Multimedia
In general, it’s best to avoid auto-playing content, animated content, and blinking/flashing content, where possible. When providing videos for students, particularly lecture-style content, bear in mind that your audience may not be able to see everything in the frame. Incorporating verbal descriptions of visual content helps support students with disabilities, but also improves understanding and engagement for your whole audience. Incorporating verbal descriptions into your teaching style can take a little practice, but the benefits are great – instructors often find their confidence and their classroom engagement rises with this technique.
Captions and transcripts
When providing audio or video content, make sure you also provide captions and/or transcripts, whenever possible. Captions and transcripts benefit users with disabilities, but are helpful for other users as well: those for whom the presentation language is not a primary language, those who are having difficulty getting the original version to play, those who are in an environment where they are not able to hear or play audio, etc.
Many video platforms, like YouTube and Kaltura, offer auto-generated captioning options – users can turn these on and off as they desire, provided you enable the setting when uploading your content.
Transcripts differ from captions in that they are provided as a stand-alone text file, rather than text overlaid on the screen. Users can read along with the audio/video, or can choose to read the transcript in lieu of watching the video. Since transcript users may not be able to watch the video, it’s important to include information that is conveyed with visuals or non-speech audio in the original version.
Auto-generated captions are not always accurate, and sometimes have difficulty interpreting words correctly. Auto-generated captions and transcripts sometimes fail to differentiate between different speakers, and may omit non-speech sounds. When possible, proofread and edit your captions and transcripts for accuracy and to ensure all content is included. For content that you plan to re-use or share widely, consider investing in human-edited captions/transcripts. Open-source options exist for do-it-yourself video captioning; where budget permits, hiring a student worker for the project is also a great option. Paid professional captioning and transcription services are also available.
Collaboration and annotation tools
Collaborative tools and platforms can be a great way to help students connect with each other, but these tools and platforms aren’t always completely accessible. When selecting options for your class, check out the accessibility and privacy/security documentation to find the best fit. Providing multiple choices and formats for participation helps ensure your students can select the options that work best for them – universal design is never one-size-fits-all.
There are some known accessibility issues with popular tools like Jupyter Notebooks, CLAS, Jamboard, Mentimeter, and Piazza. This doesn’t mean you should avoid these tools – but you might choose to avoid grading student participation, or you might choose to make graded participation just one option, with other types of assignments available for students who have difficulty using these tools. Many of these tools offer more-accessible options, as well.