While the use of media can be an effective mode for engaging students with course content, it can burden students with disabilities. In producing educational media, efforts must be made to provide equivalent content for students who cannot engage the material via sight or sound: for audio-only, a transcript; for video, closed captions and audio descriptions. Owing to campus accommodation resources, we are handling audio descriptions on a more individual case-by-case basis.
Likewise, care should be taken in designing your online course to provide high-contrast visual aids that appear as informative as intended to audiences with color blindness or poor eyesight.
Best Practices
- Provide a transcript for audio recordings.
- Provide captions for video recordings.
- Provide a screen-reader friendly version of any informative visual aids that appear in a video (a PowerPoint, pdf, html, or Word document with labeled images, etc. as makes sense for the type of visual aid).
- Avoid referring to portions of visual aids with demonstrative pronouns. Instead of this line/that line, label the lines and refer to them by the labels, for example.
- Whenever possible, use media distribution services provided by campus, such as Illinois Media Space or Ensemble.
Resources
Accessibility Help Documents