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Workshop - Online Course Accessibility: Small Fixes with Big Benefits for Your Students

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The Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning is an advocate of inclusive teaching practices and strongly supports the University’s accessibility policy We are happy to work with instructors to assess and improve the accessibility of course activities and digital resources.

Table of Contents

This article will address the following information:

Workshop Video: Online Course Accessibility

Overview

Accessibility  within the teaching environment addresses the need to ensure that students with disabilities are not inadvertently presented with barriers that could prevent their learning. The primary goal of accessibility work is to create learning environments and activities that make it possible for the widest range of students to participate, regardless of disability status.

Overarching Goals

  1. Recognize the audiences who can benefit from increasing the accessibility of your course and the relationship between accessibility and inclusive teaching.
  2. Think about your teaching practices and how to diversify them to reach a larger percentage of students.
  3. Understand the basic components of accessible course materials and how to provide accessible reading materials and texts for your students.

Facilitators

  • Michelle Morgan, Digital Accessibility Specialist
  • David Hirsch, Director for Educational Technology Strategy

Tools Referenced

Example syllabus statement:

Your success in this class is important to me. We will all need accommodations because we all learn differently. If there are aspects of this course that prevent you from learning or that form barriers to your inclusion, please let me know as soon as possible. Together we’ll develop strategies that can enable you to succeed in the course. I encourage you to visit Student Accessibility Services to determine how you could improve your learning as well. If you need official accommodations, you have a right to have these met. There is also a range of resources on campus, including the Writing Center, Residential College Tutors, and Academic Strategies.

(This is a Yale-specific adaptation of the statement included in the Anne-Marie Womack essay, "Teaching is Accommodation.")

For more information about Yale's accessibility guidelines, please contact [email protected]. For general help, please contact [email protected].

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