Presented at 2:15pm in Denver 1-3 on Thursday, November 17, 2022.
#36625Speaker(s)
- Glenn Gross, Accessibility Center of Excellence Sales Executive, CTI
Session Details
- Length of Session: 1-hr
- Format: Interactive/Discussion
- Expertise Level: All Levels
- Type of session: General Conference
Summary
Accessibility is the law! Higher education is one of the most inclusive industries in America, yet it's often a demand letter that sparks the effort to make digital documents and course content accessible. Today, many colleges and universities are receiving these demand letters and reaching settlements. This session will explore proactive processes and steps to take to ensure the content on your websites, as well as critical student coursework, are made accessible.
Abstract
This session will review the challenges facing higher education institutions and what needs to be done to ensure that your online documents and student course materials meet the current accessibility standards. We will discuss why accessibility in higher ed is particularly important, the difference between static and transactional documents and whose job it is to make sure documents and student course content is accessible and useable. We will explore legal complaints and settlements and how they may be handled differently than those brought against corporate America. We will examine the key challenges faced, the consequences of non-compliance and review the difference between "compliance" and accommodation. While accessibility by design is always the best approach for compliance and usability, it is quite often overlooked. We will discuss what can be done in these situations and explore methods used to enable organizations to find, test and fix the public documents hosted on their websites and simplify remediation for student accommodation of coursework. Lastly, we will share tools and solutions, developed by Crawford Technologies, that will crawl websites and content management systems, identify all hosted PDFs and other documents, test them against the WCAG and PDF/UA standards, provide both global and individual view of the errors, warnings and informational messages that will need to be corrected and simplify internal remediation efforts to make these documents accessible. In many cases fear of litigation, or reaction to it, is the driving force behind making documents, websites, and information accessible, but it shouldn’t be. The goal should always be that of inclusivity and accommodation, if not by design, then by remediation. Discover ways to make online content accessible and usable for everyone, including your students, who may need alternate formats in order to interpret/ingest classwork, documents, etc., just as easily as other students.
Keypoints
- Understand the challenges of document compliance and course accommodation.
- Learn who is responsible for document accessibility compliance and the consequences of non-compliance.
- Identify ways to Find, Test & Fix documents to improve the experience for all website visitors and students.
Disability Areas
Cognitive/Learning, Vision
Topic Areas
Accessible Course Design, Accessible Educational Materials, Alternate Format, Assistive Technology, Legal, Teaching about Accessibility in Curriculum, Uncategorized
Speaker Bio(s)
Glenn Gross
Glenn has several decades of experience working with organizations to help solve their technical business challenges with software solutions, services and training. He is a founding partner of SightSky Technologies, which offered document accessibility solutions and services. In 2018, SightSky was acquired by Open Access Technologies. In October of 2021 Crawford Technologies acquired Open Access. As part of that acquisition, Glenn joined Crawford’s Accessibility Center of Excellence. In this role, Glenn’s primary focus is to help higher-education institutions identify and solve their document accessibility challenges.
Handout(s)
- Document Accessibility Compliance for Higher-Ed
Practical solutions to Find, Test & Fix online documents and course materials
This session will review the challenges facing higher education institutions and what needs to be done to ensure that your online documents, and student course materials, meet the current accessibility standards. In many cases fear of litigation, or reaction to it, is the driving force behind making documents, websites, and information accessible, but it shouldn’t be. The goal should always be that of inclusivity and accommodation, if not by design, then by remediation.