Kansas State University

Accessible online courses (part 1 of 2)

Creating an accessible online course

Planning and designing for accessibility at the beginning stages of an online course will simplify processes. Find out what your technologies can do. After you’ve chosen the relevant authoring tools to create and edit your digital materials, you may do a walk-through of the features of the technology to see what accessibility accommodations have been built into the technology. Some will allow for simulations of the uses of a computer text reader through the contents. Others will offer ways to create alt text labeling for images, maps, drawings, diagrams, and other visuals. Video editing software (and screen capture software) offers ways to integrate annotations or closed captioning with video and audio files.

Take notes on how to use the features of your programs to help you make accessible digital files (slideshows, audio, and video). Learn about optical character recognition (OCR) technologies to make .pdf files readable with a computer text reader.

Collect field-specific information. As subject matter experts (SMEs), faculty will need to have rich descriptive information for their course materials in easy-to-handle form. These can then be used to label and annotate.

Plan on time and hard work. Transcribing a voice file or a video will require focused attention and effort. This will add time to the course development process. Avoiding automating effects and pacing, as of slideshows, will also enhance accessibility. Users should have the utmost control regarding pacing an e-learning experience.

Get help. This may mean bringing on additional student help. This may involve coordinating with other offices on campus, such as the Disability Support Services (DSS), the Office of Mediated Education (OME) and the Information Technology Assistance Center (iTAC). It will help immensely to make connections with those with expertise and experience on these issues around campus. Having another set of eyes to peruse the digital materials and to test their accessibility may be helpful, too.

Next week in part 2 of this series, learn how to retro-fit a course to make it accessible.

For more about accessibility, see K-State's Web Content Accessibility site and the K-Access site.

K-State's SSN policy

216,176,736 is the current total count of data records containing personal identity data known to have been involved in a security breach since January 2005, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. The actual number is much higher since many thefts go unnoticed or are not reported. A person's name combined with their Social Security number or credit card number are actively targeted for theft by criminals on the Internet, contributing to identity theft's position as one of the fastest growing crimes in the U.S. and worldwide.

K-State cannot let down its guard in diligently protecting personal identity information, so please review K-State's policy on the "Collection, Use, and Protection of Social Security Numbers" and make whatever changes necessary to comply with the policy and help prevent identity theft. For example, stop using SSNs where not approved and where not absolutely necessary, and start using the Wildcat ID (WID) when an ID number is needed. Also remove old files from your computer that have student ID numbers in them and shred old paper copies with this information. Before disposal, though, check K-State's Retention of Records policy in the PPM to make sure university records are properly maintained.

Define alternative course e-mail address

Instructors, do you have a course e-mail address you prefer to use instead of your K-State e-mail address? If so, it can be defined in K-State Online to display on the Email Instructor page as an alternative or addition to the course instructor's e-mail address listed:

1. On the desired course's Tools page, under Course Management, click the Configure Email link.
2. In the Course Email box, type the alternative e-mail address.
3. Click the Save button.

Correction to Beyond $10 Printing

This week’s feedback is a correction to the November 13^th question Beyond $10 Printing:

If you are running low on your limited free printing allowance, you can still load monies on your Wildcat ID card, but funds from free printing and your Wildcat ID card will not combine. You can, however, split your print job in two: on the first job, limit the number of pages to the money left on your free printing; on the second job, print the remaining pages using the funds from your Wildcat ID card.