The Spring session has well and truly begun and it’s important to remember what you need to do to make your subject materials and classes accessible to students, as well as where to go for help.
New LX.lab accessibility support
Online support with ServiceConnect
If you need assistance to make your subject accessible, you can book a consultation or ask for advice via our new Inclusive Practice Support tile in ServiceConnect. We can assist with queries for specific students in your class and their access requirements, or provide more general advice.
Resources
The LX.lab has helpful online resource collections covering different accessibility topics:
- Inclusive and accessible practices to help you facilitate inclusive classrooms and create accessible learning materials. This is a great place to start if you’re not familiar with accessibility practices.
- Reasonable adjustments and alternative assessments will equip you with the process of how to support students with accessibility requirements in your subject. This is a good collection to reference if Accessibility Services informs you that a student in your class has specific accessibility requirements.
Where else to get help?
- Accessibility Services is the central contact point for students who have a disability, medical or mental health condition. If you come across a student who has an access requirement you can refer students to register with the Accessibility Service so they get the right support.
- Academic Liaison Officers (ALOs) are the link between the Accessibility Service and faculties, and are a good contact for academic staff to consult about access responsibilities/processes within faculties. ALOs determine approval of recommended adjustments such as exam provisions.
Top tips and reminders for Spring session
How to use captions
- Live classes: the closed captions feature is now available in both Zoom and Microsoft Teams online classes for all students to access. Captions are beneficial to all students so it’s a good idea to turn on.
- Pre-recorded videos: ensure you upload content in Kaltura which provides automatic captions. The Use captions and transcripts in Kaltura resource gives instructions on how to review and edit captions.
- Professional captioners: The Accessibility Service will arrange professional captioners for live captioning for students who have access requirements. They will be in touch if your subject requires captioning. Good news – the captioners should be able to automatically join your class and can skip the waiting room in Zoom. However, you will still need to move them into the correct breakout room.
A new captioning collection to help with all your needs is coming soon.
How to add extra time and exam provisions
Remember to provide extra time and additional attempts in quizzes. Extra time gives the student a longer amount of time to complete each attempt at a quiz.
Assign different due dates in Assignments and Quizzes. Extensions for Assignments and Quizzes can be applied in Canvas by assigning different due dates and availability windows using the Assign to feature.
Follow our step-by-step guide for extra time and extensions to ensure this is implemented correctly. For centrally conducted exams this is done by the exam team, however, for faculty-based exams including weekly quizzes, this will need to be done by the faculty.
What to do with notetakers
- You might have students in your subject that require a notetaker. Learn why students may need this support in our Notetakers: reasonable adjustments resource and how to manage notetakers in your classes so they have access to Canvas content, links to Zoom and Teams classes. Like captioners, notetakers will also need to be manually moved to their correct breakout rooms.
- Remember that students’ circumstances can change at any time during the session, so you may be notified of new students needing notetakers at any time.
How to facilitate an accessible class – online, on-campus or mixed-mode
It is important to consider the needs of all your students when delivering mixed-mode classes. The flexibility of multiple ways to interact in-person and virtually in different types of lectures, tutorials, workshops, labs and large collaborative classrooms can create further barriers to students with access requirements.
Our Facilitating inclusive classrooms resource has strategies that will benefit students both online and on-campus.
How to make sure your content is accessible
The LX accessible content practices are a useful guide to making your subject sites accessible.
And don’t forget to use the Canvas Accessibility Checker. In this blog post, Associate Professor Emma Power demonstrates using the Canvas Accessibility Checker to improve content in her subject.
Enjoy Spring session and be sure to reach out to the LX.lab via ServiceConnect if you need a hand.
Feature image by Alexander Grey.