Making Online Courses ADA Compliant

Rehabilitation Act of 1973• Section 504 and Section 508

Americans with Disabilities Act 1990• Title II

• Extends to include programs offered via the Internet• Online Courses

Laws Ensuring Accessibility

Two Views

Universal Design for Learning Basic Principles of Accessible Design

Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design

Everyone Benefits!

Universal Design for Learning

--is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn

--provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs

--from CAST, Center for Applied Special Technology

Teach Every Student

Universal Design for Learning: 3 Core Principles

-- from CAST, Center for Applied Special Technology

Provide multiple means of engagement

Provide multiple means of representation

Provide multiple means of action & expression

Applying UDL in Course Design• Provide multiple formats• Incorporate varied media

Who benefits?• ESL (English as a second language) students• International students• Students of diverse ages• Students of diverse learning styles• Students with disabilities• Everyone benefits!

UDL in Course Design

Course content pages◦MS Word, PDFs, HTML

PowerPoint presentations Audio/video/screencasts Images◦Photos, charts, graphics, math formulas

Lecture capture

Online Course Materials Review

Basic Principles of

Accessible Design

Provide appropriate alternative text for non-text elements Provide appropriate document structure Provide headers for data table rows and columns Use concise, descriptive, meaningful text for links Use color with care Use clear fonts Provide captions or transcripts for multimedia Ensure accessibility of non-HTML content, including PDF files,

Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and Adobe Flash content◦ Run the Accessibility Checker in MS word to identify and fix accessibility issues

Provide learners with information about the accessibility of all technologies required in the course◦ Add Learner Support Tool to your courses (as a Web Content link) ◦ How to add a Web Content link to your course site

Use this Review Checklist to check your course for accessibility

Accessible Design Basics

Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) Longsight Rich Text Editor Accessibility Guidelines National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE) PDF Documents: Make them accessible Quality Matters

◦ set up an account◦ Quality Matters course self-review tool tutorial

UDL Universe University of Central Florida (online @ucf) Web AIM: Introduction to Web Accessibility

Resources