Presented at 8:00am in Mattie Silks on Wednesday, November 8, 2023.
#38336Speaker(s)
- Lori Kressin, Coordinator of Academic Accessibility, University of Virginia
- Korey Singleton, ATI Manager, George Mason University
Session Details
- Length of Session: 1-hr
- Format: Lecture
- Expertise Level: All Levels
- Type of session: General Conference
Summary
The Virginia Higher Education Accessibility Partners (VHEAP) worked to build a captioning and audio description solution which is available to all K-12, higher education, other post-secondary organizations, and state agencies within the Commonwealth of Virginia. Eight vendors are participating to provide these services. In addition, each vendor's price points are available to all participants and some vendors pool minutes used to reduce costs for all participants using their services.
Abstract
This presentation will provide an overview of how the Virginia Higher Education Accessibility Partners, commonly referred to as VHEAP, worked to identify and make available vendors who can provide accurate and effective captioning (both live and post-production) and audio description services to K-12 schools, post-secondary schools and institutions, and state agencies across the Commonwealth.
As example of the power in working together and creating a broad solution, the participants in this Initiative are under the same pricing structure, enabling smaller institutions to leverage the spend of larger institutions. Some of our vendors offer a tiered pricing structure that aggregates all minutes used to drop pricing for all participants using that vendors services. Eight vendors have been identified to provide these services. These vendors have entered into agreements with the University of Virginia (UVA), agreeing to state terms and conditions, UVA’s data protection addendum, and have undergone a UVA IT Security Review. UVA serves as the administrator of these agreements while the Virginia Higher Education Procurement Consortium and the VHEAP Captioning Committee manage the Initiative.
In this session, we will describe the work to identify vendors, the benefits of participating in the initiative, and how institutions outside of Virginia can also take advantage of the cooperative contracts now in place.
Keypoints
- The benefits of working with peers to solve common issues are many.
- Leveraging the spend of large institutions and agencies to benefit smaller institutions is possible/
- For the most part – vendors are willing to work with you to solve big challenges.
Disability Areas
All Areas, Cognitive/Learning, Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Vision
Topic Areas
Accessible Educational Materials, Administrative/Campus Policy, Captioning/Transcription, Legal, Procurement, Uncategorized, Universal Design for Learning, Web/Media/App Access
Speaker Bio(s)
Lori Kressin
Reporting under the Executive Vice President and Provost, Lori Kressin is in her ninth year as the Coordinator of Academic Accessibility, having served the University of Virginia for over 30 years in a variety of positions. Her role is to assure the accessibility of the academic experience for all, including the built, digital, and attitudinal environments. Focusing on coordination of effort across the University, Lori relies on the connections she has made during her tenure to create key partnerships across departments to further accessibility efforts University wide.
She has presented at a variety of regional, national, and international conferences and workshops including Accessing Higher Ground, the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, and the NADP Conference in England.
Korey Singleton
Korey Singleton is the Assistive Technology Initiative (ATI) Manager for George Mason University (GMU), operating under Mason’s Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. He also an affiliate faculty member in the College of Education and Human Development, teaching a course on Web Accessibility & Design in the Learning Design and Technology Program. He has been an advocate for the assistive technology and digital accessibility needs of individuals with disabilities in the home, in school, and in the workplace for over 25 years.