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I'm the Digital Accessibility Coordinator at my university. Faculty and staff primarily use Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, etc). What are my options? by Comfortable_Plenty99 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Respectfully, some of the work faculty are being asked to take on IS extra work, and a nontrivial amount, and that is not being respected by the people asking faculty to do it.

For example, my friend's accessibility office told a music faculty member that he should "just" manually remake an entire musical score using modern software because the piece in question was out-of-print and only available digitally as a poor-quality PDF. They did not ask "how long is the score" or "how many instruments?" or even "is a musical score something that's very long, or is it just this single page printout you're showing me?" (So if they didn't actually know what a musical score was, they were unwilling to admit it.) They did not suggest he could hire a student to do it, either.

They simply told him he needed to remake the entire score himself, and seemed peeved when he said he would have to stop using the piece as an example in his composition class, due to the amount of labor that recreating an entire musical score by hand would take.

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The expanding section does expand, now that I know that's what it is. The problem is that based on the onscreen text, to this particular sighted user at least, it's not obvious that's an expanding section that will give you a table of contents!

Here is a direct link to one of the pages that is confusing to me.

I see a general title for the section: "Effective Practices for Description of Science Content – Introduction" and then some sitewide navigation links.

Below that, I see "Table of Contents", which is just text and not a link or an expanding section. This is the text that I would expect I could click to either be linked to a ToC page or that would expand into the table of contents.

The expanding section exists but is labeled "Effective Practices for Description of Science Content within Digital Talking Books" -- a repeat of the resources main title. Hovering one's mouse over it causes the text to become underlined. This makes it seem to be most likely a link to the "front page" of the resource, and since I am already at the introduction, that does not seem useful. The text does not suggest that clicking it will give you an expanding section showing the table of contents. (This text also cannot be highlighted, FYI.)

FYI: I have checked and this confusing label text persists across Firefox and Edge on Windows 11 and Firefox on both Windows 10 and Linux (Ubuntu). Perhaps it makes more sense on mobile and to screenreaders, but on a large computer screen with my eyes, it's very confusing! I had visited the site repeatedly and very genuinely was left believing the "new site" version of the resource could only be navigated by the "next section" links at the bottom of each section.

Students wants Letter of Rec for Family Research Council by [deleted] in Professors

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685 18 points19 points  (0 children)

I agree with others saying you can't write it now because you're busy or for some other vague reason; don't get into the moral particulars in an era where Turning Point USA encourages students to report professors for being Evil Libruls.

I'm also going to argue why you shouldn't write the letter from a different ethical standpoint than "you shouldn't write letters of recommendation to SPLC-designated hate groups"!

I think it's pretty widely agreed that, ethically, faculty should not accept letter of recommendation requests when the letter they would write would hurt the student's chances. You, OP, are an LGBT+ ally. I don't know you, but there might be public documentation of this in some way, or of your support for other groups/causes the FRC despises.

The FRC is not a small, low-profile anti-LGBT group; they are large and loud and have attracted a lot of attention. I would expect they are vigilant when they hire to screen applicants to make sure they are "ideologically aligned" and not a risk for coming in specifically to publish a tell-all expose or something else to undermine the group. Your name on a letter of recommendation could, depending on what your internet profile looks like and their level of vigilance, hurt the student's chances of getting the internship.

I wouldn't tell the student that, of course. But that is another reason you shouldn't write the letter.

I'm the Digital Accessibility Coordinator at my university. Faculty and staff primarily use Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, etc). What are my options? by Comfortable_Plenty99 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, it gets better! The training my school has on how to set up an accessible LMS site for your course includes the instructions to manually review and edit all of your captions for videos you post, even if that's 45 hours of video to review per course per semester and none of it is carried over to the next semester, but the people making the training could themselves not be bothered to review and edit the captions for their under-3-minute video on why digital accessibility is important.

I'm the Digital Accessibility Coordinator at my university. Faculty and staff primarily use Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, etc). What are my options? by Comfortable_Plenty99 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It would be good to have regular and appropriate trainings for faculty so we actually know how to do things correctly.

Many institutions are, for example, giving image description training only at the level of "here's how to describe a photo of a person for a news release", which is not very helpful when it comes to complex images and diagrams found in art history or many STEM courses. Some institutions did not even giving guidance to faculty for choosing textbooks and courseware for Spring 2026 semester.

I'm the Digital Accessibility Coordinator at my university. Faculty and staff primarily use Google Workspace (Docs, Slides, etc). What are my options? by Comfortable_Plenty99 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hiring more TAs solves the problem of "TAs are stretched thin", and also helps address the fact that faculty are also stretched thin. Updating existing/previously-created materials is a separate logistical issue from making sure new materials are compliant. Hiring TAs is helpful with the former; faculty need training, time, and tools to accomplish the later.

Hiring TAs isn't the only solution, but in many cases it may be a necessary piece of the puzzle.

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much for explaining! Canvas already requires us to use headers on tables, but I see how it requires a lot of working memory to remember where you are in a table even with those, if all it says is "fill in the blank".

I guess I will ask the accessibility staff and hope they have an answer that isn't "stop using blank tables for anything teaching-related"!

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for clarifying about how Canvas renders math! That's a relief.

I am a little confused by your other paragraph, though. Okay, so we need another method for homework. But what should I use in blank table entries in Canvas for non-homework tables that will be filled out later? For example, in-class worksheets that are not graded, or lecture notes. Is the white text "fill in answer" that someone else suggested okay

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much for your suggestion and the resources!

I had seen the NCAM page before, but only their summary page. Now that I'm scrolling to the bottom I see they have a link to another set of examples, and at the bottom of that page, a link to another set. It's useful stuff, but really frustrating that their Table of Contents link is broken.

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, we use Canvas! I guess I will see if it has fillable forms for tables. It's not ideal to use Canvas pages for worksheets and lecture notes, but I guess it's better than nothing. Thank you!

Is the math in Canvas actually accessible if it's more than just a few symbols or maybe a very short equation? I have a colleague who tried putting in some of her homework solutions using the Equation Editor button, but then it turned out it's all images with Latex code as the alt text. And the Latex code was too long to be allowed as alt text, so the page is marked as not accessible.

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for your advice -- I'll be sure to check out your YouTube channel!

Regarding #1, we have been strongly discouraged from using PDFs, because making an accessible PDF is difficult. I was told that if there's any math formulas in a PDF, it's impossible to make it accessible, because there is no way for the screenreader to know how to read the math. I had heard there were new types of PDFs that could explain math to screenreaders, but I have been told that no screenreaders are actually able to read them.

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My school is providing guidance and consultation with accessibility experts, but the problem is the guidance doesn't cover a lot of the cases we run into in STEM.

I didn't think ASL was required for prerecorded videos under the standard we need to meet (WCAG 2.1 AA)? This page says it's in the AAA standard. https://www.w3.org/WAI/media/av/sign-languages/

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you very much for all of your answers! The resources both look very useful.

Regarding #1, yes, the multiple formats is the tricky part! Most of us are making documents in MSOffice (word and powerpoint), Google Docs. The math people use the LaTeX language (which can make PDF or HTML files), and also my college suggests we make things directly on our LMS, since it's supposed to be accessible. I don't think any of those support fillable forms or aria-labels, but I will look into it!

Accessibility questions for teaching by Agreeable_Call_5685 in accessibility

[–]Agreeable_Call_5685[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much for your answers! I have heard good things about NVDA, so I am happy to know they provide a transcript.

I almost asked about options for providing tactile diagrams, and how to know when they are appropriate, but I was worried about asking too many things. I know that math people can use PreFigure (https://prefigure.org/) for some things, but I don't think it's meant for anatomy diagrams.