7 Questions on Engaging Faculty in Digital Accessibility

• 06/19/23

Keown: What is so great about it is that as they're walking through the easy fixes, they'll notice other stuff — maybe the heavier lifts or the harder fixes, like a video that doesn't have closed captioning — and make a note to come back to it.  

We also do an outbrief from Fix Your Content Day: We'll all come together and say, "What did you find?" And a lot of us are going to say, "Alt text, alt text, alt text … okay, we got those, now what?" Then we can share something that we found that maybe someone else hadn't been thinking about, that wasn't on their radar yet. So we all benefit from those lessons learned, and that gives us stuff to look at over the coming months or coming year, depending upon the severity of what needs to be fixed.

CT: How you build awareness among students of the resources that are available to them?

Keown: We hold our physical and virtual classrooms to the same standards. So our virtual classroom has to be just as accessible as a physical, on-campus classroom — already pre-loaded for individuals who might have an accessibility need. With Ally being within our Blackboard Learn learning management system, it provides multiple tools that students immediately have access to. And one of the key things has been making sure our faculty understands that that stuff's there. A lot of times when we first started this, faculty didn't realize the capabilities of what Ally produced in terms of alternative formats that students can go in and download.

Roberson: What we did notice is that students were accessing those alternative formats before faculty even told them they were there — without faculty even knowing they were using them. They see that little "A" icon, they're like, "What's this?" and they click on it. So students are finding them on their own.

Keown: Students are not shy about clicking on anything. But we do try our best to make sure faculty know about the resources — because once they learn about it, they start infusing it into their syllabus and their lesson plans, and let students know about it.

CT: What emerging technologies might come into play in accessibility moving forward? What gets you excited about the potential of technology in this realm?

Roberson: I'm excited about whatever they come up with, as long as it works and it's going to be beneficial to everyone. And I like when new technologies come out and they have accessibility in mind already — that accessibility piece is built in.

Keown: I can remember back when closed captioning was 70%-75% accurate. Now you're upwards of 90%-95% accurate, and it even recognizes our "southern-ese" sometimes, when we have our slang, our accents, and so forth. Just that in itself is going to be beneficial.

I'm a member of an instructional system design group on LinkedIn, and they are talking about how AI is going to be changing the ed tech world. For example, they are using AI to build a virtual classroom space — give you an outline, build your format, build your structure. So I see that that's already a benefit. I can even see where AI could pick up on a student's profile, and if that student is deaf, the virtual classroom will automatically provide every tool available according to that identifying need. That's going to be one of those slippery slopes where you have to be very careful to protect individual privacy. But AI, emerging technologies, whatever that might be, it's going to be an excellent, powerful tool. We just have to make sure that we're staying as much up to speed as possible, to provide students the best learning experience that we can. And that's not only in the classroom, that's walking in from registration to graduation.

CT: What would be your advice for others who are trying to expand their digital accessibility efforts? Any lessons learned that you can share?

Roberson: My advice would be to consistently promote accessibility and its importance, provide lots of training opportunities, take advantage of any accessibility events that you might have access to — or create your own. One of the biggest things is to stress how accessibility is not only for those with disabilities — it benefits every one of us, in ways we don't even realize.

Keown: You have to understand the non-negotiables. You have to look at the standards. There are things that we're supposed to be doing, that we have to be doing, and so you need to make sure that you're doing those as a minimum. The WCAG 2.1 standard is a great place to start. Especially if you're just getting started and it looks like a heavy lift, it looks hard, it looks difficult, but you've got to start somewhere. So start with those standards, start with the policy. And then realize, hey, okay, we're doing a lot of this already. We just need to go through and align it up.

And then it's a matter of promoting, communicating, and just maintaining that constant push on the importance of accessibility. Where we gained a whole lot of ground was when faculty realized this isn't just about disabilities. This is just about making your classroom more accessible. The accessibility that you're putting into that environment isn't just for one or two people. A lot of your students will use that. That was an aha moment for a lot of our faculty.

Look for your champions. Look for those who are willing to go ahead and get there with you and start promoting along with you. And build off of each other. If anybody comes up with a great idea, share it. Once you get everyone on board and you get it going, then it's just a matter of having fun with it. And just realize that the end product is a learning environment that's going to allow students to step into the career they want to get to.