Accessibility

Prince William Sound College is committed to ensuring that all students have an equal opportunity to participate in the college's programs, benefits, and services.This includes making course materials, instruction, and activities compatible with the use of assistive technology. 

IDT's Role

Our focus is on preparing instructors to teach accessible live, blended, and online courses. We assist faculty in producing fully accessible content using a variety of different guidelines and tools.

Students who experience disabilities and need academic accommodations should reach out to the PWSC Disability Support Services (DSS) office.

Resources

An accessible document can be read by a screen reader.  This means it is text-based (rather than a scanned image), and allows a person using a screen reader to do more than just read the document word-by-word.  Like a sighted reader, they can skim through the document reading headers and locating links. This is best accomplished by using styles, headings, and paragraph-line spacing for document structure.

Closed captions and/or transcript not only make material accessible for those who are hearing-impaired but also benefit a wide variety of other leaners.  These include those who absorb text-based information better than audio and those to whom English is a second language. Providing a transcript also allows all students to more quickly review material when preparing for exams.

A study by Oregon State eCampus Campus Technology Report: Video Captions Benefit Virtually All Students which surveyed over 2,000 students enrolled in online classes showed that over 70% used transcripts when provided, even those with no hearing difficulty.

Transcripts are one step in providing accessibility, but closed captions are required when the audio portion of a video needs to be associated with relevant images. Closed captioning tools are available in most video editing software, including ScreenCast-O-Matic. Closed captioning is also available when videos are uploaded to YouTube. Videos on YouTube can be automatically closed-captioned and then those captions can be edited to provide proper spelling and punctuation.

Tools for Adding Closed Captioning to Recorded Videos

Screencast-O-Matic

PWSC provides free access to the premier level of Screencast-O-Matic for all faculty. This lecture-capture software has full editing, captioning, and transcription capabilities.

For information on how to create accessible videos in Screencast-O-matic, visit their how-to blog post at https://screencast-o-matic.com/blog/accessible-video/.  Also, you can view their short video embedded below.

Youtube

Subtitling Add-in for Microsoft PowerPoint 

The Subtitling Add-In for Microsoft PowerPoint (STAMP) helps Microsoft PowerPoint 2019, 2016, 2013 and 2010 users add closed captions to the video and audio files included in their presentations, which boosts their impact for those with hearing disabilities.

STAMP creates editable closed captioning files saved in a .vtt format.  To learn more about use and find installation instructions, visit Microsoft Support's article on STAMP.

 Amara 

Amara enables you to caption and subtitle any video for free. For larger subtitling projects the platform makes it easy to manage teams of translators. https://amara.org/en/

Though the focus is often on creating accessible online courses, live courses should also be accessible to all students. 

Tools for Adding Closed Captioning to Live Lecture

PowerPoint Translate (Live Speech-to-Text Captioning)

Microsoft Presentation Translator is an add-in that provides real-time closed captioning for live or recorded Powerpoint presentations. Subtitles can be shown in the presenter’s language (to support accessibility scenarios) or in any of 60+ supported languages. Custom speech recognition improves the accuracy of subtitles that include discipline-specific vocabulary terms by learning from slide content.

Presentation Translator also allows the audience to use their own devices to follow, in their preferred language, what the presenter says. Content is available in both translated real-time audio or text. Learn more about the free desktop too and mobile app at Microsoft's Translator product page.

To learn more about how this tool is used in university settings, view the following videos published by Microsoft Research.

    

Live captions created with Presentation Translator are not stored or saved, unless the presenter records the screen while presenting live. In this case, captions would not be editable.

 

Google Slides (Live Speech-to-Text Captioning)

When presenting with Google Slides, click the CC button in the lower left corner or press the Ctrl or CMD+Shift+C shortcut to enable closed captioning. The device microphone will pick up everything the speaker says and add it as closed captioning on the bottom of the presentation.

 

Google Slides closed captioning currently only supports spoken English, using Google Chrome on a Mac or PC for now, and captions aren't stored at the moment. Presenters can, however, record the screen while presenting then save the finished video with your captions recorded as well. 

Accessibility Quick Guide (University of Alaska Anchorage)

 

Legislation 

Key federal legislation related to online courses includes the following:

  • Rehabilitation Act passed in 1973 made it unlawful to discriminate against persons with disabilities in all federally assisted programs, services, and employment.
    Section 504 stipulates that "no qualified individual with a disability in the United States shall be excluded from, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.”
    Section 508 is a 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act that requires electronic and information technology developed, procured, maintained, or used by federal agencies to be accessible by people with disabilities.
  • Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is civil rights legislation signed in 1990 to prohibit discrimination based on a student’s disability. The ADA Amendments Act of 2008 clarifies the definition of “disability” and broadens the number of individuals who are eligible for the protections of the ADA, including accommodations for temporary disabilities.

Definitions

  • Disability:  A physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.

  • Accessibility:  All students can access, perceive, understand, navigate, interact, and contribute to web-based or technology-enhanced courses and materials.

  • Universal Design:  Proactive design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.

  • Accommodation:  Necessary and appropriate modifications to ensure that individuals with disabilities have access to course materials and functions.

  • Assistive Technology:  Any equipment that is used to enhance the functional capabilities of students with disabilities.