Gif showing the steps to create a meaningul link in Microsoft Word. The text on the screen reads "Learn more Windows 10 keyboard shortcuts to help you save time." The animation shows the words "windows 10 keyboard shortcuts" are highlighted, and then the add hyperlink dialogue box appears. The URL is pasted into the dialogue box and the user clicks OK.

Note that these same steps also work in Outlook, PowerPoint, CarmenCanvas, Qualtrics, and just about any other software application or website that allows for adding text and hyperlinks. If you’re a Mac user, substitute the Cmd key in place of the Ctrl key and you’re all set.

Recommended resources

Adding alternative text

| Sarah Rusnak

Alternative text or alt text is important to include so that learners who use screen readers can fully engage with content. There are several ways to add alt text, depending on what website you are using or content you are creating. In general, start with right clicking the image or graphic and look for the option to Edit Alt Text or to edit Properties. Here are specific guides:

The Web Accessibility Initiative provides an alt text decision tree if you need help deciding whether an image needs and description, and what to include.  Note also that in many programs it is possible to mark an image as decorative so that screen readers will skip the image.  Though, if an image does not convey any meaning to the learner, consider whether it should be included at all.

And if you’d like a master class in writing alt text that conveys meaning, check out We Rate Dogs (@dog_rates) on Twitter.

Accessibility checker in CarmenCanvas

| Sarah Rusnak

Too long; didn’t watch

Transcript

As you are editing or creating content in CarmenCanvas, there is a built in accessibility checker that can help you check for things like images that are missing alt text or color contrast that’s actually very hard to read. So this is the page that I’m going to work off of. And if I come in here and click on edit, you can see anywhere in Canvas, anywhere in CarmenCanvas that you have the rich content editor, or this up here which appears at the top of a page it appears at the top of an assignment, a discussion, a quiz. Anywhere you see this, you should also have the accessibility checker just below the content itself.

So there’s a two here which lets me know there are two issues on this page that need to be fixed. So if I click on the accessibility checker, it’s going to pop up and tell me what the issue is. It highlights the image in question and says, Hey, this image, the only alt text is the file name, which is not descriptive. So I can change that. I can come in here and I can, for the sake of time, choose the text that I already wrote and put in a description here. This has multiple uses by changing the alt text. Here’s another one that has the file name which doesn’t tell anyone using a screen reader why this image is here or what it’s telling them, or why it matters. So it helps those who are using screen readers, but it also helps those who are having trouble with their internet connection or the image doesn’t load for some reason.

And so now it says, great, no issues were detected. I get balloons and confetti, I can click save. There are no longer accessibility issues. And what’s tricky about this is you don’t see anything different. For a sighted user, the alt text does not appear and that’s fine. That’s as it should be. But for users of screen readers now, it would say “image: screenshot of the page that results from using the undelete function in CarmenCanvas”, which is better. I could probably do better than that, but that’s better than nothing. Or if someone has a really slow internet connection. Or if Canvas is only half working, or who knows what and the image just doesn’t appear, the alt text will display in its place and that tells a sighted user what was supposed to be there and the purpose that it served. So alt text actually helps everybody. In the case of the internet going out or even if it is working, it’s good to have. So good to know. The accessibility checker is there and it will guide you through the changes you need to make.

Mediasite to Echo360 Migration

| Sarah Rusnak

The College of Medicine is moving to Echo360 for video hosting, you can find full details from the Office of Curriculum and Scholarship.

The short version is, download and save a copy of the Mediasite Video Inventory Excel file, fill it out, and email it to OCS@osumc.edu when you’re done.

Read through for more information or jump to:

Getting started

1. Download and save a copy of the Mediasite Video Inventory Excel file. Change the file name by adding the your last name (e.g., “Mediasite Video Inventory for Migration_Rusnak”) and save.

2. Open the file, click to Enable Editing, and the move to the Instructor tab

Screen shot of the Excel workbook with circles around the text "Enable Editing" and "Instructor"

 

3. There are drop-downs for both Department and Program. If you teach in more than one program, just choose one for this page. After completing the Instructor information, return to the Videos tab.

Screen shot of the Excel workbook showing the drop-down options for Department

 

4. On the Videos tab, fill out row three for your first video.  Course Code is the abbreviation and Course Title is the full name of the course as listed on the registrar. If you’re uncertain of either, you can check this information at classes.osu.edu. For Term, the spreadsheet is asking during which term this course will be taught next.  Select the correct term from the drop-down, then select whether course is taught in Carmen, also a drop-down.

Screen shot of the videos tab highlighting the drop-down features of specific cells

 

5. Once you have the first four columns complete, you can save yourself some time by copying down the course code, name, term, and Carmen status. For example, I have dozens of videos in HTHRHSC 5900.  Rather than answer these questions for each video, I’m going to copy-down or fill-down this information.  Starting with the cells you wish to copy, highlight the cells where the data should be copied.  In this case, I’m going to copy the contents of cells A3-D3 into every cell down to A23-D23:

Excel spreadsheet with specific cells highlighted, and the text "select cells then press Ctrl + D

 

6. The result appears with identical information in each row. Repeat this process as many times as needed, or each time you begin listing videos for a different course.

Excel spreadsheet showing the result of the fill down shortcut

Finding video titles and links in Mediasite

If you prefer video tutorials, here’s a step by step video for finding videos in Mediasite.

1. If you know which videos in your Mediasite catalog you need to migrate, login to Mediasite and navigate to the page with the videos you need.  Here is one way to find the titles and URLs (links) to each video, without leaving the page on Mediasite.  First, the Title of Video is the first line in the description to the right of the video thumbnail. To get the Video URL, click on the View button at the bottom of the video’s info:

Mediasite page with arrows pointing to the video title and the view button.

 

2. In the resulting window, copy the link text from the URL bar. You can use keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl + C on Windows or Cmd + C on Mac) or right click and select Copy.

Mediasite page with the URL bar highlighted and the right click context menu shown.

 

3. Paste the video title and URL into the spreadsheet, and save the file. If you haven’t already, be sure to rename the file to include your last name at the end.

Excel spreadsheet with the first row complete and the filename specified

4. When finished, email the completed spreadsheet to OCS@osumc.edu

Finding video titles and links in your Carmen course

If you prefer videos, here’s a step by step video for finding videos in Carmen.

It may be easier to find your active videos by going through the pages of the most recent instance of your course in Carmen.  Here’s how to find the video titles and links for videos embedded in a Carmen course.

1. Navigate to a page with an embedded video, and wait a few moments for the videos to load. Once the video preview appears, you’ll see the Video Title in the bottom left corner of the frame:

Carmen course page with an arrow pointing to the video title

 

2. Though you cannot copy the video title that appears on this screen, you can type this information into the Excel spreadsheet.  To find the URL for this video, begin playing the video and click on the Pop Out icon in the bottom right corner:

Carmen course page with a circle around the pop out icon on the video

 

3. In the resulting window, copy the link text from the URL bar. You can use keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl + C on Windows or Cmd + C on Mac) or right click and select Copy.

Pop up window of the video with the URL bar highlighted

4. Paste the video title and URL into the spreadsheet, and save the file. If you haven’t already, be sure to rename the file to include your last name at the end.

5. If instead of embedding videos in your course, you have the URLs to the videos in your course, simply copy the URL and paste into the spreadsheet.  In this case however you may need to open the videos to find the video title, which appears in the bottom left before the video is played.

6. When finished, email the completed spreadsheet to OCS@osumc.edu