In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act became law in the United States. This civil rights law is intended to ensure all individuals have access to public resources regardless of their disability status. For educators, this means the materials they use in class (such as textbooks) must be available to all. For example, Braille or Read More
Category: ADA Compliance
edtech for IT: Assistive Technologies & Accessibility
School IT professionals often collaborate with special education teachers, leaders, and consultants to select, install, configure, maintain, and manage assistive technologies necessary for students who need them. These devices include items such as Braille printers, keyboards for specialized input, specialized displays, assistive listening systems (for individual students and for groups in presentation spaces), and other Read More
ADA Compliance & Inclusivity
In recent months, I’ve been working with faculty who have been asked to make the resources in their online courses accessible…. make sure alt-tex is available, use colors that exceed 4.5:1 for a color contrast ratio, run accessibility checkers before releasing files, closed caption videos, and provide transcripts. These are all steps they should have Read More
Headings in Documents
Word processors provide users with pre-defined formatting styles. Ostensibly these are provided to make it easy to apply formatting styles and to facilitate the use of outlines in organizing one’s writing. For those who use screen readers (software that convert the text into speech generated by the compute and played thought the computer’s speakers), the Read More
ADA Compliance
Educators have had access to productivity suites for generations. In the first few years after computer arrived in schools, we tended to use whatever came installed on the machines that we purchased or that were installed in our classrooms. We had many challenges in those days. Anyone remember the student who arrived to print his Read More
Accessibility Toolkit 2.0
https://opentextbc.ca/accessibilitytoolkit/
Colour Contrast Analyzer: A Tool for ADA Compliance
This video introduces a tool that can be used to check that your files have sufficient color contrast that those with certain visual impairments can view the text and images.
Colour Contrast Analyzer
Educators have a responsibility to make their files accessible to users. If students–all students–cannot see or hear the materials teachers create, then the are “inaccessible.” One of the steps educators should take to make their files and pages accessible to those who have vision disabilities is to make sure files have sufficient color contrast. The best Read More
Grackle Suite
Unfortunately, many educators are unaware of the importance of ensuing the files they create (documents, spreadsheets, presentation) comply with the standards defined in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). In general, ADA compliant files are more accessible to users with disabilities than those that are not. These files, for example, are structured to facilitate interpretation Read More
Making Files Accessible
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was enacted to ensure those who cannot use media (text, audio, and other methods of communicating) have access to the information they need in a format they need. (Of course there are many aspects of life affected by the ADA, but this post focuses on digital media.) Teachers are Read More