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Basics Principles of IT Accessibility Accessible Course Design Document Accessibility Web Accessibility Upcoming Training

Basic Principles of IT Accessibility

Six Essential Steps for Digital Accessibility

An overview of the six areas that have the greatest impact on making your online content more accessible. Unintentional barriers to learning can happen when headings, links, color, images, tables, and multimedia are incorrectly used or formatted. Fortunately, there are some simple things you can do to make all of your online content more accessible, including ELMS-Canvas course spaces, emails, presentations, and handbooks. Participants will leave the workshop with new skills for increased accessibility as well as additional resources for implementing the Six Essential Steps in all aspects of creating and editing online content.

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Pre-recorded webinar materials:

Accessible Course Design

Ally

An overview of Ally, the ELMS-Canvas accessibility tool. Topics will include alternative formats of course content available for your students and instructor feedback and guidance on accessibility issues in course content. Explore the Ally Accessibility tool!

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Extending Time in ELMS-Canvas Quizzes, New and Old

A review of the steps required for extending time in ELMS-Canvas quizzes. It's important to make sure you know how to implement extended time in exams given through the ELMS-Canvas quiz tool for any of your students who have this accommodation. We will cover extending time in both classic quizzes and new quizzes, as the steps are slightly different.

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Implementing Accommodations and Accessibility: Best Practices Online

An overview of the most common online accommodations such as extended time for exams and professional captioning using ELMS-Canvas. We will share accessibility best practices and tools that can be used to build accessibility as an integral part of course design.

Pre-recorded webinar materials:

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  • Contact us at itaccessibility@umd.edu for information or to request a training or consultation.

 

ELMS-Canvas Accessibility Tools

An overview of the available tools for improving the accessibility and usability of content in ELMS-Canvas. Barriers to learning can occur from simple issues with common elements such as color contrast, links, heading levels, and tables — but there are several built-in tools available for checking and fixing these issues.

Some previous experience with ELMS-Canvas is helpful, but this session is designed for every level of experience. Attendees will leave with an understanding of the available resources and the ability to use them in their own course spaces.

Pre-recorded webinar materials:

Find upcoming training sessions

  • Contact us at itaccessibility@umd.edu for information or to request a training or consultation.

Document Accessibility

SensusAccess: Alternative Media Made Easy

SensusAccess is an alternative media solution to convert documents into multiple formats. SensusAccess allows students, faculty, staff, and alumni to convert documents into various alternate media, including audiobooks (MP3 and DAISY), e-books (EPUB, EPUB3, and Mobi), and digital Braille.

The service can also convert inaccessible documents such as image-only PDF files, JPG pictures, and Microsoft PowerPoint presentations into more accessible and less tricky formats.

The quality of the conversion is dependent upon the quality of the original document. For instance, if you upload a poorly scanned image file for conversion to a text format, the resulting text document may include recognition errors in the output file. However, a Microsoft Word document containing the heading style markup for chapters (e.g., Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) will convert into a more usable DAISY or ePub format with the relevant chapter navigation elements.

Resources

Equidox PDF Remediation Software: New User Training

Equidox is a web-based software that converts inaccessible PDFs into accessible documents. Training is required for users before being granted access to the platform.

Training and Tutorials

  • Review Equidox training videos covering the high-level basics for day-to-day use of Equidox, interface navigation, and best practices for PDF accessibility. Areas of focus will include text, headings, lists, tables, images, links, and other common elements that make up a PDF document.
  • Review the Equidox user guide.

Web Accessibility

Introduction to Web Accessibility

Introductory training for web content producers, editors, and managers. This 2-hour training will cover:

  • Introduction to Web Accessibility
  • Overview of how individuals with disabilities use the web
  • How to apply the IT accessibility 6 essential steps (headings, links, color, and contrast, images, tables, media) in everyday tasks
  • Basics of accessibility testing (automated tools and manual checks)
  • Basics of document accessibility

Pre-recorded webinar materials:

Siteimprove: All modules overview and updates

Siteimprove is a third-party hosted Web Governance software solution that enables users to quality check websites under the umd.edu domain for accessibility compliance, errors, and best practices. The Siteimprove Web Governance suite includes the following modules and tools:

  • Accessibility (check against WCAG 2.0)
  • Quality Assurance (broken links, misspellings)
  • SEO module (increases Search Engine traffic)
  • PDF Checker (test PDFs hosted on a website for broken links and accessibility issues)

Available Training and Support

  1. Login at www.siteimprove.umd.edu with your UMD credentials.
  2. Review the following training resources:

Support

  • Siteimprove Help Center. Siteimprove has a comprehensive list of tutorials, knowledge articles, and training materials in their Help Center.
  • UMD users may contact the Siteimprove help center directly to ask general questions and to address technical issues at support@siteimprove.com
  • Contact DIT’s IT Accessibility team at itaccessibility@umd.edu

Upcoming Training Sessions

Upcoming Trainings
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