Accessible Instructional Material and Electronic CommunicationsJune 2, 2016

by Sarah Lazare, Director, Banacos Academic Center, Westfield State University

Each college and university has an obligation to provide accessible electronic communications, including instructional materials, under the ADAAA (2008) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This obligation extends beyond the classroom to the entire physical and virtual campus, including communications with alumni, prospective families, donors, and the outside world.

Planning is key to ensuring that campus communication becomes fully accessible and readily accessible by request. Theprogression to this accessibility requires systematic planning, policy review, training and oversight of these efforts.

This sheet addresses what must be accessible, who is obligated to ensure accessibility, what has Westfield State University achieved so far, and what steps can the University take now. This account is by no means exhaustive and there are likely players who have gone unmentioned and unintentionally so.

What must be accessible?

  • Classroom materials including
  • texts
  • videos
  • films
  • course management systems
  • presentations
  • learning labs
  • hardware and software (tablets, etc.)
  • Software used for
  • course registration
  • housing selection
  • any forms
  • university data management (Banner)
  • academic portal (MyWestfield)
  • Email platforms
  • Official and university sanctioned email communications (such as student announcements)
  • Website content and navigation including
  • captioned videos
  • video descriptions
  • alt tags
  • keyboard navigability, among other functions

Who is obligated to ensure accessibility?

  • Everyone plays a role in ensuring the timeliness of providing accessibility. Students and employees must communicate their needs. Faculty and staff must respond to requests to help in the provision of accessible materials.
  • Administrators must be knowledgeable about their responsibility to create accessible material even in their day-to-day communications
  • A heightened responsibility exists for AIT, Library, Disability Services, Faculty, Procurement, HR, Marketing, website managers. In other words for those
  • Who produce material sent to a class or otherwise made public to the on and off campus community
  • Who train others to, or oversee platforms that provide information to classrooms or the community
  • Who purchase or have the authority to approve purchases made for use in the community
  • Who are tasked with ensuring that reasonable accommodations are provided to employees and students

What has Westfield State University achieved so far?(

Westfield State University has come a long way in recent years. Much of that is due to the goodwill of employees eager to ensure effective communication through accessible means and materials. Much is also due to the strong support that upper administration has provided and modeled.

What has Westfield State University achieved so far?(in no particular order)

  • The Office of the President has created the Accessible Electronic Communications committee to oversee and ensure compliance and education.Included on the committee are two members of the faculty (yet to be assigned), the Director of the Banacos Center, Director of Academic Affairs, Director for the Center of instructional Technology, Associate Director of Marketing and Communication, Director of Creative Services, Executive Director of Information Technology Services and the Director of Non-Discrimination Compliance
  • The committee will educate the community on the obligation of every state contracted employee to provide (or assist in providing) accessible electronic communications, how to create it, and what steps they must take to ensure it is timely provided

What has Westfield State University achieved so far? (con’t)

  • The committee has
  • Met with academic departments to explain the purpose and intention of the committee (continuing)
  • Reviewed departmental websites (continuing)
  • Plans for regularly scheduled on-going training for the campus community to learn how to make their electronic communications accessible with a certificate of completion
  • Produced guides and guidelines for those posting materials to the community
  • Plans for further development of guides for the community to create accessible communications
  • Made members available for consultation
  • Members researched and interviewed video captioning services to establish a vendor contract for use by anyone in the university
  • The WSU website manager has
  • Acquired a platform for an accessible, navigable website
  • Ensured that all official videos are captioned
  • Created a system to monitor new content for accessibility
  • Created a Web Accessibility Guide for general campus reference
  • The library staff researches its purchases to ensure navigable and screen readable material
  • The Center for Instructional Technology has
  • Acquired BlackBoard®, a course management system certified as accessible by the National Federation for the Blind
  • Acquired a program that can caption material
  • Begun designing a plan to allow for all texts put in the Pipeline to be ready for captioning on request
  • Faculty
  • Manyinstructors and professors have taken great steps to be responsive to requests to assist in making instructional material accessible
  • Many have reached out for feedback on how to be accessible from the outset during course planning
  • The Banacos Academic Center (houses Disability Services)
  • Coordinates the provision of accessible course material for students by acquiring lists of course texts, contacting publishers for electronic copies of texts, and converting texts into accessible electronic texts
  • Ensured, along with AIS, the acquisition of screen reading (Kurzweil 3000 and 1000), navigation (JAWS) and print enlarging (ZOOMText) software for use by those with print disabilities
  • Prepares accessible exams for students
  • AIS has
  • Assisted in acquiring accessible technology
  • Included accessible software in the images for computer labs across campus
  • Marketing has
  • Informed those using their material to provide accessible formats when emailing to the community
  • Begun researching ways to make their pdfs of flyers accessible

What steps can the University take now?

  • Follow through!
  • Create a system to ensure the accessibility of all future purchases
  • Revisit and reviserelevant policies and practices
  • Keep up to date on new
  • assistive technology
  • innovations in web design and its effect on accessibility
  • Train those who staff computer labs in use of Assistive Technology

What are the challenges?

  • Innovative software and hardware that is not accessible to the blind and color blind yet are valuable academically (GIS, MyLearningLab)
  • The evolving door of community members (adjunct faculty , students, staff)
  • Time
  • Funding
  • Fear of the unknown