The Disability Services for Students office realizes that the transition from in-class to online learning will not be easy. Some of you will have a lot of material to upload and not a lot of time to do it. As you do this, please understand that this is a critical time to be considerate of any students who may have disabilities in your courses. The DSS office, the Center for Teaching & Educational Technology (CTET) and our colleagues across the CSU are working together to provide “Best Practices” to assist our faculty partners.
DSS Current Mode of Operation
- Staff working remotely
- Normal business hours, Monday through Friday, 8:00 to 5:00 PM
- Office closed to walk-in business.
- Consult with faculty by Zoom or by phone
- Meet with students via Zoom or by phone
- Testing will be conducted by faculty using the campus’ LMS
Appointments with students/Faculty Consultation
We are currently offering remote appointments until further notice. Appointment availability is based on each advisor’s set availability, but is generally from 8:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday. We will work with students or faculty to schedule an appointment via telephone or Zoom.
Students or faculty may call the office at
Campus’ Legal Obligation
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OCR Short Webinar on Online Education and Website Accessibility
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The Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has published a short webinar on YouTube titled "Online Education and Website Accessibility".
- The video is approximately 7 minutes long and covers basic institutional responsibility as well as why accessibility is a necessary consideration as colleges and universities are transitioning many classes and instructional resources to the online environment.
- It does not tell you how to make your Canvas course accessible, but may be helpful to some in providing additional context for why accessibility is still a necessity even with these rapid changes in how we support students and our campus community.
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Accommodations
Extra time for test-taking
- Faculty will make appropriate adjustments in the LMS
- How to extend time for an individual student on Canvas
Reduced-distraction testing
Students have the ability to determine the testing environment to best meet their needs at a remote location
Sign language - ASL
DSS will contact instructors in classes where students are receiving sign language interpreting services to determine the format that on-line classes will be held. Interpreters will be added to Zoom classes for live or recorded classes in order for students to continue to receive sign language interpreting services.
Captioning
DSS will contact instructors in classes where students are receiving sign language services or real-time captioning services to determine the format that on-line classes will be held. DSS staff will collaborate with the CTET for classes where instructors will be using Yuja, which is a cloud-based video creation and management software to ensure that auto generated captions are sent to the predetermined vendor for accessibility validation (to meet accessibility standards) for accuracy. Managing Accessibility Options | YuJa Enterprise Video Platform.
Note-taking assistance
Students will continue to receive notes from their pre-established note-takers who have been set up in classes prior to the conversion to an on-line format.
Other available note-taking resources:
- Otter.ai - Available on iOS and Android Phones
- Scannable by Evernote - Available on iOS
- Genius Scan - Available in Google Play
Captioned Media
DSS advisors will contact all instructors for students who have an accommodation to receive captioned media to determine if instructional materials have changed since moving to an online format. Captions will be added to “in-house” or sent to CaptionSync to caption media.
Alternate Media
Staff will continue to work on converting instructional materials into accessible formats remotely. Students will also be provided with self-service resources, so last minute conversions can be made by students.
Flexibility with attendance and due dates
Students will follow the protocol established in the Exacerbation of Symptoms Accommodation Guidelines.
Adaptive furniture
Students have the ability to determine the testing and learning environment to best meet their needs at a remote location.
Use of recorder
Students will follow the Recording and Transcription Agreement if this is an approved DSS accommodation.
Assistive Technology Resources
Visit the DSS Technology FAQs page for information about technology used for accessible online teaching and learning:
- READ&WRITE (R&W)
A text-to-speech software that provides users with the tools to read documents aloud, research, annotate, note-take, and study. - ALLY
Students use Ally to convert files from Canvas courses to more accessible formats including audio MP3s, ePubs, eBraille, tagged PDFs, and more - Canvas
Canvas is SSU's Learning Management System (LMS) - Otter.Ai
Use Otter to record lectures on Zoom and generate transcriptions - Yuja
Yuja is SSU's lecture and online video recording management system. - Zoom
Zoom is a web conferencing tool - and more
How do I change my class to teach remotely?
Resources and Support
- Remote Instruction at SSU (Academic Affairs)
- Faculty Accessibility Guide
- Center for Teaching & Educational Technology (CTET)
- Accessibility Workshops
- Teaching Through Disruptions
- IT Help Desk
- Universal Access Hub
- Online Course Accessibility Checklist | Disability Resources for Students
Instructional Materials
Scanning documents into your online LMS
- Is not encouraged, but this may be unavoidable. If you must scan documents:
- Clean, straight scans without “wavy” text lines
- Erase underlining or written notes if possible.
- Do not save the scan as a “bitmap” image.
Text Recognition
Though making documents accessible can be a tedious process, the most important step is making sure all documents have text that is “recognized”, meaning it is digital, and can be accessed by assistive technologies.
How can I tell if text is recognized?
A simple way to tell if text is recognized is to try to highlight it with your cursor. If you can’t highlight it, the text is not recognized.
How Do I Recognize Text?
There is a simple way to recognize text in your scanned images using “Adobe Acrobat Pro”. The provided link is a short video on how to accomplish this. As a faculty member, you should have access to an Enterprise Adobe Creative Cloud account, which includes Adobe Acrobat Pro.
Converting Word Documents to PDF
When converting word documents to PDF, use the Acrobat PDFMaker application in Microsoft Word. This is automatically added to Word when Adobe Acrobat is installed on your computer. The following video shows how to establish the best preferences for converting from word to PDF.
What About Lecture Slides?
If lecture slides were generated by typing directly into PowerPoint or Google Presentations, lecture slides should have recognizable text.