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Free Higher Ed Resources During Covid19 Pandemic

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Free Higher Ed Resources During Covid19 Pandemic

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116 apps that offer resources, services and teaching materials. Please note that not all platforms are supported by ECSU  ITS or the CSCU system.

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As more colleges and universities continue to be affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic, higher education solution providers have stepped up by rolling out free college management software and other resources for administrators along with various faculty resources, such as free college courses and tutoring services. Here are 116 higher education solutions for college and university leaders to consider.

Editor's note: Updated June 1.

Vernier Software & Technology
Numerous instructional activities are available for college students through June, including the Vernier Video Analysis physics app, a 30-day trial of the Pivot Interactives video-based science learning environment, the Physics with Video Analysis Lab e-book for introductory physics.

Interactive biology course
In partnership with ADInstruments, this collection features experiments with sample data derived from three Vernier biology lab books that helps educators teach scientific concepts, such as enzymes.

CT2Learn Evolved Learning System
This environment provides learning content on administration of justice, corrections, investigations, law and procedure, terrorism and homeland security, first response, policing and security, criminology, and cybercrime. It also includes public safety and security training in addition to PD-oriented online courses and webinars.

VitalSource Helps
Through May 25, students and instructors can access this catalog of etexts at no charge.
Students simply log into the VitalSource Bookshelf app using their school email address and can then find and view course materials from participating publishers via VitalSource's Explore capabilities within Bookshelf.Learn more.

Casio is offering three resources for free. ClassPad.net is a web-based platform that offers tools for calculation, graphing, geometry and statistics. Emulator calculator software recreates scientific and graphing calculators for Windows and Mac. Downloadable math activities for K-12 are also available.
Interested in technology? Keep up with the UB Tech® conference.

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Free college management software and faculty resources |

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As more colleges and universities continue to be affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic, higher education solution providers have stepped up by rolling out free college management software and other resources for administrators along with various faculty resources, such as free college courses and tutoring services.

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Blackboard Best Practices for Remote Instruction

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Blackboard Best Practices for Remote Instruction

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How to ensure your students have access to your digital content

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Accessibility Best Practices For Transitioning to Remote Instruction

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As you prepare your course for online delivery, one of your first tasks will be to add digital content into your Learning Management System (LMS) course. You can help ensure your students have access to content that works better with their assistive technologies and study tools by following some simple accessibility best practices.

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How to add captioning to a Teams Meeting Recording

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Support is still available! Learn how from our OAS Coaches.

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Information, professional development, and resources to support research library personnel during a pandemic

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LibGuides: Pandemic Resources for Academic Libraries: Distance Education and Engagement

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Updated information, professional development, and resources to support academic and research library personnel during a pandemic.

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Microsoft Teams How-to Videos Play List 

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Microsoft Teams How-to Videos Play List 

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46 mostly short (less than 1 minute) videos that focus on specific tasks

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If your school uses Office 365 you definitely need to be using Microsoft Teams. Communicate with your class, assign assignments, and give feedback on student...

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Text to speech app with reduced subscription rate through the end of spring 2020

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Features & Benefits

All

For Admins

For Teachers

For Students

Read Any Way You Like

Listen To Texts

Listen to anything you want to read with a fluent, natural sounding voice of your choice, and follow along to improve spelling and word recognition.

Customize Your Voices

Select your favorite voice and set your comfortable speech rate for each language to make it easier to understand the texts read to you.

Change How Text Looks

Personalize the text to make it easier read by customizing size, font, color, line spacing, and a number of other parameters.

Use Capti On Any Webpage

Listen To and Read Selected Text

Use Capti Chrome extension to select and listen to the content of any web page read out loud by natural sounding voices and follow along as needed.

Save Web Articles to Capti

Save the selected passage or the entire web page to the Capti playlist. Capti will strip out links and ads and save the main article content.

Supports Google Docs, Office 365, PDF

Use Capti Chrome extension to access Google and Office 365 Documents online; Canvas, Blackboard, and other LMSs; PDFs opened in the browser, etc.

Minimize Capti Window

Hide the window with the text and just listen to the content of the website.

Save Anything to Capti

Import Any Document

Import documents and images in any popular format, as well as web articles into the Capti Playlists to aggregate and organize the reading materials.

Import From the Cloud

Import documents from Google Drive, OneDrive, Office 365, iCloud Drive, Dropbox. Capti understands Google and Office 365 document formats.

Import From Your LMS

Import files from Canvas or BlackBoard. Support for more Learning Management Systems is comming soon.

Import From Book Libraries

Import books from Bookshare (500K+ titles) - a free library for students with print disabilities, or from Project Gutenberg (50K+ titles) - a free library of classical books.

Import Photos

Take a photo of text with your phone or import a scanned document to turn it into machine readable text with the best optical character recognition (OCR).

Import in Rich Text or Original Layout

Import documents in Rich Text format to personalize the way the text looks or import in the Original Layout format to view them exactly as the author intended. Enables "Write on Documents" feature.

Write, Annotate, and Highlight

Highlights, Bookmarks, and Comments

Enhance text by highlighting passages, bookmarking important locations, and adding notes. Share your annotations or export them to a separate document.

Write on Documents

Write answers or make a side note on an original-layout documents. Export your writing, as well as print or email document to share.

Build Vocabulary

Translation to 100+ languages

Use contextual translation for individual words and passages. Capti translates to over 100 languages with over 25 offering text-to-speech support.

English dictionary definitions

Look up the meaning of unknown words in context to get the most accurate definition, or provide custom definitions you like.

Word Challenge Game

Play the Word Challenge game to build vocabulary, increase reading comprehension, and practice context clues.

Personalized Word Lists

Build your own word list with definitions or translations and use it as a study guide. Share your word lists or export them into a separate document.

Lookup Words on Any Webpage

Use Capti Chrome extension to look up translations and definitions without leaving the web page you are viewing.

Assign Reading to Students

Share Your Content with Students

Share any content as playlists of tracks. A playlist can contain files of any type, web articles, books, and more.

Share Your Notes with Students

Any notes (comments, highlights, bookmarks, and more) that you take in a shared playlist will be visible to anyone with access.

Send Students a Link to Playlist

Make it easy for your students to find their assigned reading by sending them a link to a specific page in playlist.

Review Notes Taken by Students

You can review all notes taken by your students in playlists you shared with them.

Track Student Progress

Monitor student engagement with Capti analytics.

Access from Anywhere

Offline Support

Use Capti online or install it to use it offline, e.g., when there is no Internet or for exam accommodations.

Cross-Device Sync

Use Capti on any of your devices - your content will synchronize so you can conveniently switch among your devices.

Supported Browsers

Use Capti with with Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari

Supported Operating Systems

Use Capti on Chromebooks, Windows, Mac, and iOS. (Android online only)

Usability and Accessibility

Screen-Reader Accessibility

Use Capti with Jaws, NVDA, and VoiceOver - Capti is built from the ground up with screen-reader compatibility in mind,

Advanced Text Navigation

Navigate text by pages, headings, paragraphs, sentences, words, time, keywords, bookmarks, etc.

Feature Access Control

OCR

Disable use of Optical Character Recognition for all students or all users

Personal Purchases

Disable in-app purchases for all students or all users

Translation Lookup

Disable translation of text or individual words for all users

Definition Lookup

Disable definition of words for all users

Passwords

Disable password changing for all students

Easy Account Administration

Single Sign-On

Sign in to Capti with Google, Clever, or Facebook. Log in through Canvas or Blackboard using LTI integration.

Automatic Rostering

Import the roster of students, teachers, and classes from Clever, any Student Information System (SIS), or using LTI integration. Great for large accounts.

Manual Rostering

Import the roster of students, teachers, and classes from Google Classroom or a .CSV file. Manually manage everything. Great for small accounts.

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Read text aloud. PDF reading books speak text to voice, read it out loud

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Use Capti Voice to read books online and speak text. Read any book from Bookshare and Gutenberg with free text to speech. Read out loud PDF, DAISY, EPUB, DOC.

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Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI) Checklist and additional resources

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ERI Checklist for Higher Ed.

ERI Checklist for K-12

K-12 Companion for IEP & 504 Plans

Watch Dr. Bethany Simunich's introduction to the ERI Checklists.

Watch Chris Voelker's introduction to the K-12 Companion to ERIC.

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QM Emergency Remote Instruction (ERI) Checklist

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Watch Dr. Bethany Simunich's introduction to the ERI Checklists. Watch Chris Voelker's introduction to the K-12 Companion to ERIC.

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Accessible and inclusive features are highlighted in 5 minute video

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Inclusive and accessible features in OneNote

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Free Text to Speech software for various formats

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NaturalReader Software

NaturalReader is a downloadable text-to-speech desktop software for personal use. This easy-to-use software with natural-sounding voices can read to you any text such as Microsoft Word files, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails. Available with a one-time payment for a perpetual license.

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NaturalReader Text to Speech Software Download

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Desktop Text to speech download software with natural sounding voices. Supports PDF, word, ebooks, webpages, Convert text to audio files.

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Free screen capture and video creations that allow for transcriptions

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Our screen capture tools help you easily create, edit and communicate with videos and images. Simple and intuitive tools to share your ideas.

Windows, Mac / iOS, Android, and Chromebook | No account required

Easy video communication for everyone

190 countries

Million of users in ourglobal community

Trusted

by Fortune 100 companies, school districts,
and 98 of the top 100 universities in the US

100,000,000+

Videos captured (and counting) since 2006

How can ScreenPal help you?

I need to capture videos and images.

Highly rated by our community

Overall rating: 4.6 out of 5 based on 4,516 reviews.

What our community is saying

With ScreenPal I've been able to extend my expertise and automate some of my more routine tasks by creating high-quality video content and feedback, which then frees up my time for more personalized mentorship.

Cal Poly University Professor and founder and CEO of Mentorship Academy

ScreenPal's user-friendly interface and seamless integration into our existing teaching methods made it an obvious choice. From day one, it was clear that ScreenPal was not just another tech tool; it was a catalyst for active learning and collaboration.

Technology Integration and Innovation Coordinator, Arlington ISD

We use ScreenPal internally to create and manage all of the videos we share with educators. ScreenPal makes it easy to create videos with a consistent, branded look and feel, and then to share all of those videos from a central repository.

Chief Program Officer, The Modern Classrooms Project

Join millions of people communicating through video.

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At ScreenPal, we don't believe that video recording and editing should be difficult, or cost a fortune. Our simple and intuitive tools help you get the job done easily.

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Free app that adds transcription to existing videos

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A free HTML5 app to take the pain out of transcribing interviews. Useful for journalists, academics and anyone else transcribing audio. And it's open source, too.

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Provides real-time subtitles to your presentation and can also translate into many languages

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Presentation Translator subtitles your live presentation straight from PowerPoint, and lets your audience join from their own devices using the Translator app or browser.

As you speak, Presentation Translator displays subtitles directly on your PowerPoint presentation in any one of more than 60 supported text languages. This feature can also be used for audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Up to 100 audience members in the room can follow along with the presentation in their own language by downloading the Translator app or joining directly from their browser.

The technologies behind Presentation Translator

Presentation Translator for PowerPoint is powered by the Microsoft Translator live feature which lets you have translated chats by starting or joining a conversation from the Translator app. Up to 100 people can chat at once using the Translator app or directly from their browser at http://translate.it.

The Microsoft Translator live feature is built using Microsoft Translator core speech translation technology, the Microsoft Translator API, an Azure Cognitive Service.

Presentation Translator integrates the speech recognition customization capabilities of Custom Speech Service (CSS) from Azure's Cognitive Services to adapt speech recognition to the vocabulary used in the presentation.

What does custom speech recognition do?

Improves the accuracy of your subtitles by learning from the content in your slides and slide notes. In some cases, you will see up to 30% improvement in accuracy.

Customizes speech recognition for industry-specific vocabulary, technical terms, acronyms, and product or place names. Customization will reduce these errors in your subtitles, as long as the words are present in your slide or slide notes.

How to set up custom speech in your presentation

The first time you customize speech recognition for your presentation, it can take up to 5 minutes for Presentation Translator to finish learning.

After the first time, the subtitles will start instantaneously unless you update the content of your slides.

Tip: start the custom speech recognition during a practice run so that you don't experience delays when you present to your audience.

How does the custom speech recognition feature work?

The custom speech recognition feature works by training unique language models with the content of your slides. The language models behind Microsoft's speech recognition engine have been optimized for common usage scenarios.

The language model is a probability distribution over sequences of words and helps the system decide among sequences of words that sound similar, based on the likelihood of the word sequences themselves. For example, "recognize speech" and "wreck a nice beach" sound alike but the first sentence is far more likely to occur, and therefore will be assigned a higher score by the language model.

If your presentation uses particular vocabulary items, such as product names or jargon that rarely occur in typical speech, it is likely that you can obtain improved performance by customizing the language model.

For example, if your presentation is about automotive, it might contain terms like "powertrain" or "catalytic converter" or "limited slip differential." Customizing the language model will enable the system to learn this.

When you use the Customize speech recognition feature in Presentation Translator, your presentation content - including notes from the slides - is securely transmitted to the Microsoft Translator transcription service to create an adapted language model based on this data. Data used for customization is not de-identified and is retained in full, along with the adapted model, by the service for thirty (30) days from last use to support your future presentations and use of the language modeling.

Tips for using Presentation Translator

Audio/visual set-up

Before you get started, you'll need:

A working microphone: We suggest using a Bluetooth headset so you can move around without restrictions. Check out our list of recommended headsets

PowerPoint for Windows: PC only. Make sure you do not have any Office applications open while Presentation Translator installs. Once installed, the add-in will update automatically each time a new version is published.

Permissions: If you are an educator and use a school login for PowerPoint, you may need to contact your administrator to install the add-in on your device(s).

Internet connection: A hard-wired connection is ideal, but a reliable WiFi connection works well also.

How to set up customized content

Depending on what you're presenting you will probably want to customize how Presentation Translator "understands" your content.
Here are a few tips to set-up CSS:

Include all relevant content: Don't forget your presenter notes! Before CSS "learns" your content, the content needs to be present within the slides or slide notes. Full sentences will be used for word contexts, so a full script of your presentation within the slide notes will be useful.

After you click "Start Subtitling", a dialogue box will appear to set-up your presentation. Make sure to check the box that says "Personalize speech recognition" so it can customize your presentation speech model*. This will take 3 to 5 minutes depending on the length of your presentation.

Train in advance. Content, notes, and audio logs will be retained by the service for thirty (30) days from last use to support future presentations. You only need to train the system again if you have updated content or it's past 30 days since the last training.

* Currently only English and Chinese are supported.
Microsoft Translator live feature

Now that your audio, visual, and presentation content are ready to go, you can now start presenting! This is where audience participation can play a role - to expand the audience that understands your content, or invite them to comment in real-time in their own language.

Here are a few tips to set-up the Microsoft Translator live feature:

After you click "Start Subtitling", a dialogue box will appear to set-up your presentation. Under "Additional Settings", make sure to check the box that says "Add instructional slide". This will explain to the audience how they can view subtitles on their own devices.

The add-in will then insert the instructional slide before the start of your presentation. These instructions will allow your audience to easily join the conversation (up to 500 people!) on their device, in their language.

You can choose to "unmute" the audience - allow comments directly from their device - or "mute" the audience so your presentation is uninterrupted. You can simply click "Audience Unmuted" towards the end of the presentation for an interactive Q&A session.

TRANSLATOR LANGUAGES

TRANSLATOR FOR BUSINESS SITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT APP FEATURES

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Presentation Translator for PowerPoint - Microsoft Translator

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Presentation Translator subtitles your live presentation straight from PowerPoint, and lets your audience join from their own devices using the Translator app or browser. As you speak, Presentation Translator displays subtitles directly on your PowerPoint presentation in any one of more than 60 supported text languages.

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Tool for real-time captioning for presentations & conversations

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Microsoft Translator live is a free translation and transcription service that lets you have translated conversations across multiple devices on iOS, Android, Windows, PowerPoint and web for 1:1 conversations or larger group interactions.

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Including Closed Captioning /Transcription for YouTube  

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Including Closed Captioning /Transcription for YouTube  

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Quick 2 minute how-to video

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How to Use Youtube for Closed Captioning/Transcriptions

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Guidance for accessibility on social media platforms: Facebook, Instragram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube

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Table of Contents

Always address the accessibility of Social Media content and provide alternatives when necessary. This article provides guidance for accessibility on the following social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube.

Why

Social Media platforms are essentially websites containing user-generated content. There are roughly 3.4 billion active social media users around the world; users have on average 5.5 social media accounts each and spend at least 2 hours a day using social media, according to Pew Research Center.

Your social media accounts are likely one of many ways you share content and connect with your audience. The content you deliver via social media should be accessible. If you are not able to share accessible content on a social media because of limitations inherent to that platform, you should be prepared to provide alternatives.

How

Keyboard Accessibility

Many of the most commonly used social media platforms have accessibility issues inherent to the platforms themselves- issues that users of these platforms cannot fix. Keyboard traps, inaccessible right hand columns, absent keyboard focus indicators and incorrect keyboard focus orders are present to varying degrees in all of the social media platforms discussed in this article. Test your social media account with a keyboard to make sure the content you're posting is accessible to users.

Autoplay

Videos and other media should not automatically play on default. Users should have the ability to pause videos and other media. If media plays by default and this feature cannot be turned off, users should be made aware of this, e.g., "This video will automatically play in a new window."

Heading structures in social media platforms may not be accessible. For example, of the social media platforms discussed in this article, only Facebook properly uses the H1 heading, and none of the platforms properly nest headings. Keep this in mind when adding your content.

Images

All images should have alternative text, or alt-text, added. If alt-text is not available, describe images in the body of the post. You can add alt-text on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. You cannot add alt-text to images on Pinterest.

See also Images for general guidance on creating alt-text.

Animated GIFs

There is very little support for animated GIFs on social media platforms. Do not rely solely on animated GIFs to convey content.

Emojis & Emoticons

Screen readers will read emojis appropriately, e.g., "clapping hands." Do not overuse emojis and place a space between each one. Emoticons, or representations of expressions created through a variety of keystrokes, e.g., :), will be read as "semi-colon parenthesis" and should be used sparingly if at all.

Alternative Options

Until social media platforms comply with accessibility guidelines and fix issues on the back end, users posting content should consider the following workarounds.

Provide Contact Information

Make sure your contact information is available on your social media account.

Provide a link to the appropriate contact information if the full information cannot be posted.

Provide contact details for Yale's accessibility support group, much like you already provide accessibility statements on university webpages.

Repeat Content Across Platforms

Make content you post on social media sites available on your university website, as well.

Consider offering daily/weekly digests of information posted on social media sites.

Post the same content on multiple platforms, e.g., a video in posted in your Instagram Stories, where captioning is not available, should also be posted on Facebook, where captioning is available; Images posted on Pinterest, where alt-text is not available, could also be posted on Twitter, where alt-text is available, etc.

Suggest Alternatives to the Application

Provide links to the social media platform's accessibility tips and support.

Provide links to alternative apps and websites that create accessible interfaces for social media.

Use Clear Language & Describe Actions

Use camel case in your hashtags, e.g., #ThisIsCamelCase.

Avoid abbreviations.

Use hashtags only as needed and at the end of posts.

Avoid misspellings.

If you link to inaccessible content on social media platforms, let the user know if it will auto-play, if there is no transcript or captions, etc.

Test Your Content

Have someone with a disability test your social media content

Hold it to WCAG 2 AA standards

Platform Specific Guidance

Facebook Accessibility

Add alt-text to images .

Add captions to your Facebook videos.

Alternatively, load videos to YouTube and add captions there, then link to the video in your posts.

Link to transcripts for videos if possible.

Consult American Foundation for the Blind's Facebook's Accessibility Tips to understand how users with disabilities might navigate through your content.

Check the color contrast in your images if you are conveying textual information.

Use camel case in your hashtags, e.g., #ThisIsCamelCase. Use hashtags only as needed and at the end of posts.

Recommend alternatives to Facebook's interface. These alternatives can sometimes provide more accessible experiences for people with disabilities.

Instagram Accessibility

Add alt-text to images.

Burn captions into your videos. Instagram does not support the addition of caption files to videos, so you should burn captions into video files using tools like Kapwing (paid) or Handbrake (free).

Check the color contrast in your images if you are conveying textual information.

Use camel case in your hashtags, e.g., #ThisIsCamelCase. Use hashtags only as needed and at the end of posts.

LinkedIn Accessibility

Add alt-text to images. LinkedIn does not currently provide help documentation on adding alt-text to images. Accessibility advocates have provided step-by-step instructions elsewhere online.

Add captions to LinkedIn videos.
Link to transcripts for videos if possible.

Make sure your profile photograph is clear and representative. People with Prosopagnosia (colloquially known as face blindness) may rely on your profile photo.

Check the color contrast in your images if you are conveying textual information.

Use camel case in your hashtags, e.g., #ThisIsCamelCase. Use hashtags only as needed and at the end of posts.

Pinterest Accessibility

Identify your content, e.g. [PIC], [VIDEO], [AUDIO].

Add a description to your Pin when you create it. Pinterest does not support the addition of alt-text, but this is a workaround. If you are using a plug-in to Pin objects from a WordPress site, you may be able to add alt-text to images via that plug-in.
Alternatively, create a Pin by adding a URL to an image that includes alt-text.

Pinterest does not support the addition of videos directly to its platform. You can add videos by pinning links to videos on YouTube or other media players. Make sure those videos are captioned.

Consult Pinterest's Best Practices for Inclusive Product Design for tips about accessibility options available in the platform, such as color contrast.

Check the color contrast in your images if you are conveying textual information.

Use camel case in your hashtags, e.g., #ThisIsCamelCase. Use hashtags only as needed and at the end of posts.

Twitter Accessibility

Add alt-text to images.

Add subtitles to your Twitter videos. Twitter does not support closed captions.
Alternatively, load videos to YouTube and add captions there, then link to the video in your posts.

Check the color contrast in your images if you are conveying textual information.

Use camel case in your hashtags, e.g., #ThisIsCamelCase. Use hashtags only as needed and at the end of posts.

Recommend alternatives to Twitter's interface. These alternatives can sometimes provide more accessible experiences for people with disabilities.

YouTube Accessibility

Warn users of auto-play when posting links to videos hosted on YouTube.

Caption your videos. Include a transcript or a link to a transcript where possible.

Use YouTube with a screen reader to understand how the experience might function for a person with a disability.

Resources

The slide deck from our Social Media Accessibility training is available to the Yale community via Box.

For more information, visit the WCAG links for this topic.

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Always address the accessibility of Social Media content and provide alternatives when necessary. This article provides guidance for accessibility on the following social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube. Social Media platforms are essentially websites containing user-generated content.

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Compare features for platforms that suit your needs

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Compare the features of Zoom and Google Hangouts Meet to help you decide which tool is best for your needs. Google Hangouts Meet is the simplest tool and interface for online meetings, but Zoom offers many additional features.

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Support for writing and/or taking notes during lectures

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The best speech-to-text apps make it simple and easy to convert speech into text, for both desktop and mobile devices.

Speech-to-text used to be regarded as very niche, specifically serving either people with accessibility needs or for dictation. However, speech-to-text is moving more and more into the mainstream as office work can now routinely be completed more simply and easily by using voce-recognition software, rather than having to type through members, and speaking aloud for text to be recorded is now quite common.

While the best speech to text software used to be specifically only for desktops, the development of mobile devices and the explosion of easily accessible apps means that transcription can now also be carried out on a smartphone or tablet.

This has made the best voice to text applications increasingly valuable to users in a range of different environments, from education to business. This is not least because the technology has matured to the level where mistakes in transcriptions are relatively rare, with some services rightly boasting a 99.9% success rate from clear audio.

Even still, this applies mainly to ordinary situations and circumstances, and precludes the use of technical terminology such as required in legal or medical professions. Despite this, digital transcription can still service needs such as basic note-taking which can still be easily done using a phone app, simplifying the dictation process.

However, different speech-to-text programs have different levels of ability and complexity, with some using advanced machine learning to constantly correct errors flagged up by users so that they are not repeated. Others are downloadable software which is only as good as its latest update.

Here then are the best in speech-to-text recognition programs, which should be more than capable for most situations and circumstances.

Jump straight to:
We've also featured the best voice recognition software.
Best paid for speech to text apps

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We list the best speech-to-text apps, to make it simple and easy to convert speech into text, for both desktop and mobile devices.

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A 45 minute overview using the updated Calendar version

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Run effective meetings with Microsoft Teams

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A complete functionality explanation (1 hour)

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A 15 minute demo tutorial

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How to use Microsoft Teams, a demo tutorial

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Guidance, support and motivation tips for parents and families through this time

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Start thinking about your future possibilities here

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Hello! Hey, we're glad you made it. This site is a place for you, your friends, and other teens. It's a welcoming community for all youth and a place where all youth belong. We want you to be here. This is your place, your space.

Here you can start thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your life. This Web site was built to help you plan for the future. What will you do after high school? Will you work? Go to college? Live in a place of your own? By using this Web site, you can plan for your future right now!

Click here to learn more, or you can register now! If you're already registered, log in (see top right) and get active!
Go for it, and thanks for coming to visit!

Knowing what bosses want is important! These are 21st century skills that, if gained and practiced, will help you stand out.

With which one of these skills do you need the most help?

Login or Register to vote!
About the Poll

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The Youthhood - Where teens prepare for life after high school

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Hello! Hey, we're glad you made it. This site is a place for you, your friends, and other teens. It's a welcoming community for all youth and a place where all youth belong. We want you to be here. This is your place, your space.

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How college is different than high school and your rights

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Reproduction and ordering information
U.S. Department of Education
Arne Duncan
Secretary

Office for Civil Rights
Russlynn Ali
Assistant Secretary

First published July 2002. Reprinted May 2004.
Revised September 2007. Revised September 2011.

U.S. Department of Education
Office for Civil Rights
Washington, D.C. 20202
September 2011
More and more high school students with disabilities are planning to continue their education in postsecondary schools, including vocational and career schools, two- and four- year colleges, and universities. As a student with a disability, you need to be well informed about your rights and responsibilities as well as the responsibilities postsecondary schools have toward you. Being well informed will help ensure you have a full opportunity to enjoy the benefits of the postsecondary education experience without confusion or delay.

The information in this pamphlet, provided by the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the U. S. Department of Education, explains the rights and responsibilities of students with disabilities who are preparing to attend postsecondary schools. This pamphlet also explains the obligations of a postsecondary school to provide academic adjustments, including auxiliary aids and services, to ensure the school does not discriminate on the basis of disability.

OCR enforces Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Title II), which prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability. Practically every school district and postsecondary school in the United States is subject to one or both of these laws, which have similar requirements.*/

Although Section 504 and Title II apply to both school districts and postsecondary schools, the responsibilities of postsecondary schools differ significantly from those of school districts.

Moreover, you will have responsibilities as a postsecondary student that you do not have as a high school student. OCR strongly encourages you to know your responsibilities and those of postsecondary schools under Section 504 and Title II. Doing so will improve your opportunity to succeed as you enter postsecondary education.

The following questions and answers provide more specific information to help you succeed.
As a student with a disability leaving high school and entering postsecondary education, will I see differences in my rights and how they are addressed?
Yes. Section 504 and Title II protect elementary, secondary, and postsecondary students from discrimination. Nevertheless, several of the requirements that apply through high school are different from the requirements that apply beyond high school. For instance, Section 504 requires a school district to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to each child with a disability in the district's jurisdiction. Whatever the disability, a school district must identify an individual's educational needs and provide any regular or special education and related aids and services necessary to meet those needs as well as it is meeting the needs of students without disabilities.

Unlike your high school, however, your postsecondary school is not required to provide FAPE. Rather, your postsecondary school is required to provide appropriate academic adjustments as necessary to ensure that it does not discriminate on the basis of disability. In addition, if your postsecondary school provides housing to nondisabled students, it must provide comparable, convenient, and accessible housing to students with disabilities at the same cost.

Other important differences that you need to know, even before you arrive at your postsecondary school, are addressed in the remaining questions.
May a postsecondary school deny my admission because I have a disability?
No. If you meet the essential requirements for admission, a postsecondary school may not deny your admission simply because you have a disability.
Do I have to inform a postsecondary school that I have a disability?
No. But if you want the school to provide an academic adjustment, you must identify yourself as having a disability. Likewise, you should let the school know about your disability if you want to ensure that you are assigned to accessible facilities. In any event, your disclosure of a disability is always voluntary.

What academic adjustments must a postsecondary school provide?

The appropriate academic adjustment must be determined based on your disability and individual needs. Academic adjustments may include auxiliary aids and services, as well as modifications to academic requirements as necessary to ensure equal educational opportunity. Examples of adjustments are: arranging for priority registration; reducing a course load; substituting one course for another; providing note takers, recording devices, sign language interpreters, extended time for testing, and, if telephones are provided in dorm rooms, a TTY in your dorm room; and equipping school computers with screen-reading, voice recognition, or other adaptive software or hardware.

In providing an academic adjustment, your postsecondary school is not required to lower or substantially modify essential requirements. For example, although your school may be required to provide extended testing time, it is not required to change the substantive content of the test. In addition, your postsecondary school does not have to make adjustments that would fundamentally alter the nature of a service, program, or activity, or that would result in an undue financial or administrative burden. Finally, your postsecondary school does not have to provide personal attendants, individually prescribed devices, readers for personal use or study, or other devices or services of a personal nature, such as tutoring and typing.
If I want an academic adjustment, what must I do?
You must inform the school that you have a disability and need an academic adjustment. Unlike your school district, your postsecondary school is not required to identify you as having a disability or to assess your needs.

Your postsecondary school may require you to follow reasonable procedures to request an academic adjustment. You are responsible for knowing and following those procedures. In their publications providing general information, postsecondary schools usually include information on the procedures and contacts for requesting an academic adjustment. Such publications include recruitment materials, catalogs, and student handbooks, and are often available on school websites. Many schools also have staff whose purpose is to assist students with disabilities. If you are unable to locate the procedures, ask a school official, such as an admissions officer or counselor.
When should I request an academic adjustment?
Although you may request an academic adjustment from your postsecondary school at any time, you should request it as early as possible. Some academic adjustments may take more time to provide than others. You should follow your school's procedures to ensure that the school has enough time to review your request and provide an appropriate academic adjustment.

Do I have to prove that I have a disability to obtain an academic adjustment?

Generally, yes. Your school will probably require you to provide documentation showing that you have a current disability and need an academic adjustment.

What documentation should I provide?

Schools may set reasonable standards for documentation. Some schools require more documentation than others. They may require you to provide documentation prepared by an appropriate professional, such as a medical doctor, psychologist, or other qualified diagnostician. The required documentation may include one or more of the following: a diagnosis of your current disability, as well as supporting information, such as the date of the diagnosis, how that diagnosis was reached, and the credentials of the diagnosing professional; information on how your disability affects a major life activity; and information on how the disability affects your academic performance. The documentation should provide enough information for you and your school to decide what is an appropriate academic adjustment.

An individualized education program (IEP) or Section 504 plan, if you have one, may help identify services that have been effective for you. This is generally not sufficient documentation, however, because of the differences between postsecondary education and high school education. What you need to meet the new demands of postsecondary education may be different from what worked for you in high school. Also, in some cases, the nature of a disability may change.

If the documentation that you have does not meet the postsecondary school's requirements, a school official should tell you in a timely manner what additional documentation you need to provide. You may need a new evaluation in order to provide the required documentation.
Who has to pay for a new evaluation?
Neither your high school nor your postsecondary school is required to conduct or pay for a new evaluation to document your disability and need for an academic adjustment. You may, therefore, have to pay or find funding to pay an appropriate professional for an evaluation. If you are eligible for services through your state vocational rehabilitation agency, you may qualify for an evaluation at no cost to you. You may locate your state vocational rehabilitation agency at http://rsa.ed.gov by clicking on "Info about RSA," then "People and Offices," and then "State Agencies/ Contacts."
Once the school has received the necessary documentation from me, what should I expect?
To determine an appropriate academic adjustment, the school will review your request in light of the essential requirements for the relevant program. It is important to remember that the school is not required to lower or waive essential requirements. If you have requested a specific academic adjustment, the school may offer that academic adjustment, or it may offer an effective alternative. The school may also conduct its own evaluation of your disability and needs at its own expense.

You should expect your school to work with you in an interactive process to identify an appropriate academic adjustment. Unlike the experience you may have had in high school, however, do not expect your postsecondary school to invite your parents to participate in the process or to develop an IEP for you.
What if the academic adjustment we identified is not working?
Let the school know as soon as you become aware that the results are not what you expected. It may be too late to correct the problem if you wait until the course or activity is completed. You and your school should work together to resolve the problem.
May a postsecondary school charge me for providing an academic adjustment?
No. Nor may it charge students with disabilities more for participating in its programs or activities than it charges students who do not have disabilities.
What can I do if I believe the school is discriminating against me?
Practically every postsecondary school must have a person-frequently called the Section 504 Coordinator, ADA Coordinator, or Disability Services Coordinator-who coordinates the school's compliance with Section 504,Title II, or both laws. You may contact that person for information about how to address your concerns.

The school must also have grievance procedures. These procedures are not the same as the due process procedures with which you may be familiar from high school. But the postsecondary school's grievance procedures must include steps to ensure that you may raise your concerns fully and fairly, and must provide for the prompt and equitable resolution of complaints.

School publications, such as student handbooks and catalogs, usually describe the steps that you must take to start the grievance process. Often, schools have both formal and informal processes. If you decide to use a grievance process, you should be prepared to present all the reasons that support your request.

If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of the school's grievance procedures or wish to pursue an alternative to using those procedures, you may file a complaint against the school with OCR or in a court. You may learn more about the OCR complaint process from the brochure How to File a Discrimination Complaint with the Office for Civil Rights, which you may obtain by contacting us at the addresses and phone numbers below, or at http://www.ed.gov/ocr/docs/howto.html.

If you would like more information about the responsibilities of postsecondary schools to students with disabilities, read the OCR brochure Auxiliary Aids and Services for Postsecondary Students with Disabilities: Higher Education's Obligations Under Section 504 and Title II of the ADA. You may obtain a copy by contacting us at the address and phone numbers below, or at http://www.ed.gov/ocr/docs/auxaids.html.

Students with disabilities who know their rights and responsibilities are much better equipped to succeed in postsecondary school. We encourage you to work with the staff at your school because they, too, want you to succeed. Seek the support of family, friends, and fellow students, including those with disabilities. Know your talents and capitalize on them, and believe in yourself as you embrace new challenges in your education.

To receive more information about the civil rights of students with disabilities in education institutions, you may contact us at :

Customer Service Team
Office for Civil Rights
U.S. Department of Education
Washington, D.C. 20202-1100

Phone: 1-800-421-3481
TDD: 1- 877-521-2172
Email: ocr@ed.gov
Web site: www.ed.gov/ocr

*/ You may be familiar with another federal law that applies to the education of students with disabilities-the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). That law is administered by the Office of Special Education Programs in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services in the U.S. Department of Education. The IDEA and its individualized education program (IEP) provisions do not apply to postsecondary schools. This pamphlet does not discuss the IDEA or state and local laws that may apply.

This publication is in the public domain. Authorization to reproduce it in whole or in part is granted. The publication's citation should be: U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Students With Disabilities Preparing for Postsecondary Education: Know Your Rights and Responsibilities, Washington, D.C., 2011.
To order copies of this publication,
Write to : ED Pubs Education Publications Center, U.S. Department of Education, P.O. Box 22207, Alexandria, VA 22304.

or fax your order to: 703-605-6794;

or e-mail your request to: edpubs@inet.ed.gov;

or call in your request toll-free: 1-877-433-7827 (1-877-4-ED-PUBS). Those who use a telecommunications device for the deaf (TDD) or a teletypewriter (TTY), should call 1-877-576-7734. If 877 service is not yet available in your area, you may call 1-800-872-5327 (1-800-USA-LEARN).

or order online at http://edpubs.gov.

This publication is also available on the Department's Web site at http://www.ed.gov/ocr/transition.html. Any updates to this publication will be available on this website.

On request, this publication can be made available in alternate formats, such as Braille, large print. or computer diskette. For more information, you may contact the Department's Alternate Format Center at 202-260-0852 or 202-260-0818. If you use TDD, call 1-800-877-8339.

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disabilities; postsecondary education; college preparation; special education; universities; civil rights; disabled student services; transition; americans with disabilities act; academic adjustments

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Students with Disabilities Preparing for Postsecondary Education

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This pamphlet contains information for high school students with disabilities who plan to continue their education in postsecondary schools.

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Get your family involved to help you prepare

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There are over 300 programs in the United States that offer a non-degree program for students with intellectual disability, located at public and private, 4 year and 2 year colleges and universities, as well as a few located at technical colleges. Program length ranges from one year to four year and some include a 'fifth' year opportunity. The number of students in the programs varies as well. Some programs are focused on a general certificate and others have a more specific career focus certificate. Some provide residential living for students with intellectual disability in the campus dorms, though many offer only commuter opportunities.

Other ways that the programs can vary: some serve students who are over 18 but still in high school for the ages of 18 to 21 (these are called "dual enrollment" or "concurrent enrollment" programs). Others serve students who have left high school. Programs also offer varying degrees of participation in regular college classes with students without disabilities. They may be fully inclusive, meaning that all academics, social events, and independent living support happens with students without disabilities. Other programs offer a more separate experience, where students may be on a college campus, but participate in some or most classes and experiences only with other students with intellectual disability.

At this time, the most common approach is a mix of both separate and inclusive experiences. In our College Search listing, we ask programs to estimate how much time is spent with students without disabilities so that you can get some idea of type of experience that program is offering.

Many of these non-degree programs offer an individualized approach by supporting each student to select courses most closely related to their specific career goals. There are a growing number of programs that offer workforce credentials, but the majority are offering a general certificate that can be tailored to the student's goals. Check in with the program director and ask for a handbook, program curriculum, or program of study to see the details for programs you are interested in.

Start by reviewing program details in College Search. You can save a list of favorites that are the type of campus you like, in the parts of the country you are interested in and use a downloadable list to compare them to one another.

Once you have a list of solid possibilities, visit the programs' websites for more details. You may want to contact the program to ask questions or to schedule a campus visit. Many programs offer online and in-person Open Houses that can be a great way to learn more.

You can use our How To Guide on Conducting a College Search and/or the Self-Advocates Guide to Selecting a College to help decide what questions to ask when you talk to the program staff and review information on their websites.

This can all be a little (or a lot!) overwhelming. Feel free to contact us at ThinkCollegeTA@gmail.com if you need more information or help deciding on the best fit.

The admission process for these non-degree programs will be different than that of degree-seeking students.

Students DON'T NEED a standard high school diploma. An IEP diploma, certificate of attendance or other alternative diplomas are accepted for admission into college programs for students with intellectual disability. There are also some programs that support students while they are still in high school. Also, standardlzed test scores such as from ACT or SAT will not be required.

What the student WILL need is documentation of intellectual disability, and information that describes their strengths and their support needs. Some sort of documentation is required because there is a different admission process for students with intellectual disability, as well as special access to federal financial aid.

Other than these important considerations, there will be a variety of other requirements that can differ from program to program. Some typical requirements include a desire to go to college and to work after college, as well as some basic skills like ability to spend some time alone, manage their own medication, and use a cell phone. Also common is to see an age range of 18-26, but not all programs have an upper age limit.

The expectation of inclusive postsecondary education for students with intellectual disability was clearly identified in the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) of 2008 when it stated that students with intellectual disability must enroll in and/or participate in regular college courses with their non-disabled peers. The most inclusive programs offer students opportunities to take college courses from the course catalog, and they offer support to the students to participate in those classes. Students may participate in these classes as an audit student, or they may take them for credit.

The level of participation in the assignments and readings will depend upon whether the student is taking courses for credit or audit. Students taking the course for credit, are responsible for all required assignments and tests with only accommodations (no change to the course content or learning expectations), to pass the course. Those students who audit the course may receive modifications to the amount of content they are expected to learn and may have reductions in the amount and types of assignments and tests for which they are responsible.

This is a really important question to ask when you're looking at a program: How many of the college courses are actually available for the students to take?

When students participate in college courses, they often do that through an audit status. This means that college credits are not awarded. Students who are auditing a class can participate in all class activities, including taking tests or writing papers, to the best of their ability and with supports. Typically, the audited course has a procedure for grading and counts towards earning the credential that the program offers.
If the student does take the course for college credit, then they must meet the same standards as everyone else in the class. This includes papers, tests, and all other course requirements. All students are eligible for what is known as "reasonable accommodations" that do not modify course assignments. For example, a student with intellectual disability might ask for extended time to take a test, or to use assistive technology to help them write a paper.

When exploring colleges, a good question to ask the program directors is, "Will my student take their college courses for credit or audit and how will they be graded?

A student's reading level isn't the most important concern as they prepare for college, but rather their knowledge of and ability to use their compensatory strategies and electronic devices. Though any student's compensatory strategies would include digital and internet accessible devices, they would also include decision-and choice-making skills, and the ability to schedule activities, homework, and events, follow their schedule, and advocate for their support needs.

Device savvy: Students should be using their phones, tablets, and computers in school to read their text aloud, summarize sections, find their assignments, record homework, take notes, create homework schedules, keep track of schedules and connect with teachers and other students for homework or study help. Students should also be able to create Word and PowerPoint documents, file them in their computer, and find the documents when needed to study from or turn in.

Decision-making: The most noticeable difference is that college students are expected to manage their own learning and make choices and decisions more independently than in high school. Students should be developing these skills in high school: organizational skills for homework and studying, personal routines and schedules to carve out homework and study times, and strategies for keeping track of time and being on time.

Scheduling and keeping to a schedule are crucial skills for college students. No one else is going to wake them in the morning to get to class or turn in their homework on time. They will have to make choices when there are conflicting activities on the schedule and be able to modify their choices.

Self-advocacy is another skill students can and should be utilizing in high school. Students need to be able to recognize when they need help and who to ask. It is up to the student to email their professor and schedule office hours if they don't understand something or know when an assignment is due.

Many programs offer residential opportunities. You can find them in Think College Search using the search term "housing." Sometimes those residential options are in dormitories and on-campus apartments. Some programs offer off-campus housing. It's not directly affiliated with the college, but it's very close to campus.

Many more programs for students with intellectual disability are attended by those students who live at home and commute to school than those who live on or near campus. About 1/3 of the programs across the country have a residential option for students with intellectual disability. Some programs require students to live on campus and some allow students to choose to be a commuter or residential student.

Residential programs vary in terms of the levels and types of supports provided in campus housing. Some have a resident assistant (RA), the same support available to any residential student. Some programs provide an additional support person through the program, though often for limited hours. Few programs provide support to wake the student up in the morning to go to class or tell them when to turn the game or show off and go to bed. Those responsibilities generally belong to the student.

This is another area of questioning you will want to direct to the program director at each college you are exploring. "What type of 'housing' support is available to the students? How will they know who is supporting them? How will they contact them? Is there after-hours support?"

This is something that's so important in the life of any college student, and where much of our learning and growing takes place. Most, if not all, college programs will support many opportunities for students with intellectual disability to participate in those kinds of activities. There is a focus on supporting students to join clubs, use the gym, hang out in the student union, attend athletic events, and so on.

Every program puts in place supports and strategies in the event a student needs help. Many programs begin each semester orienting students to the location of their new courses, the clinic, and 'help phone' boxes on campus. Some begin the semester with peers who walk the students with intellectual disability to class for the first week or two. Many programs use a social media app like 'group me' to stay in touch with their students.

It is a good idea to plan ahead and check out the campus when you visit, prior to enrolling in the program, and look for strategically placed emergency phones on campus and ask about whether the institution has campus police.

Ultimately, it is up to the student to identify when they are in a situation that they need help and then how to access that help.

As with many students who find themselves going away to college and now "free" from their parents, there are lessons to be learned about their structured and unstructured time, about staying up too late when a required early event or class is scheduled the next day.

Program staff will support students with ID to identify their interests and find an organization, club, or event that, if joined, would begin to structure some free time. Some programs require students to join a club and attend a certain number of activities as well as attend required tutoring, career services workshops, and volunteer or work a specified number of hours. However, there is always some unstructured free time when attending college and learning how to explore and engage in activities of interest is a crucial skill to learn.

Essentially, each student is responsible to explore opportunities on the campus and to make choices in how to spend his or her own time when not in class. There are generally a few popular places students gather to do homework, like the student union or library. They may hang out with friends at the campus cafe, play video games, visit the campus gym or recreation center and join an exercise or nutrition class, go to a convenience store, or go to their room and take a nap.

Support for college varies tremendously by state, but there are state, local, and federal options to be explored. The Paying for College section on the Think College website includes a number of resources and links to explore.

A TPSID is a federally funded model demonstration grant project. These college programs have received a 5 year federal grant to create and/or further develop their program. TPSID stands for Transition and Postsecondary Education Program for Students with Intellectual Disability.

A CTP refers to a college program that has been approved through a process created by the US Department of Education. The CTP, or comprehensive transition program approval means that students with intellectual disability attending those programs are eligible for federal student aid.

IPSE stands for inclusive postsecondary education and is sometimes used to refer to college programs for students with intellectual disability.

Yes, there are a variety of different summer program options offered by college programs. Some are to prepare students who have been accepted into the program for the upcoming Fall, and there are also many that are for any student who wished to experience a bit of college life. Some are residential, some are during the day only, and they vary in length. To see a listing of summer programs Think College has compiled from info provided to them by the programs, review this Excel spreadsheet.

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There are over 300 programs in the United States that offer a non-degree program for students with intellectual disability, located at public and private, 4 year and 2 year colleges and universities, as well as a few located at technical colleges. Program length ranges from one year to four year and some include a 'fifth' year opportunity.

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A resource for teens with disabilities

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Learn how to use your strengths, learning style and interests to set goals for college.

What to expect in college and what professors will expect from you. Tips for good grades, accommodations and using technology.

Learn what you can do now to prepare for and apply to college.

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Plan for college, plan for success

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KnowHow2GO is a campaign designed to encourage students and veterans to prepare for college. Explore the site to learn more about the steps you need to take to be college-ready.

About KnowHow2GO

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KnowHow2GO is a campaign designed to encourage students and veterans to prepare for college. Explore the site to learn more about the steps you need to take to be college-ready. About KnowHow2GO

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Not sure where to start? This site might help

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This directory was composed by students in Dr. Lynda West's Special Education Course: 6236, Introduction to Career, Vocational and Transition Services, The George Washington University, Graduate School of Education & Human Development. Their assignment was to select 5 websites they considered their favorite transition websites. You are able to locate these sites and many others in our LINKS as well.

Posting of websites does not imply endorsement or support by the HEATH Resource Center, GWU, or The HSC Foundation. At the time this publication went to press, these sites were active. Because websites frequently change, we cannot guarantee that the links provided will remain accurate. As web site content is that of the sites' owners, if you attempt to access a website and receive a "not found" message, it is likely that the item has been removed from the site. If you are unable to access content with assistive technology (e.g., PDFs) please contact the site's owner for alternative formats.
Secondary Transition to Postsecondary Website Portals to further Resources The websites listed here are portals to further resources. Sites may be hosted or funded by federal agencies, national agencies, state education agencies, local education agencies, institutes of higher education projects, private agencies or professional organizations. Sites are identified and put into a specific category to make it easier to search the Directory of Transition Websites. Associations, Organizations, and Professional Groups Career and Employment College/University Information and Disability Support Services Disability News Federal Government Federal Legislation Health Transitions Independent Living Internships, Training, and Volunteer Programs Parent/Guardians and Youth Resources Social Security Technology Transition Assessment Transition Programs and Services Transition Resources Vocational Rehabiliation and Developmental Disabilities Services
This document was published in part under a grant from http://www.hscfoundation.org/ The HSC Foundation with The George Washington University . No official endorsement by The HSC Foundation or of any product, commodity, service or enterprise mentioned in this publication is intended or should be inferred.

Permission to use, copy, and distribute this document for non-commercial use and without fee, is hereby granted provided that appropriate credit to the HEATH Resource Center is included in all copies. April 2015.

Last Updated (Monday, 06 April 2015)

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This directory was composed by students in Dr. Lynda West's Special Education Course: 6236, Introduction to Career, Vocational and Transition Services, The George Washington University, Graduate School of Education & Human Development. Their assignment was to select 5 websites they considered their favorite transition websites.

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Quick guides and college planning

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College : Continuing and Higher Education Getting Started l Choosing a College l Articles lSuccess Stories l The Law
Loans, Scholarships & Financial Aid l Resources l Free Publications

Whether your child is 14 and you are just beginning to consider the dreaded "C" word ("C" is for College), or you are a tireless self-advocate who is determined to take the next logical step up in your life (the "C" word again), this page is for you.

We've hand-picked some of the best content available on the web for those who are just getting started, seeking the "perfect" college fit, navigating financial aid, or are just curious about what information is available and when to start planning. For more in-depth information, be sure to review the Free Publications, Resources, and follow the links at the end of the articles, guides and resource booklets below.

Getting Started

College Board Simplifies Request Process for Test Accommodations. Beginning January 1, 2017, the vast majority of students who are approved for and using testing accommodations at their school through a current Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 Plan will have those same accommodations automatically approved for taking the SAT®, PSAT™10, PSAT/NMSQT®, SAT Subject Tests™, and AP® Exams.

Quick Guide to Accommodations on the SAT for Students with Disabilities. Here is a quick guide to accommodations on the college boards (SATs). Wrightslaw research editor, Sue Whitney, provided the information in this Quick Guide to Accommodations on the SAT.

College Accommodations: What are my Child's Rights? Parents of kids with disabilities are often surprised to learn that their college-bound children are no longer eligible for IDEA services. Find information and resources that will help you along the way.

Help for College Students with Disabilities from Wrightslaw
Parents of disabled kids are often surprised to learn that their college-bound children are no longer eligible for services. This document from Wrightslaw contains information and many resources that will help you along the way.

College Planning for Students with Learning Issues. Is college the best choice for your teen with a learning disability? Check out these expert guidelines for making an informed decision about postsecondary education.

Why College is Daunting for Kids with LD. About half as many students with LD earn college degrees as their peers in the general population. While the reasons for this discrepancy vary, none have to do with ability or intellect. Addressing the issue involves changing the focus from getting into college to developing the skills necessary to succeed once there.

Preparing Your Child For College: A Resource Book for Parents (Archived 2000)
This resource book is designed to help you plan ahead -- with your child and your child's teachers and counselors -- to ensure he or she is prepared academically for the rigors of college and to save now and plan financially for the costs of a college education.

EducationPlanner is your one-stop career and college planning site. Offers information to research careers, choose a postsecondary school, apply on-line, and find ways to finance your education.

Life with LD: Navigating the Transition to College. The transition from high school to college can be a confusing time for any student. Deciding which school to attend is one of the biggest decisions a student will make. For students with learning and attention issues, there are some add.

Parents Guide to Transition to College, Career, and Community. This article will increase your knowledge and provide tools to help you prepare for your child's transition from K-12 education to postsecondary education and life as a young adult.

Workforce Recruitment Program. A joint program from by the Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) and the U.S. Department of Defense (ODMEO), the WRP is a recruitment and referral program that connects federal and private sector employers with motivated postsecondary students with disabilities who are eager to prove their abilities in the workplace through summer or permanent jobs.

White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics
From Risk to Opportunity The Road to a College Diploma (pdf) (pdf)

Choosing a College That's Right for YOU

From Where I Sit is a powerful video series of eight CSU students with disabilities who share their experiences in the college classroom. They tell their stories by answering five questions:

What is your disability?

What made you decide to come to college?

What is it like in the classroom?

What do you have to do to keep up with the class?

What suggestions can you offer to faculty that will make their classroom more accessible?

Going-to-college (www.going-to-college.org) This new website contains information about living college life with a disability. It is designed for high school students and provides video clips, activities, and additional resources that can help them get a head start in planning for college. These video clips offer a way to hear firsthand from students with disabilities who have been successful.

Getting Into College: The College Application Process. This article assists students with disabilities to understand the college admissions process.

Regional Center for College Students with Learning Disabilities. The Regional Center for College Students with Learning Disabilities was established at FDU as one of four regional centers funded by the State of New Jersey Commission on Higher Education to provide services to college students with learning disabilities.

Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities. A listing of colleges in MA (and other states) and additional information from the Concord SpedPAC.

Postsecondary Education Options for Students with Intellectual Disabilities (PDF) - Recognizing the challenges faced by students with intellectual disabilities and the benefits of college education, the authors include an overview of the types of options available for students looking to enter college and recommendations for improving access to postsecondary education for students with intellectual disabilities. [Debra Hart, Meg Grigal, Caren Sax, Donna Martinez and Madeleine Will. (2006) University of Massachusetts-Boston]

Virtual campus tours offer high-school students the chance to see colleges without leaving home. The Web site YOUniversityTV.com has video tours of more than 400 four-year institutions in the U.S. Colleges do not provide or pay for the online tours, which are produced by the Web site. "It's not the same as being on the campus, but on the other hand you can't get there sometimes..."

Navigating College Handbook. From the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network -An introduction to the college experience from those who've been there. The writers and contributors are Autistic adults, and who give you the advice that we wish someone could have given us when we headed off to college. We wish we could sit down and have a chat with each of you, to share our experiences and answer your questions. Free download .

Articles

IDEA Funds for Postsecondary Programs - While Still in High School. USED Secretary DeVos Makes Clear Federal Funds can be Used to Support Dual Enrollment, Postsecondary Options for Students and Youth with Disabilities

Summer Pre-College Programs for Students. HEATH staff members have compiled this list as a resource for students with disabilities who are seeking ways to prepare for college and enhance college performance.

How a Transition Coordinator Plans for Life After High School. The transition from high school to whatever comes next can be stressful for students with special needs and their parents. If you haven't made contact with a school transition coordinator or specialist yet, don't wait.

Managing Time and Staying Focused in College with the Help of Assistive Technology. Insight into how combining healthy study habits with technology can help a college student to focus and manage their time. This resource addresses setting goals, developing good study habits, incorporating technology tools, and getting enough sleep at college.

Protecting Students with Disabilities in Post-Secondary Education. Good advice to assist your child in learning about her civil rights, the two federal laws that provide protection at the postsecondary level, and how to find out about other state and/or local laws that may provide protection.

Providing Testing Accommodations for Students with Disabilities. The College Board's Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) provides a broad range of accommodations, such as Braille tests, large print, and extended time, to students on College Board tests who provide documentation of a disability.

A Nuts and Bolts Guide to College Success for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students
This guide provides information for those deaf and hard of hearing students transitioning into a college environment. It includes information on self-advocacy skills, communication strategies, pre-college timelines, financial aid basics, how to access appropriate accommodations, academic issues, and necessary documentation.

Success Stories

Embracing Self-Sufficiency - San Antonio Business Journal (11/12/07).

Students with Disabilities Get an Extra Hand in Transition to College (Pdf) Austin American Stateman (03/06/08).

- The Boston Globe (12/10/07). P Campuses Widen the Mainstream df format

Help for When College Years are Not So Carefree (Pdf) - the College Living Experience Program. The Chicago Tribune (08/23/07) about.

Setting Goals and Preparing for the Transition to College - Preparing for the SATs was a big challenge, with the help of his school guidance counselor, Sal applied for testing accommodations for the SAT according to The College Board requirements. Now, college-bound Sal says, "I have proven that I have the ability to overcome challenges. Special education should not be a limitation; it is a jumping point to an endless world of life's lessons."

Legal Rights & Responsibilities

Letter to Parents from the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) about changes students with disabilities encounter as they make the transition from high school to postsecondary education. Postsecondary institutions have significantly different responsibilities from those of school districts. This letter provides examples of the unique relationship between postsecondary institutions and students with disabilities. Q&A Guidance: Increasing Postsecondary Opportunities and Success. Vocational rehabilitation (VR) and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds can be used to support dual enrollment, comprehensive transition and other postsecondary education programs for students and youth with disabilities.
Students with Disabilities Preparing for Postsecondary Education: Know Your Rights and Responsibilities
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in the U.S. Department of Education is providing the information in this pamphlet to explain the rights and responsibilities of students with disabilities who are preparing to attend postsecondary schools. This pamphlet also explains the obligations of a postsecondary school to provide academic adjustments, including auxiliary aids and services, to ensure that the school does not discriminate on the basis of disability.

Accommodations and Modifications for College Students. Do colleges have to provide accommodations for disabled students? Dr. Brown offers advice about dealing with colleges.

The Law After High School - Q & As on important legal topics for students entering college.

College Students and Disability Law - Today, there are more students with disabilities in higher education than ever before. Although the process has been slow, colleges and universities are making their programs more accessible, sometimes in good faith, sometimes due to coercion by federal agencies and courts.

ADA Q & A: Section 504 & Postsecondary Education - Many parents of students with disabilities know about rights and responsibilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). As students and their families prepare for the transition from high school to postsecondary options, they will often find they are less familiar with protections provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The following questions reflect those most commonly asked of PACER staff regarding the ADA and postsecondary institutions.

Loans, Scholarships & Financial Aid

Attending college can be an exciting and enriching experience. It can also be a costly one.

We've created a page of resources to help you find Loans, Scholarships and Financial Aid for Students.

Resources

Khan Academy provides free video tutorials for every math skill addressed by official SAT sample test questions.

ThinkCollege.net
Youth with intellectual disabilities have not had many chances to go to college. This is changing as individuals across the country begin to create opportunities for these youth to reap the benefits of postsecondary education. This website will provide information and links to anyone interested in finding out more about the possibilities.

The Center on Postsecondary Education and Disability is committed to promoting equal postsecondary educational opportunity for adolescents and adults with disabilities.

A Smooth Postsecondary Transition: What Parents Can Do. Provides insights into the realities that students with learning disabilities face as they prepare to apply to and attend college. What parents can do to help.

Ohio State TOPS (Transition. Success. Independence.) offers individuals ages 18 and older with intellectual and developmental disabilities an unique opportunity to engage in Ohio State academic coursework and work experiences while developing independent living skills and participating in campus and community organizations, social activities, and events..

Publications

2017-18 version of the Guide is now available to download in EntryPoint! places students with disabilities on STEM tracks. EntryPoint stands as a singularly successful career launching pad in the STEM fields. Other programs such as the federal Workforce Recruitment Program help college students with disabilities enter the workforce, EntryPoint focuses on STEM jobs. The Guide to Federal Student Aid is a comprehensive resource on student financial aid from the U.S. Department of Education.
English (PDF) and Spanish (PDF) and Braille.
The

The Guide to Federal Student Aid (2018-19) (English).

Resources from the Office for Federal Student Aid. Resources are in English, Spanish, and Braille Accessible versions. Order publications.
Preparing for College: The Online Guide for Students with Disabilities. Preparing for college is a challenge. If you have a disability, the process can be more complicated. This online guide offers sound advice about factors to consider when choosing a college, financial aid, understanding your rights, disability organizations, and information about colleges and universities that offer special programs for students with disabilities.

U.S. Department of Education Pamphlet: Students with Disabilities Preparing for Postsecondary Education: Know Your Rights and Responsibilities
This document provides information on the rights and responsibilities of students with disabilities who plan to attend a postsecondary institution. This pamphlet also explains the obligations of postsecondary schools to provide academic adjustments to ensure that they do not discriminate on the basis of disability. Copies can be ordered by calling (877) 4-EDPUBS or on-line ordering at .

Transition to College: Strategic Planning to Ensure Success for Students with Learning Disabilities . Making plans for the future and knowing where you're going allows you to design the steps that will take you to your destination. As a parent, it is important to encourage your child to learn what he or she needs to know about college in order to plan a successful transition. This Parent Advocacy Brief can help you understand the requirements and opportunities included in the law so that you can successfully plan and help your child prepare for his or her future.

Books
College and Continuing Education
Accommodations in Higher Education under the Americans with Disabilities Act: A No-Nonsense Guide for Clinicians, Educators, Administrators, and Lawyers by Michael Gordon and Shelby Keisern

Colleges for Students with Learning Disabilities or ADD (Peterson's)

College And Career Success For Students With Learning Disabilities

Guide for College Students with ADHD or LD by Kathleen G. Nadeau

Going To College: Expanding Opportunities For People With Disabilities (Paperback) by Elizabeth Evans Getzel and Paul Wehman (Editors)

Realizing the College Dream With Autism or Asperger Syndrome: A Parent's Guide to Student Success
Financial Aid
Peterson's How to Get Money for College 2018

Peterson's Scholarships, Grants and Prizes 2017

Financial Aid for the Disabled & Their Families, 2012-2014
Transition
Life Beyond the Classroom: Transition Strategies for Young People With Disabilities by Paul Wehman

The Transition Handbook: Strategies High School Teachers Use that Work! by Carolyn Hughes and Erik W. Carter

Vocational & Technical Schools--East 8th Edition

Last revised: 11/25/19

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College: Continuing and Higher Education

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College and continuing education prepares students with disabilities and their families for their transition to life after school, includes information financial aid, loans, scholarships, admissions tests including the SAT and ACT, how to request accommodations and modifications, success stories, rights and responsibilities, resources, free publications

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Compare colleges and find out which one is a right fit for you

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College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics

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College Navigator is a free consumer information tool designed to help students, parents, high school counselors, and others get information about over 7,000 postsecondary institutions in the United States - such as programs offered, retention and graduation rates, prices, aid available, degrees awarded, campus safety, and accreditation.

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Find out how much college will cost by the time you enroll

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College Cost Calculator | The College Board

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Compare the true cost of various colleges. Use this calculator to see how much college will cost by the time you enroll.

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Succeeding in college and helping students succeed

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Mapping Your Future is a nonprofit organization committed to helping students, families, and schools navigate the higher education and student loan processes through trusted career, college, and financial aid counseling and resources.

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Resources and learning about self-advocacy

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© Research and Training Center on Community Living at The University of Minnesota. Through the RTC, SAO operates with primary funding from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AIDD), and other federal agencies.

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Simple to keep in mind to maximize participation and productivity

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Network Best Practices for Video Conferencing

From understanding your network's bandwidth capacity to the importance of health monitoring and security needs, check out our Video Conferencing Network Best Practices guide to get the most out of your network.

Download guide

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Whether joining your team's weekly video standup or meeting with a job candidate for the first time through a video interview, here are a few remote employee video conferencing best practices to ensure that your video call is as effective and productive as possible.

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You can stay connected with these apps and learn tips along the way

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Millions of people working from home and practicing social distancing to avoid coronavirus are taking advantage of free video chat apps to stay in touch with coworkers, friends and family. But staring at your own face framed by your messy living room or plain home office on the screen can get dull -- for you and for them.

Luckily, popular video chatting and conferencing platforms like Zoom, Skype and FaceTime offer some ways to spice up your chats with fun features and settings. We break down the tips for each app below.

Read more: How to stay healthy and entertained at home during the COVID-19 pandemic

Zoom

1. Change your Zoom background

Virtually transport yourself to the beach, outer space or anywhere else you can imagine by changing and customizing your background while on Zoom calls -- everyone's doing it these days. You can read our step-by-step guide on how to change your Zoom background on the desktop and mobile app, but basically, you go to Settings > Virtual Background, and select or upload the one you want from there.

2. Loop yourself paying attention during a meeting

Not that we'd ever recommend doing this, but if you wanted to create a customized background that is just a loop of yourself nodding along to a meeting, you technically could do that, as David Zhou of Mailchimp tweeted. To get the video background option, follow the instructions for customizing your background above and just add in a video file instead of a photo. You might need to make sure your Zoom is updated and that you meet minimum system requirements.

Read more: 13 Zoom video chat tips, tricks and hidden features

3. Turn your Zoom mic on and off with the space bar

Want to feel like a DJ who happens to work in their PJs from their kitchen table? Mute your microphone, then press and hold the space bar whenever you need to talk.

4. Look your best with a Zoom beauty filter

You've probably heard all of the work from home advice by now -- wake up on time, shower, get dressed like it's a day at the office. But if it's one of those days where you don't think you're looking your best, Zoom has an answer: a feature called Touch Up My Appearance. Basically, it's a softening filter, like you'd find on Instagram, FaceTune or your phone's selfie camera.

To turn it on, click the up arrow next to Start Video. Click Video Settings, and under My Video, check the box for Touch Up My Appearance.

Skype

1. Blur your background on Skype

On Skype, you can blur the background of your video to hide any mess. The background blur feature (which is the same on Microsoft Teams, as Microsoft owns both platforms) uses AI to keep the focus on you. To use this feature, click or tap on the camera icon at the bottom of the screen and toggle on Blur my background.

2. Send a video message on Skype instead of live chatting

If you want to video chat with another Skype user but can't get your times to match up, you can send a video message for them to watch when they can. To do this on the desktop version, click on the contact you want to message, click the three dots on the bottom right corner of your messaging history and select Send Video Message to record a clip of up to three minutes for them to watch.

3. Talk with friends and relatives abroad with the Skype Translator

Skype has a Translator service that will translate everything you say or type in real time for the person you are talking to. The text translator is available in more than 60 languages, while the voice translator is available for 10 languages (including English, Spanish, French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, and Russian). You can enable it by going to Tools > Options > General > Skype Translator.

4. Uncover Skype's hidden emoticons

In its messaging feature, Skype offers a number of animated emoticons that help you liven up your conversation or better express your mood. While most of these are visible when you click the smiley face at the bottom left corner of a chat window, some are only accessible when you type a certain shortcut in -- including ones that are a bit more PG-13, like a middle finger, a smoker and Santa giving you his full moon. You can find all of the hidden emoticons on Skype's support page.

Apple FaceTime for iPhone and Mac

1. Chat as your Animoji or Memoji in FaceTime

If you've created a customized Memoji avatar, you can use it to replace your actual face during a FaceTime call. To do that, start a FaceTime call, tap your phone's display and tap the Effects button (it looks like a star, and is at the bottom left of the screen). Tap the monkey icon above that to choose the Memoji or Animoji you want to use and you'll see your face get replaced by that choice. Tap the Effects button again to stop using the character, or to switch to another one.

2. Add filters and effects to your FaceTime chats

Make your FaceTime video call look a bit more interesting by adding filters and effects -- similar to how you would on Snapchat or Instagram. To do this, start a FaceTime call, tap the display and again tap the Effects button. You'll see different options in terms of effects, features and stickers you can use during your call -- which will stay in effect throughout the call, or until you decide to remove them.

3. Take a live photo during your FaceTime video call

Keep a moving snapshot of your time with your friend by taking a live photo during your FaceTime call. To do this, tap the camera icon at the bottom of the screen. It will say "You took a FaceTime photo" on your screen. The photo will then appear in your Photos app. Live Photos is enabled by default, but you can turn it off or back on by going to Settings > General > FaceTime.

For more tips to help get you through social distancing and self-quarantine, check out whether you should use Zoom or Skype for working from home, our guide to everything you need to stay healthy and entertained while practicing social distancing, and all of the practical tips to help avoid coronavirus when you leave the house.

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Zoom, Skype, FaceTime: 11 tips for your video chat apps

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Millions of people working from home and practicing social distancing to avoid coronavirus are taking advantage of free video chat apps to stay in touch with coworkers, friends and family. But staring at your own face framed by your messy living room or plain home office on the screen can get dull -- for you and for them.

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7 Best Screen Reader Apps and Software

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As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Screen reader software allow any blind or visually impaired person to use the computer easily. These tools convert the content present on the screen into audio so that the user can hear and understand it easily. Some of the apps also provide Braille display output which the blind people can read to get the information on the screen. Here we have mentioned some of the most popular screen readers that will help those who are unable to use the computer due to vision problems. You will get software for both the Windows PC and Mac in this list. Also, there is a bonus tip to use a screen reader on Android and iOS at the end of the article.

Best Screen Readers For Blind And Visually Impaired

1. NVDA

NVDA or Non-Visual Desktop Access is an open source screen reader application for Windows PC. Once you download the software and install, it will narrate each area of the desktop and icons where the mouse will be navigated. It will also narrate all the keyboard keys that you will type or use.

It is easy to use NVDA, just install and it will do the rest. This is a great screen reader for blind people and it provides voice feedback for everything on the desktop of the PC, whether browsing on Chrome, typing anything or just navigating to any folder or file. You can also use some keys and shortcuts from the keyboard to control or manage NVDA application.
Download from Website
2. Jaws Screen Reader

This is another screen reader software that will let visually impaired people use the computer. It will also narrate the components on the desktop where the cursor of the mouse is pointed to. In addition to all this, Jaws can also convert the screen information into Braille language and transfer it to refreshable Braille displays. By this way, the blind people can touch the Braille display to know what is on the desktop display.

3. WebAnywhere
Download from Website
WebAnywhere is an online free screen reader tool for any web browsers and can be used without installing any software or application. Using this tool blind people can access web browsers on any system or desktop easily and listen to the text on the screen using this screen text reader for browsers. It will work on any kind of browser but not elsewhere like any other folders etc.

4. ChromeVox
Visit Website
This screen reader is made especially for Chrome browser which you can download from the Chrome Web Store. This extension will give voice feedback and narrate all the activity going on the web browser while highlighting the area with the box that is being narrated. It will also narrate all the words, text and number that is typed on the keyboard so the blind people can enter the right thing. It will also work with the Chrome browsers on macOS.

5. BRLTTY

This is one of the best screen reader apps and the most popular among LINUX users. This software turns the info and details on the screen in Braille form and transmits it to the Braille display for the blind users to see and navigate. In addition to this, it also has some voice features and speeches that will work as an additional guide to the visually impaired people using the system.
Download from Chrome Web Store
6. Apple VoiceOver

If a user is operating Mac then they can also use the screen reader application inbuilt in macOS. You can enable it inside System Preferences > Accessibility > under Vision you will find VoiceOver Utility. This will enable the screen reader application or tool on your Mac and it will narrate each and everything on the display to guide the blind or visually disabled. It will also read aloud the web pages and their content that is on the screen.

7. Windows Narrator
Download from Website
This tool is also inbuilt in almost the entire version of Windows, whether 7, 8, 10 or others like Linux. You can activate the narrator option under the Ease Of Access menu. This will let the Windows narrate and provide audio feedback for the area where the mouse cursor is taken. It's simple and no need of downloading any additional software on your Windows PC.

Conclusion

All these screen readers will let the blind and visually impaired people work on the computer. Most of these software programs are perfect for using but I will recommend going for Windows narrator and NVDA as they both are easy to use.

You can also use the screen reader feature on Android devices. For this, you can turn on TalkBack option or Voice Assistant. For iOS users, VoiceOver will work in the same way. You can easily use VoiceOver on iPhone.

Do you know any other tool? Do let us know. And if you have friends who need these kinds of software then do let them know by sharing this article.

Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc, or its affiliates.

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7 Best Screen Reader Apps And Software | TechUntold

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As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Screen reader software allow any blind or visually impaired person to use the computer easily. These tools convert the content present on the screen into audio so that the user can hear and understand it easily.

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Components to consider for instructional platforms

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[Editor's Note: We understand many schools and students cannot rely on virtual learning during the closures because many in our communities do not have access to it for a variety of reasons. We will address issues of equity in subsequent articles.]
My inbox-probably yours, too-is flooded with suggestions, how-tos, and don't-dos, on teaching online as a strategy for dealing with COVID-19.
Online articles Resources, tips and more for remote and e-learning (teaching online) - from Educational Technology Guy Tools to prepare for school closures-suggested by Common Sense Advice for new Online Teachers-from EdSurge Navigating Uncertain Times: How Schools Can Cope With Corona virus-from EdSurge Understanding the Impact of Coronavirus on K-12 Education-from EdSurge Newsela COVID-19 resource center (and free access to their paid products this school year) A live-tracker of the spread of the disease from Johns Hopkins University. Snow Day? 7 Ways to Keep Teaching An Open Letter to Teachers About Online Classes Remote Learning: Tips for Thriving in This Ecosystem
As I received the onslaught of teach-online resources, I collected those that made the most sense. Below is a short curation of the most useful articles, links, resources, and webinars to help you through this challenging environment, followed by some tips and answers to common questions.

Online webinars

One of the best I've watched in the last few weeks (as I dig into this subject) is Rushton Hurley' s. Here are some great suggestions for teachers who have to start fast with little preparation:
Distance Learning Strategies for Education Leaders, Part 1 Distance Learning Strategies for Education Leaders, Part 2
Here are three webinars from the knowledgeable Richard Byrne: Three Free Webinars About Transitioning to Teaching Online

If the above webinars have already passed, you may still register to receive a link to the presentation.

A short curated list of resources for teaching online:

How-to

Distance Learning with Google Slides-from Alice Keeler

Resources for Teaching Online-from Edublog

Guidance For Switching to Online Learning from Rushton Hurley

Online chats

Adobe Connect-fully-featured with lots of options for meeting students online

Google Hangouts-max. of 10-15 people

Nepris-bring experts into your classes

Unhangouts-gather in the virtual lobby and then join a GHO

Online course sites

Virtual Classrooms/Meetings

Canvas-and it's Big Blue Button conference option

Draw Chat-virtual meeting with a whiteboard

Google Hangouts

Webroom.net - virtual conference or meeting room

***

If you're still with me, here are quick notes on questions I've gotten from fellow educators over the past week or so:

What can you as a parent do in advance?

Be positive, upbeat about these changes. They are good-you will grow to like them. Know the pros and cons-they are balanced, maybe even skewed in favor of online.

Assume the teacher will be flexible with students as they adapt to online learning.

Don't give up-try, try again, and come up with a solution that works even if it isn't perfect.

Let your child try to solve their problems but be there to help if they get stuck. Most online classes aren't a virtual meeting. They're a list of assignments, discussion boards, forums, and projects that are accomplished at the students own pace. While you're at work, you can help your child with your own virtual meeting (via free programs like Google Hangouts, Zoom, and Webroom.net) by screen-sharing their assignment page. You can even remote in without nearly as much trouble as that used to be. Your child is not in the same room as the teacher. Don't think you must be in the same room as your child to help.

Know how to get in touch with the teacher (since you can't walk in and visit their classroom). FB? Messaging? Email? What's the best way?

What are the biggest problems I face moving my teaching online:

Tech knowledge-don't give up; there are only so many problems. Once they're solved, most of the rest of the experience will go smoothly.

Problems-solve these together, you and the parents. Don't try to be perfect, just a problem-solver.

What should students and families know before their first online session:
#coronaviruseducation

Don't be afraid.

Get help if you're stuck.

Be a risk-taker-boldly go where few have gone before.

Jacqui Murray has been teaching K-18 technology for 30 years. She is the editor/author of over a hundred tech ed resources including a K-12 technology curriculum, K-8 keyboard curriculum, K-8 Digital Citizenship curriculum. She is an adjunct professor in tech ed, Master Teacher, webmaster for four blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice, CSTA presentation reviewer, freelance journalist on tech ed topics, contributor to NEA Today, and author of the tech thrillers, To Hunt a Sub and Twenty-four Days. You can find her resources at Structured Learning.
Schools and Coronavirus:
What You Should Know
Find general guidance on COVID-19 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, and other health organizations, in addition to resources for navigating schools closures and online learning. NEA is committed to ensuring the health and safety of its members and the students they serve and will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as they become available.

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Resources for Online Learning During School Closures

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Editor's Note: We understand many schools and students cannot rely on virtual learning during the closures because many in our communities do not have access to it for a variety of reasons. We will address issues of equity in subsequent articles.]

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Things to consider when creating accessible online courses

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Design is powerful in its ability to include some, and exclude others. When the design of a course is approached in a thoughtful and inclusive way, it creates an educational environment where all students have an opportunity to learn and demonstrate their mastery of the course content. Design that does not take into consideration the variety of ways students access online content differentially impacts certain students. If a course is not designed in accessibly up front, students with disabilities are burdened with the need to work with the disability service office to obtain access. They are immediately put at a disadvantage when compared to nondisabled students.

What Does It Mean to Create an Accessible Online Course

A well-designed course is more usable for all students. The design also takes into consideration that not all students navigate or access the online environment in the same way. This toolkit focuses on three key principles:

Intuitive: The layout of the course is simple, consistent and predictable.

Perceivable: The content is designed so that it can be perceived by a wide range of users, regardless of disability.

Navigable: Course navigation does not assume that the student is using a specific device, such as a mouse. A user can navigate the course using the keyboard alone or with the use of assistive technology in ways that are equally effective.

Designing in ways that consider these principles will go along way toward inclusion and access for students with disabilities. This toolkit is not meant to be comprehensive. It also does not address specific learning management systems. You are encouraged to also consult the documentation for your particular LMS to see if there are tips and tools to enhance accessibility.

Learning management systems vary in terms of their accessibility. If the learning management system you are using is not accessible to students who use assistive technology or navigate using the keyboard alone, then your content will be inaccessible to these students even if you design it well. Consider contacting your campus disability resource office or instructional design support to ask about the LMS your campus uses in terms of its accessibility. If you plan to use a system other than the one owned by your campus, make sure you are choosing one that is most accessible for your students.

In a prominent place in your course, include a statement that informs students who might experience barriers that you are committed to creating an accessible online course. Include information about how to request accommodations. Your college or university may have a recommended or required statement. If not, here are a couple of options for you to consider.

Students with Disabilities: If you anticipate issues related to the format or requirements of this course, please contact me. I would like us to discuss ways to ensure your full participation in the course. Together we can plan how best to remove barriers and coordinate your accommodations. You are also welcome to contact the disability resource office [insert office contact information].

Usability, disability and design: I am committed to creating a course that is inclusive in its design. If you encounter barriers, please let me know immediately so that we can determine if there is a design adjustment that can be made or if an accommodation might be needed to overcome the limitations of the design. I am always happy to consider creative solutions as long as they do not compromise the intent of the assessment or learning activity. You are also welcome to contact the disability resource office [insert office contact information] to begin this conversation or to establish accommodations for this or other courses. I welcome feedback that will assist me in improving the usability and experience for all students.

Sharing course content in MS Word is common and can be simple and effective. As you design these documents, make sure you are taking accessibility into account.

Creating Accessible MS Word Documents

Be sure do the following:

Use headings to structure the document.

Add alternative text to images.

Create links by using meaningful text descriptions.

Avoid the use of SmartArt.

Avoid adding text boxes.

Avoid putting important information in headers or footers.

The tutorials provided below will take you through the process of implementing these suggestions.

More Resources: Accessible MS Word Documents

Creating Accessible PDF Documents

PDFs can provide an accessible way to provide content. If not created correctly, though, they can be totally inaccessible to people who use screen readers.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

Start with an accessible source document. By following the previous suggestions for creating an accessible MS Word document, you are on your way to creating an accessible PDF.

Save the MS Word document to PDF by choosing, Save as PDF rather than printing to PDF.

Simple documents should convert pretty well from MS Word to PDF. More complex documents may need to be checked for accessibility and even remediated for accessibility.

If you have a Professional version of Adobe Acrobat, you can run an accessibility check.

You may also want to check with the disability resource office on your campus to see who might be able to assist with making sure your PDF documents are accessible.

If you are using PDFs that were created by someone else, check to make sure they are accessible.

Can you highlight the text on the page? If not, it may be an image of the text instead of real text.

Older PDFs created by scanning an article are often purely an image.

Work with someone on your campus to determine the best approach to making these documents accessible.

More Resources: Creating Accessible PDF Documents

When you use MS PowerPoint to teach online you may be using it in a variety of ways.

Upload it so that students can download it to view on their own computer.

Load it into the LMS so that students view it as a slide presentation there.

Show it during a live video conferencing session.

No matter the end product, there are several things that need to be considered as you create the presentation.

Choose a design template that offers good contrast.

Avoid starting with a blank slide and adding text boxes.

Instead, choose the layout that fits your slide design.

Avoid the "Design ideas" presented by PowerPoint. Some are accessible but many are not.

Look at the "outline view" of the slide to see if the text on your slide is visible there.

Describe images, charts and graphs with alternative text.

Use sans serif fonts and make sure your text is 24-point or larger for online classes and 28-point or larger for face-to-face classes.

Create an accessible PDF version of the PowerPoint for students to download. This version will be more accessible to screen reader users.

The resources below will walk you through these and other steps so that you can create an accessible slide presentation.

More Resources: Creating Accessible MS PowerPoint Presentations

Providing clear wording for the text in a link can be challenging. In an effort to be concise, sometimes we sacrifice clarity. If a student using a screen reader is your course, they have the option to scan links to find what they need. If links are not described adequately, scanning the course in this way is not productive. Providing clear links makes your course more usable for everyone. Some of the more common problems seen in providing links are listed below along with suggestions for correcting these errors.

Video content can be much more engaging than more static content, adding great benefit to an online course. At the same time, if access is not considered, video content can present barriers for many students. So what needs to be considered to make sure video content is accessible?

For videos embedded in a course, the video player needs to be accessible by keyboard and the controls need to be labeled properly so that a screen reader user can access all of the video controls.

The video will need to be captioned.

The visual content will need to be described.

A transcript will need to be created that includes the captions and the descriptions of the visual content.

Accessible Video Players

The use of accessible video players is typically a decision made on a college-wide level. If you are using an LMS that allows you to embed your own videos, a good practice is also to include a link that goes directly to the source video (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

Using Captioned Videos

When choosing a video that has been created by someone else, make sure it is captioned. Automatic captions do not provide equal access. You can learn more about why this is the case by reading Automation Is Not Equal Access. See the next section for more details on choosing captioned videos and captioning your own videos.

Audio Description

Audio description refers to providing information about the visual aspects of a video to someone who is blind or who has low vision. Audio description can be provided as part of the general narration or can be added after the fact. If the video is simply a recording of you providing a lecture, then there would be little need for audio description. If you are also showing slides, you'll want to describe what is in the slides. See more details about creating audio descriptions in Sharing Accessible Videos - Audio Description.

Providing a Transcript

Once you have your transcript for the captions and the audio descriptions, you can combine the two to create a document that will make your video accessible to students who are DeafBlind. Simply create an accessible MS Word document with this content and provide a link to it below the video.

Choosing Captioned Videos

When choosing a video that has been created by someone else, make sure it is captioned. As mentioned above, automatic captions do not provide equal access. Transcription created by artificial intelligence often has many inaccuracies. Even when it is fairly accurate, it lacks punctuation and capitalization, making it very difficult to follow. Below are some suggestions for determining if videos are truly captioned and searching for videos that are.

Checking a Video for Captions

To check to see if a video is truly captioned, click on the "CC" button at the bottom of the video. Immediately you will see this information displayed in the top left corner of the video.

In this first image, we see the text that displays when only an auto-generated transcript is available in the top left corner.

In this second image, the text that appears when a video has actual captions is shown. Even when you see this, it is a good idea to check for accuracy before sharing the video.

Finding Captioned Videos

If you are searching for video content to share with your students, you can narrow your YouTube search to just those videos that are captioned. Simply go to youtube.com and enter the topic you want to search for. After you select the search button, you will see a button appear labeled Filter. Select that button and open up the options. Then, under Features select Subtitles/CC. This will bring up only those videos that have a caption file uploaded.

Again, make sure to check for accuracy before sharing the video.

Captioning Videos You Do Not Own

If there is a video you want to use that you do not own and discover it is not captioned (or not captioned well), one option is to use the 3Play Media Plugin. This plugin allows you to select a YouTube video, add the captions, and then share a link to the video that has the captions overlaid over the original video.

Captioning Your Own Videos

If you have created your own video, you will need to caption it or have it captioned. There may be professionals on your campus who assist with this. Contact your disability resource office, ICT department, or instructional technology support professionals to check. If you do not have support available on your campus, it is not difficult to add your own. If funds are available, there are also companies that you can contact to outsource this.

If you plan to add your own, assuming your video is housed on YouTube, you can approach this a few different ways.

Create a transcript of all of the video content, upload that to YouTube and allow YouTube to sync the transcript with the video.

Upload your video to YouTube and allow it to create an automatic transcript for you, then go in and edit the transcript by making corrections and adding capitalization, punctuation, and identifying speakers.

Create a transcript and use a tool that allows you to add timings to your transcript. Upload the caption file to YouTube.

The resources below provide you with guidance for captioning your videos. Online captioning resources are also provided.

More Resources: Captioning Your Videos

Tutorials on Captioning

Captioning Tools

As stated in a previous section, the term audio description refers to providing information about the visual aspects of a video to someone who is blind or who has low vision. Videos vary in terms of how much visual information they provide and how much description is needed. The following will help you consider what aspects of a video need additional audio description.

Are there sections of the video that provide content in text only (i.e. credits, section titles, statistics, etc.)?

Are the names and/or titles of speakers listed under the speaker?

Are there presentation slides that are being shared that are not spoken by the narrator?

Are there other visuals that add to the content of the video?

Is something being demonstrated in the video?

All such content will need to be described in order for the video to be accessible. Good audio descriptions simply state in words what a blind person would miss visually. The resources below will assist you in creating good audio descriptions.

More Resources: Creating Audio Descriptions

If you have a course that has several modules, it is helpful to organize each module in a similar way. This predictability helps many students navigate the course and makes it less likely that students will miss an important activity. Below is a sample organization that illustrates this consistency.

Universal Design 101
(Each item in would actually be a link.)
Module 1: An Introduction to Universal Design

M1 Video

What is Universal Design? (YouTube) - CC

What is Universal Design? (YouTube) - AD & CC

What is Universal Design? Transcript (DOC)

M1 Reading Assignments

A Historical Perspective of Universal Design (PDF)

Universal Design as a Philosophical Framework (PDF)

The Principles of Universal Design (PDF)

List of additional suggested readings (PDF)

M1 Activities

M1 Reaction Paper (DOC)

M1 Questions to Ponder (Discussion Board)

M1 Self-Test (DOC)

Module 2: Universal Design in Postsecondary Settings

M2 Video

Universal Design in Postsecondary Education (YouTube) - CC

Universal Design in Postsecondary Education (YouTube) - CC & AD

Universal Design in Postsecondary Education Transcript (DOC)

M2 Reading Assignments

Hidden Disabilities and Disclosure (DOC)

Students with Learning Disabilities in Higher Education: A Growing Population

Models of Universal Design (PDF)

M2 Activities

M2 Reaction Paper (DOC)

M2 Questions to Ponder (Discussion Board)

M2 Self-Test (DOC)

Notice that the link to different items also includes information about the format of that item. When a link does not include a format, most people would assume that would take a person to a web page.

Encourage students to use good discussion board etiquette. Using good subject headings is helpful to everyone. For example, instead of Question using a heading such as A Question about Module 1. This will help other students determine where to focus their time and energy in reading the discussion posts and be able to scan for the information they need. For more specific information, consult these Discussion Board Guidelines. You are also welcome to adapt and share those guidelines with your students.

Do you plan to meet with your class using a video conferencing tool? This can be a good way to connect with students remotely. There are several things to keep in mind in order to create an accessible experience for all students.

Selecting an Accessible Video Conferencing Solution

Perhaps your university has adopted a video conferencing tool already. You may want to check with your disability resource office or instructional technology department to make sure it is fully accessible. If you are selecting your own video conferencing platform, the following questions will help guide you toward selecting an accessible video conferencing tool.

Does the company that makes the product have information about accessibility on their website?

Do they offer keyboard shortcuts to navigate the application?

Does the application have a way to provide captions?

Does the application offer the option to connect by either computer or phone?

Can you find information about the accessibility of this product from organizations other than the vendor themselves?

Is this product being used by organizations that prioritize accessibility?

If you can also have the application tested by someone who knows about digital access, that is ideal.

Planning for Access

As you plan to lecture using video conferencing, remember that not all people will access your lecture the same way. Students who are deaf or hard of hearing may need captions or an ASL interpreter. Accessing the lecture using an ASL interpreter requires higher bandwidth than accessing just the audio of the lecture or watching a video with relatively little movement. Deaf students who live in rural areas may need support finding a location where they have that level of Internet access. Students who access the computer using assistive technology or the keyboard alone may find learning the keyboard shortcuts (if they do exist) to be time consuming. Offering the option to connect by phone and sending any visual materials such as PowerPoint slides in advance is a good practice. Also providing descriptions of what you are sharing visually is a good practice whether remote or face to face. This way, blind students and those joining by phone only can follow along more easily.

During Your Class

Here are some tips for providing access during your lecture:

Provide multiple means for people to ask questions (i.e. chat tool, unmuting the user so they can ask questions, and emailing you questions).

If you are showing slides, announce when you are moving to the next slide.

Make sure students have an accessible version of the slides in advance.

Don't assume that everyone can access the slides during your presentation. Read the content or provide all of the content as part of your lecture.

If a captioner is joining to provide captioning, make sure the captioning is working properly before beginning your lecture.

Record your lecture so that students who lose Internet connection can access it later.

A highly accessible online course will remove the need for many accommodations. If you take the time to follow the suggestions in the previous sections and you are using an accessible LMS, students with disabilities will be included proactively. In fact, sometimes in a well-designed online course, students with disabilities participate seamlessly and do not even need to connect with the disability resource office.

Common Accommodations in the Online Environment

Timed Exams

Timed exams, in both the face to face and online, present barriers to many students. When timed exams are used, extended time is a reasonable accommodation for many students. This is typically determined by the campus disability resource office who will send a notification to you. When you get such a notification, you will need to provide a longer time for that student to take the exam or quiz.

In some of the more robust learning management systems, there is a way to provide this accommodation for a specific student. If your LMS does not provide this option, you may have to create a separate test for the student and set the appropriate length of time.

If you have questions about implementing the accommodation, contact the disability resource office.

Captioning

Even if you use videos that are captioned already, there are some situations where captioning will be needed as an accommodation. If you are using video conferencing technology to deliver a live lecture, that need to be captioned for a deaf or hard of hearing student. Work with your disability resource office to make this arrangement. They will probably need to provide access to the lecture to a live captionist.

Other situations where captioning may be needed as an accommodation are with the use of chat or collaborative tools that include audio (i.e. VoiceThread or Kollective).

Sign Language Interpreters

Similar to captioning, provision of remote sign language interpreters may be requested when lectures are provided online. Again, your disability resource office should take the lead on arranging this, but may need to have access to the log in information so that the interpreter can join in.

Alternatives to Inaccessible Course Components

Other accommodations in the online environment are typically a response to documents not being designed accessibly or instructors choosing applications that are not accessible. This might include the LMS itself or tools within the LMS such as chat or the exam tool. This could also include requiring students to visit a website that is inaccessible. Being proactive and checking for accessibility of applications and web resources will improve the experience of your students and reduce the need for retrofitting.

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Designing an Accessible Online Course - Explore Access

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Design is powerful in its ability to include some, and exclude others. When the design of a course is approached in a thoughtful and inclusive way, it creates an educational environment where all students have an opportunity to learn and demonstrate their mastery of the course content.

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Teaching strategies that include all learners

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Inclusive teaching refers to practices that support meaningful and accessible learning for all students. CTL's resource pages on inclusive teaching contain evidence-based practices, strategies, and resources from instructors at the UW.

Inclusive teaching at UW

At the University of Washington inclusive teaching refers to pedagogical practices that support meaningful and accessible learning for students of all races, ethnicities, genders, socio-economic classes, sexualities, disability/ability statuses, religions, nationalities, ages, and military statuses.
INCLUSIVE TEACHING AT UW
Inclusive teaching strategies

The strategies covered on this page aim to recognize the diverse strengths students and instructors bring to class.
INCLUSIVE TEACHING STRATEGIES
Teaching first-generation students

Nearly 30% of UW undergraduates are the first in their families to go to college. Recent studies have documented the challenges of these students, as well as their strong academic engagement and commitment to their education. This page recommends practices and strategies that can help build community and a sense of belonging for first-generation students.
TEACHING FIRST-GENERATION STUDENTS
Teaching international and multilingual students

The UW values the contributions international and multilingual (I/M) students bring to our campus community. This page provides information aboutteaching I/M students at UW, including links to resources for additional instructor and student support.
TEACHING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS
Teaching students with disabilities

Proactively adopt pedagogical practices that support students with disabilities as a part of your approach to teaching. Build accessibility into your course design from the start and improve learning for all students.
TEACHING STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Teaching student veterans: Resources for instructors

Explore the resources on this page to learn about classroom practices, about military life and transitioning to civilian life, and about campus resources for instructors.
TEACHING STUDENT VETERANS

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Inclusive teaching refers to practices that support meaningful and accessible learning for all students. CTL's resource pages on inclusive teaching contain evidence-based practices, strategies, and resources from instructors at the UW. At the University of Washington inclusive teaching refers to pedagogical practices that support meaningful and accessible learning for students of all races, ethnicities, genders, socio-economic classes, sexualities, disability/ability statuses, religions, nationalities, ages, and military statuses.

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Accessibility guides for digital platforms

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Whether you are adapting a course for full or partial online delivery, or you have migrated online to maintain business continuity, you can continue to teach, learn, and work effectively. Instructors, students, staff, support teams, and others should take steps to improve the accessibility and usability of their course and work content to ensure inclusive and equitable access for all, including people with disabilities.

Accessibility 101: Accessibility and Online Immersion is intended as a resource for instructors and others who need to design, build, adapt, or migrate courses or business practices for online delivery. The goal of this site is not to offer a comprehensive guide to teaching and working online, but to offer tips, techniques, and resources to help people manage accessibility as part of their immersive online experience.

Where do I start?

For a "checklist" view of do's and don'ts, review "Providing Accessible Online Course Materials".

If you're ready to look at the accessibility of your course documents, check out the resources in "Accessibility Guides".

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Whether you are adapting a course for full or partial online delivery, or you have migrated online to maintain business continuity, you can continue to teach, learn, and work effectively. Instructors, students, staff, support teams, and others should take steps to improve the accessibility and usability of their course and work content to ensure inclusive and equitable access for all, including people with disabilities.

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Speech to text voice notes for meetings, lectures and more..

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Otter.ai uses artificial intelligence to empower users with real-time transcription meeting notes that are shareable, searchable, accessible and secure.

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Making an appointment is one click away. Book yours now!

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OAS Support Program - You can book online!

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You can now book and manage appointments using our booking page.

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Maintaining an Engaged Learning Experience

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Maintaining an Engaged Learning Experience

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Ways to keep the learning experience in mind as you create your courses with a different delivery.

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brightspace solutions for higher education

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Find helpful resources, technical documentation, video tutorials, blogs, discussions, and connect with other Brightspace users.

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When you consider going back to school to earn your master's or finish your bachelor's degree, there are a lot of options to weigh. You could go to a local campus, take night and weekend classes, or earn a degree online. But which is the right fit, and how do you know if you have what it takes to be successful as an online college student?

At the University of Cincinnati, we have entire cohorts of online students-people who are dedicated to this form of learning and are able to make huge changes in their careers and their lives through their online degrees. How did they find success in their programs? These are six secrets of our most successful online students.

Learn the Technology

This may seem like a no-brainer, but taking an online class involves learning a new technology. The courses, discussions, and assignments are all completed in an online platform. Getting familiar with the new platform at the very beginning of your course is essential for future success. You don't want to wait until the day your first paper is due to figure out how everything works.

Do yourself a favor, learn the online platform early.

Get to Know Your Professors

College students are constantly encouraged to get to know their professors. This makes sense when you are seeing them in person and interacting on campus. But this is important for the success of online students as well.

Reach out to your professor as soon as you can. Send them a quick email to introduce yourself and let them know why you're excited for the course. Start a conversation. Having a good relationship with your professors can help you be successful as an online student and in your future career or graduate studies.

Be Organized

When you attend a class on campus, you come prepared with notebooks and folders, armed with ways to organize your school supplies. You should take the same approach to online classes. Set up a file structure on your computer that will clearly divide your readings and assignments so that you can find them easily and keep up-to-date with your school work, stress free.

Set this up as early as possible, even before you start your first class. This will help you be successful in the long run.

Have a Schedule

Online students often maintain their full-time job while they are in school. Having a set schedule can help you manage the stress of such a heavy work and study load.

Use your course syllabus at the beginning of the semester and draft a schedule that highlights all your major assignments, exams, work deadlines, and course milestones. Then force yourself to stick to that schedule, building up your powers of self discipline.

Have a Routine

Similar to setting up a schedule for the whole semester, establishing a daily routine that works for you can help you be successful in the long run as well. Figure out what time you like to study-whether it's in the morning, on your lunch break, or late at night. Then, fit your coursework into your daily routine.

If you make studying a habit, finding success in your online college courses will become a lot easier.

Start Part-Time

Online college can be intense. Your schedule is more flexible, but your workload can often be heavier than expected. To compensate for the lack of facetime and in-person discussions, professors may assign more reading and writing assignments.

For this reason, we encourage hesitant students to start out taking their course load part-time. The transition to online learning can be challenging, so help yourself out by starting with a light course load. Figure out how you can best be successful in the new online format before adding more classes.

Learn to Love Writing

As we mentioned in the last point, professors for online courses will often add extra reading and writing assignments to the syllabus to compensate for the lack of in-person discussions. On top of that, students still participate in online discussions of the course material, write emails to classmates and professors, and complete the usual papers and written exams.

All this adds up, meaning online students have to write a lot! If you learn to write well, and to enjoy the process of writing, you'll ultimately find more success as an online student.

Your Success is Within Reach

Ultimately, the best way to be successful as an online student is to figure out what works for you, and stick to it. Earning a college degree isn't easy-whether on campus or online-but if you are studying something that interests you and that you are committed to, you'll achieve your goals in the end.

If you're looking for highly-ranked, accredited online programs that can help you make a career change or earn a promotion, visit our list of online programs offered at the University of Cincinnati. If you're ready to go, we encourage you to start your application today.

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6 Tips to Being a Successful Online College Student

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When you consider going back to school to earn your master's or finish your bachelor's degree, there are a lot of options to weigh. You could go to a local campus, take night and weekend classes, or earn a degree online.

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Tips to remember when facilitating online courses

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Tips to remember when facilitating online courses

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Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

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As universities rush to get all their courses online quickly, there's a high probability of error but also a lot you can do to succeed. Problems may occur due to overtaxed technological infrastructure, your students' disorientation and fear, and your own learning curve. On the positive side, you learn for a living, so you are good at it! Being open to the current crisis-driven educational opportunity is a call to action. The reputation and integrity of your institution-and you!-depends upon your offering engaging online classes. (No pressure.) Below are a few tips to get you started.

Be a Learner

You're used to being an expert. But now you may be facing a situation where you aren't an expert. For most of your students, taking all their classes fully online will be a new experience. If it's new to you as well, don't be afraid to let your students know that you are learning with them. Keep a beginner's mindset. You don't have to have all the answers. Just know how to point your students in the right direction. There are many free resources online to help out. And as you would tell your students, there are no stupid questions. Ask away. Do a Google search, check in with IT, phone a friend, or ask your students. They will be happy to help if you make it clear that having a great online course is a group project.

Use Technology as a Means to an End

Don't confuse technology with teaching. The goal is to use technology to facilitate engaging and effective teaching and learning. Know that technology's tools of engagement (like discussion boards, wikis, journals, blogs, etc.) are just that-tools, not the engagement itself. What is the secret sauce? You are! Along with the community of learners that includes your students, your fellow faculty members, and every teacher on the internet! An LMS or Zoom can't stand in for a trusted advisor, mentor, or experienced subject-matter expert like you. If you are new to online teaching, take it slow initially, but don't leave out engagement.

Don't be "the Man (or Woman) Behind the Curtain"

High "instructor presence"-the feeling that an instructor is still present in an online educational experience-is more critical now than it has ever been. Log into your course every day. Yes, every day. You don't have to promise a 24-hour turnaround for responses. In fact, that will quickly exhaust you. A 48-hour turnaround response time is typical. But do respond to your students' posts if you have a discussion board. Set expectations of when you will and won't be available. Don't make Sunday night off-limits if you have an assignment due on Monday. That's not fair. Make use of group communications, like the announcement function in your LMS, to touch base with your students every few days. Instructor presence is established when your students feel that you are there for them. It doesn't have to be 24/7, but your students will miss you! So, stay in touch.

Know the Gotcha's

Partner with IT to determine the top five to six technical issues that students are likely to encounter when accessing a course online. This may be a forgotten password, a pop-up blocker, or a browser issue. Educate yourself around what the issues could be because students will turn to you for technical support. To avoid spending more time troubleshooting technical problems than teaching your content, develop FAQs or links to websites or videos that provide solutions to the most common problems. You don't have to become a programmer to intervene effectively on technical matter. You just need to tell people where they can find good information. Encourage all students to help one another, as well. If you begin to feel bogged down or frustrated with tech support questions, remember that you want to help. It's part of the reason you chose this profession!

Promote Engagement

In a pinch, there may be an impulse to use the LMS as a content repository: upload all the relevant docs, schedule a lecture in Zoom, and voila you have an online course! But such a course will not promote lasting change-as you would expect your classroom course to do. As you construct your class-even if it's on the fly-ask yourself if your expected learning outcomes will be achieved. Avoid the trap of choosing "coverage" over engagement. Let students take turns week to week leading online discussions, either via Zoom or on the discussion board. Add peer-to-peer support, try virtual group work, and provide frequent opportunities for feedback. You don't have to be technologically inclined to let your students know that you care about what they have to say.

Upskill, Upskill, Upskill

Just as you shouldn't overemphasize the role of technology in this educational moment, you don't want to underplay it either. Everyone (faculty, administrators, and students) will need to upskill themselves in educational technology quickly. There are many free resources out there to get you started. Check out LinkedIn (which merged with Lynda.com) to find short videos on how to work in an LMS. If your university's IT department is overloaded, take matters into your own hands by using OERs (Open Educational Resources). OERs provide a wealth of information and resources (such as videos, articles, examples, case studies, rubrics) and other things useful for you and your students. Creative Commons is a good place to start, and YouTube has some very helpful videos, as well.

Survey Often and Early

Survey your students about how it is going early into your tenure as an online instructor. Fear not. You can handle the truth! Quick surveys are a way to take the temperature of the room, a sense of the meeting. They provide an early warning system. The point is not to give yourself a grade but to find out which students are struggling and what they are struggling with. A simple 3-question questionnaire will do. Use a tool like Survey Monkey if you don't know how to set up a survey in your LMS. Ask simple open-ended questions like: "What is the best thing about this experience so far? What would you do differently? How can I help?" An instructor may be unaware that half of the class can't access one of the assignments because of a pop-up blocker or some other easy-to-fix issue. Believe it or not, communicating with your students online may give you the opportunity to be more connected to them as individuals.

Keep it Simple

Think of your first online course as Version 1.0. Remember that the first time out of the gate won't be perfect. Long past the national health crisis, there's likely to be a version 2.0 and 3.0. Keep track of what you "wish you had known" as you go through the rest of the semester, and plan to use these nuggets of knowledge in future online courses. If you don't have time to make videos, post your PPTs. If you don't have PPTs, post your notes. If you don't have notes, dictate your expertise into an audio recording application (such as VoiceThread) or just use your phone to create an audio (MP3) or video (MP4) file.

All of this being said, don't be too hard on yourself. You are, after all, making the plane while flying it! Allow yourself to make mistakes. Experiment. Have fun. You know this teaching-with-technology thing has been on your to-do list for a long time. So, let this be the opportunity you've been waiting for. You are not alone. The whole world-your students, their parents, your colleagues, and your family and friends-are pulling for you right now. Our higher education system depends not upon your technical expertise, but your pedagogical passion. Keep your love of teaching front and center while you learn this important 21 st century skill!

Bio: Dr. J.A. Miller is a digital learning professional with extensive experience in online learning development and delivery. After receiving her Ph.D. English, she developed an expertise in educational technology. She is currently Director of Learning Design for ansrsource, a learning design company. Dr. Miller's background features a unique mixture of strategic consulting, curriculum design, faculty development. She has more than 20 years' experience as an online and face-to-face instructor and brings together theory and practice in her approach to creating outstanding, transformational learning experiences.

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Eight Steps for a Smoother Transition to Online Teaching

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As universities rush to get all their courses online quickly, there's a high probability of error but also a lot you can do to succeed. Problems may occur due to overtaxed technological infrastructure, your students' disorientation and fear, and your own learning curve.

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9 Tips for Successful Transition to Learning Online

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9 Tips for Successful Transition to Learning Online

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You know your stuff. You've got a routine. You're a superstar in a face-to-face classroom, but haven't yet made the leap to putting your class totally online. You want to make sure your face-to-face dream course doesn't turn into a virtual nightmare. While even technologically savvy instructors may struggle in moving even a strongly Web-supported course to fully online delivery, there are simple solutions to address some of the most common concerns instructors have about teaching wholly online.

How do You Get Students to Show Up?

Let's face facts. A computer screen offers students neither the warm comfort of peers nor the imposing brow of an instructor to encourage them to show up. We have to manufacture that motivation elsewhere to inspire students to virtually attend class and provide a means for them to be proactive in their learning. Here are a couple of suggestions.

1. Make a plan and stick to it. Plan your course calendar from the beginning. Try and make similar assignments as regular as possible, but don't try and fill up every day. For example, reading quizzes are to be completed by the first and third Tuesdays, reading journals are due one day later, original discussion posts are due on the second and fourth Thursdays, and comments to others' posts are due two days later on Saturday, etc. Having assignments scheduled on a regular basis lends itself to students developing a routine and planning ahead, yet allows them the flexibility to fit your class into their busy schedules. Even so, not all students have been trained to use a calendar effectively and some are "caught by surprise" when a major assignment comes due, hence, the following suggestion.

2. Communicate in short, timely messages. Although you might lecture for 15-30 minutes uninterrupted in your face-to-face course explaining the details of a particular assignment, don't bother preparing elaborate e-mail messages, since ultimately, your students won't read them. Think instead in terms of what would fit on a phone screen for students to read while they're waiting in line for a latte. Send messages that are short, sweet, and timely like "Make sure you're ready for next week's exam. The study guide is on our site here: [link]" or "We have some important assignments coming due in the next two weeks; check the calendar here [link]" or "By now you should have collected your data for your field assignment, and should be analyzing your data, here's the video on our site that shows you how [link]." Shorter, well-timed messages keep your students informed, help them stay on top of assignments in advance, and let them know you care about their progress. Many LMS platforms will allow you to pre-program messages, so you can time reminders to be sent to students at particular intervals even before your class starts. Program a few messages to give a heads up for your major assignments a week or so prior to when they're due and let the computer do the work for you when the time is right.

How do You Keep Them Engaged?

While the regularity of a routine can help students plan, too much of the same old stuff can lead to boredom. Include variety in the materials you prepare for them, as well as a range of ways they demonstrate their mastery of the concepts in your course.

3. A picture is worth a thousand words. A video might be worth 10 times that. Take advantage of this power to deliver and receive more than just text-based material. Short virtual lectures of 10 minutes or less used to orient students to the course, to introduce a module, or to demonstrate how to solve a particular style of problem are efficient teaching tools that students can access again and again. Videos can be created in freeware like Jing or purchased programs like Camtasia Studio, although there are several other options as well. Other already available online video resources (Youtube, Khan Academy) can help solidify specific concepts. Have students use those same services or others compose and narrate digital reports to submit to you.

4. Create assignments that are challenging yet relevant to them. Making course material relatable to their own experience can better ground their mastery of course information. So, rather than a generic "Discuss your thoughts on the author's viewpoint in Chapter 3," try instead "Identify and describe, in your own words, two strengths and two weaknesses of the author's argument in Chapter 3, then describe a situation which you experienced or witnessed in which the author's theories would have either worked or fallen flat. Explain why they would have done so." Building bridges between broad concepts and students' own experiences also allows you to get to know the students better and makes grading less dull.

5. Feedback: give it early and often. No matter whether they're top students or barely scraping by, students want to know they're on your radar. Make sure you send occasional personalized messages (again, short and sweet, as noted above) to maintain a connection. For discussion posts you might put brief, semi-generic comments: "Great post, Aaron" or "Interesting perspective, Perla," and reserve your detailed responses for more involved assignments. You may even have a bank of responses that you cut and paste, depending on how large a class you teach. If you notice a student falling behind, a short message like, "Bill, I noticed you missed the last two discussions, make sure you check the calendar regularly to stay on track," might spur their re-engagement. It makes a difference to the students when you reach out to them digitally to make even a brief connection with them.

How Do You Control The Chaos?

You've heard the horror stories. Colleagues that move their classes to a wholly online format are greeted with a barrage of e-mails from students asking where to find materials and how to complete assignments eventhough everything was carefully detailed by the instructor and readily available on the course site. There are simple ways to minimize the confusion, allow students to become independent learners, and help them stay on track.

6. Start off with a virtual tour. Even though the organization of your course makes sense to you, students may view it differently. As the first activity in your course, create a short orientation video using one of the programs mentioned above to show them how and where to find materials, calendars, quizzes, assignments, discussion boards, e-mail, announcements, drop boxes, etc. However, note simply creating this tour may not be enough, hence the next suggestion.

7. Complete the orientation to level up. Many students are familiar with video game protocols that won't let them access higher levels of the game until they've successfully completed the lower levels. Most LMS platforms include similar controls for course materials. Create a mandatory orientation module that has your syllabus, orientation video, and short exercises that let them practice turning in assignments, similar to what they'll see later down the road. At the end give them a quiz on all of the above. Set the conditions such that students have to successfully complete this orientation module before the remaining course materials are revealed to them.

If, after you've detailed the hows, wheres, and whys in this or another module you still get questions, don't repeat your explanation, just refer students back to the part of the module where the information is found. For example, "You might want to go back and review the 'how to format assignments' video for formatting instructions." Having them look for the material themselves shortens your response time, lets students know that answers to most of their questions are readily found in the materials you've provided, and encourages students to be active and independent participants in the learning process.

8. Create a narrow path to your course. Although most LMS platforms offer a myriad of ways for student to access the course materials, this variety may lead to confusion. By following multiple paths to your materials, students may unwittingly skip assignments, access them out of your intended sequence, or not see all of the resource material they need to read prior to completing an assignment. To avoid these situations, create a home page for your site that has the links to materials and assignments laid out in the order in which you want students to access them; this page should be the default when students open the course. Then, hide or disable student access to the unneeded menu options. Frequently, students really only need the menus for the few items that update or change irregularly like announcements and grades. Access to discussions, assignments, quizzes, etc. can be gained through the links you provided in your carefully laid out sequence of materials on your home page.

9. Let students help each other out. It's simple math: There's more of them than there are of us. It's much more likely that one or more students are going to be on your site at midnight when an assignment's due than you are. Create a discussion board that is a "Student Help Desk" and encourage its use for students to field simple questions for each other. That way, your inbox won't be flooded with multiples of simple questions like: "Where are the instructions for the assignment?" or "Where's the dropbox?" from the few students who aren't quite on the ball. If more than a few students are struggling to find answers on the help desk, one or more will likely write directly to you for information. If so, you may wish to review how your course is laid out and ask students to tell you what's making it difficult for them to find the information.

Online delivery of courses can present a number of difficulties. Nonetheless, if these challenges are properly managed, they not only allow students to grow in their content knowledge, they also afford students opportunities to develop the skills and confidence needed to become self-directed learners.

About the Author

Dr. Patricia MacGregor-Mendoza is a professor of spanish and linguistics at New Mexico State University. She has been teaching with web support since 1997 and has taught several wholly online courses since 2003. She may be reached at [email protected] .

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Copyright © 2013 ACM 1535-394X/13/07-2509419 $15.00

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2509419

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elearn Magazine: Transition from Tradition: 9 Tips for successfully moving your face-to-face course online

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Many successful face-to-face educators who are interested in moving their courses online feel overwhelmed by the prospect of transitioning to a virtual delivery format. This article offers a set of practical tips to address some of the most common challenges of this process and make the teaching of online courses constructive and enjoyable for students and teachers alike.

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Many assume the "accessibility" features on our devices are helpful only to those with visual or hearing impairments, but they're useful for everyone.

Credit... Jo Zixuan Zhou

Buried deep in your phone'ssettings are a collection of features under the mundane banner "Accessibility." These features seem as if they're just for people who may be colorblind or have poor eyesight - buteveryone can, and should, use them.

There are slight differences in how some of these features are handled on iPhones versus Android phones (and even further differences from one Android phone to another), but the features we've rounded up below are generally available on most devices. They may be in a different place depending on your device, but if you explore your phone, you're likely to find versions of these features somewhere in there.

One of the most universally useful accessibility features is changing the font size on your phone. As phones get bigger, they have more and more space for text. To the point that you could potentially fit whole pages of a book on your screen. Some phones default to having really small text so you can read as much as possible without scrolling, but this can also make text harder to read.

On iOS devices like Apple's iPhone and iPad, you can find this setting under Accessibility, then Display & Text Size. From here, you have a lot of options, but the most relevant is labeled "Larger Text." Despite its name, you can use this to make text smaller as well. At the top of the screen, you'll also see a toggle labeled "Larger Accessibility Sizes" that give you even more text size increments. Adjust the text until it's comfortable for you to read and go about your day.

On Android, Google's mobile operating system, this feature can usually be found in the Settings app under Accessibility, often labeled something like "Font size." Android doesn't have quite as many levels of font sizes as iPhones do, but you can adjust the text to be anywhere from slightly smaller to a couple of steps larger than normal. You might want to turn the text size up to read it better, but you can also turn it down if your eyesight is good enough and you would like to read more on a single screen.

Text isn't the only thing you can make bigger with your accessibility features. The buttons, boxes and various other visual elements in your apps can be adjusted as well. For example, your home screen can fit a certain number of icons on it. If you turn up the display size, you might not be able to fit as many, but the ones you're left with will be larger and easier to hit.

In Android, you can adjust this in the Settings app under Accessibility by choosing "Display size." Note that adjusting this setting will also bring the text size up or down with it, so you may want to start with this, then go back and tweak the text size if your changes make it too hard to read. Unfortunately, this feature doesn't exist on iOS, but you do have a couple of toggles you can tweak to add shapes to buttons so it's clearer which part of the screen you need to tap, or on/off labels for toggles that will tell you which position a switch is in.

In the most recent versions of Android and iOS, both platforms have rolled out a systemwide dark theme that is easier on the eyes than the searing bright white that most apps have leaned on in recent years. While iPhones treat this as a basic display feature, which you can find under Settings and then Display & Brightness, Android has it buried in the Accessibility section.

To turn it on in Android, open your Settings app, head to the Accessibility subheading and just under the font and display size sections, you'll see a toggle for "Dark theme." However, you have a few more options to play with. If you enable the hidden Developer Options menu, you'll find a setting under Theming called "Accent color." This will let you change the highlight color that's used throughout the system for things like buttons or menu headings.

The accent color will be altered if you enable the dark mode on Android. By default, the accent color is a deep blue, but in dark mode, this color becomes a pale blue that's not quite as easy to read against a black background. If you change the accent color to black - which, when inverted, will become white - you can get a much cleaner look.

In the early days of telephones, in order to hang up, you had to physically place the receiver down on the phone's base. The action gave phone calls a satisfying finality that just isn't achieved by lightly tapping a red spot on your screen. If you miss that - or just want a more tactile experience to let you know when you've ended a call (so you don't start talking aloud about the person you were just on the phone with, only to realize you never actually hung up) - you can enable a feature on Android phones that lets you press the power button to end a call.

In the Accessibility section of the Settings app, you can find a toggle that reads "Power button ends call." With this switch enabled, you can hang up on any phone call by pressing the power button on your phone. Sure, you can't just slam your phone down on the table to hang up, but it's still more tactile than tapping the screen. Plus, you can do it without looking.

Both Android and iOS have a handy shortcut to pull up a magnifying glass with a triple tap. In true Apple versus Google fashion, though, the two companies have very different definitions for this similarly named tool.

On Android, the feature allows you to triple tap your screen to zoom in on whatever is on your display. This is handy if, for example, you're using Instagram, which allows you to pinch-to-zoom in on photos only as long as your fingers are in contact with the screen. As soon as you let go, the picture will zoom back out. With the Magnification tool, you can zoom in for as long as you want.

On iOS devices, in the Accessibility section of the Settings app, enable the Zoom toggle. Now, you can double-tap with three fingers to pull up a magnification window to get a closer look at your menu. This shouldn't be confused with Apple's Magnifier tool, which has a different meaning. Instead of zooming in on what's on your screen, the latter will use the camera to create a "magnifying glass" to let you look closer at physical objects. It's similar to opening your camera app and zooming in manually, but a lot faster. This tool uses the same triple-tap gesture as the one on Android, though on older iPhones, it instead uses a triple-click of the home button where available. Both tools are useful, each in their own way.

Both Android and iOS have smart assistants that you can talk to with a collection of voice commands to quickly do a task. Most Android devices have a Google search bar on the home screen where you can type those same commands, if you're somewhere that you would rather not be seen talking to your phone, or where it is too loud to be heard. Unfortunately, Siri doesn't quite have the same flexibility. Unless you dig into your settings.

Under Accessibility, there is a section labeled Siri where you can find a "Type to Siri" toggle. When this is enabled, you can long-press the Side button (or Home button if your iPhone still has one) and instead of listening for a voice command, Siri will pop up with a keyboard where you can type a command. This is excellent for discreetly entering commands in the middle of that meeting that you're definitely paying attention to.

Many more tools are available in the Accessibility section of your phone, including toggles to increase the contrast on certain text elements, reduce animations that might strain your eyes, or read text aloud. Some of these features differ from one device to another, so take a look through your phone's settings to get an idea of what you can do with them.

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Why Your Phone's Accessibility Options Are Useful for Everyone

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Many assume the "accessibility" features on our devices are helpful only to those with visual or hearing impairments, but they're useful for everyone. Buried deep in your phone'ssettings are a collection of features under the mundane banner "Accessibility." These features seem as if they're just for people who may be colorblind or have poor eyesight - buteveryone can, and should, use them.

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Another resource that offers text to speech learning mode.

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#1 Text To Speech (TTS) Reader Online. Free & Unlimited

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Listen to great content

Most of the world's content is in textual form. Being able to listen to it - is huge! In that sense, TTSReader has a huge advantage over podcasts. You choose your content - out of an infinite variety - that includes humanity's entire knowledge and art richness. Listen to lectures, to PDF files. Paste or upload any text from anywhere, edit it if needed, and listen to it anywhere and anytime.

Proofreading

One of the best ways to catch errors in your writing is to listen to it being read aloud. By using TTSReader for proofreading, you can catch errors that you might have missed while reading silently, allowing you to improve the quality and accuracy of your written content. Errors can be in sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar, but also in your essay's structure, order and content.

Listen to web pages

TTSReader can be used to read out loud webpages in two different ways. 1. Using the regular player - paste the URL and click play. The website's content will be imported into the player. (2) Using our Chrome extension to listen to pages without leaving the page.
Listening to web pages with TTSReader can provide a more accessible, convenient, and efficient way of consuming online content.

Turn ebooks into audiobooks

Upload any ebook file of epub format - and TTSReader will read it out loud for you, effectively turning it into an audiobook alternative. You can find thousands of epub books for free, available for download on Project Gutenberg's site, which is an open library for free ebooks.

Read along for speed & comprehension

TTSReader enables read along by highlighting the sentence being read and automatically scrolling to keep it in view. This way you can follow with your own eyes - in parallel to listening to it. This can boost reading speed and improve comprehension.

Generate audio files from text

TTSReader enables exporting the synthesized speech with a single click. This is available currently only on Windows and requires TTSReader's premium. Adhering to the commercial terms some of the voices may be used commercially for publishing, such as narrating videos.

Accessibility, dyslexia, etc.

For individuals with visual impairments or reading difficulties, listening to textual content, lectures, articles & web pages can be an essential tool for accessing & comprehending information.

Language learning

TTSReader can read out text in multiple languages, providing learners with listening as well as speaking practice. By listening to the text being read aloud, learners can improve their comprehension skills and pronunciation.

Kids - stories & learning

Kids love stories! And if you can read them stories - it's definitely the best! But, if you can't, let TTSReader read them stories for you. Set the right voice and speed, that is appropriate for their comprehension level. For kids who are at the age of learning to read - this can also be an effective tool to strengthen that skill, as it highlights every sentence being read.

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1 Text To Speech. Type or upload any text, file, website & book for listening online, proofreading, reading-along or generating professional mp3 voice-overs.

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Although the free version has some limitations, it is highly recommended. Try Natural Reader and see if it helps support your needs!

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Free Text to Speech Online with Realistic AI Voices

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Convert text into ultra-realistic audio. Have any text read aloud with AI Voices. AI text reader for pdfs, books, documents, and webpages.

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Insight on how students learn the same information differently.

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Inclusive Design: Bring Web Accessibility to Your Nonprofit

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Even though accessibility is an ongoing process, it is still important to outline specific ways to measure progress and meet legal requirements. Fortunately, there is a well-established international standard to help you accomplish this-the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

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You can customize your Android device using accessibility settings and apps.

Use a screen reader

TalkBack: To interact with your device using touch and spoken feedback, you can turn on the TalkBack screen reader. TalkBack describes your actions and tells you about alerts and notifications.

Select to Speak: If you want spoken feedback only at certain times, you can turn on Select to Speak. Select items on your screen to hear them read or described aloud, or point the camera at something in the real world.

Change your display

Display size and font size: To change the size of items on your screen, adjust the display size or font size.

Magnification: To temporarily zoom or magnify your screen, use magnification.

Contrast and color options: To adjust contrast or colors, use high-contrast text, dark theme, color inversion, or color correction.

Interaction controls

Voice Access: Voice Access lets you control your device with spoken commands. Use your voice to open apps, navigate, and edit text hands-free.

Switch Access: Switch Access lets you interact with your Android device using one or more switches instead of the touchscreen. You can use a switch or keyboard to control your device.

Time to take action (Accessibility timeout): You can choose how long to show messages that ask you to take action, but are visible only temporarily.

Use a braille display

BrailleBack: You can connect a refreshable braille display to your device via Bluetooth. BrailleBack works with TalkBack for a combined speech and braille experience, allowing you to edit text and interact with your device.

Audio & on-screen text

Captions: You can choose caption preferences (language, text, and style) for your device.

Live Caption: On Pixel devices, Live Caption automatically captions media playing on your phone.

Live Transcribe: You can use Live Transcribe to capture speech and view it as text.

Sound Amplifier: You can use Sound Amplifier with wired headphones to filter, augment, and amplify the sounds in your environment.

Hearing aid support: You can pair hearing aids with your Android device to hear more clearly.

Real-time text (RTT) during calls: You can use text to communicate during a phone call with RTT.

Explore Android accessibility apps and services

You can explore Android accessibility apps and services in several ways:

Download Android Accessibility Suite, including the Accessibility Menu, Select to Speak, Switch Access, and TalkBack. Android Accessibility Suite is built in to many Android devices.

Review Android device settings for ways to customize your device. Open your device's Settings app, then choose Accessibility.

Explore Google Play for other accessibility apps and services for Android.

Design and develop more accessible apps

For anyone designing or developing an app, Accessibility Scanner can help you identify opportunities to improve your app for users. You can also refer to Android Accessibility developer resources.

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You can customize your Android device using accessibility settings and apps. TalkBack: To interact with your device using touch and spoken feedback, you can turn on the TalkBack screen reader. TalkBack describes your actions and tells you about alerts and notifications.

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Find information about Apple's built-in accessibility tools and technologies that help people with disabilities get the most out of their Mac.

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More specific information and quick tutorials for each quality.

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Our goal at the University of Washington, as stated in the University of Washington IT Accessibility Guidelines, is to achieve the success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG ) 2.0 at Level AA. WCAG 2.0 is the standard for web accessibility developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Our IT Accessibility Checklist can be completed online, and is based on the WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA standards. It is provided to assist the UW community, including web designers, developers, content creators, and purchasing agents, in creating and procuring accessible IT. Vendors and contractors can use it to document their level of accessibility when providing products and services to the UW, as explained in Procurement Procedure 7.2.15 (PDF). Many of the items in the checklist apply to web pages and web-based applications as well as electronic documents in Microsoft Word, Adobe PDF, and other formats, and other products and services that are not specifically web-based.

The following tutorial explains each of the items in the checklist. Click on any link for additional information about that item.

Perceivable

Make content and controls perceivable by all users.

Does video have captions and does audio have a transcript?
More about Producing Accessible Multimedia

Is the tab order and read order logical and intuitive?
More about Ensuring Proper Tab and Read Order

Operable

Make content and controls operable by all users.

Understandable

Make content and user interfaces understandable to all users.

Robust

Make content robust enough that it can be interpreted reliably by a wide variety of user agents, including assistive technologies.

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Our goal at the University of Washington, as stated in the University of Washington IT Accessibility Guidelines, is to achieve the success criteria of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG ) 2.0 at Level AA. WCAG 2.0 is the standard for web accessibility developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

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Learn about 4 qualities (Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) you can be mindful of to create a access.

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AEM: Designing for Accessibility with POUR

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The contents of this website were developed under a cooperative agreement with the US Department of Education, #H327Z140001. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the US Department of Education and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government. Project Officer, Tara Courchaine, Ed.D.

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Top 5 things you need to know about designing accessible content

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The goal of Blackboard Learn is to provide an accessible platform for students and instructors for equal access to online courses. Instructors have some responsibility to make their course content accessible. Students need to ask for accommodations if they need them. Find out how you can create and participate in inclusive learning experiences by using the accessibility features in Blackboard Learn.

Blackboard is fully committed to ensuring that our platform contains no barriers for users with disabilities and is both usable and accessible by everyone, regardless of age, ability, or situation. Blackboard measures and evaluates accessibility levels using two sets of standards: Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act issued from the United States federal government and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) issued by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The linked resources are available in English only.

Design accessible content

The following list includes the top five things you need to know about designing accessible content:

If you are adding images to your content, you must define alternative (alt) text for them. Alt text should be simple and succinct, and describe exactly what the image is. Example alt="photograph of a Cell Dividing." If an image is a diagram that conveys more complicated information, a long description or textual format of the material is required.

If you are adding video or other multi-media content to your course, you must include descriptive captions for the content to ensure users with hearing impairments can consume it.

One of the top complaints from students with visual impairments is the inability to consume attached files. Format attached documents with appropriate headings to ensure they can be properly consumed by screen readers. When creating your documents, use the Formatting and Style options available in Microsoft Office, Adobe, or other word processing tools to define appropriate headings and lists.

Properly tag attached PDF files to ensure their structures can be read by screen readers. Simple methods for "print" or "save" to PDF create a single image of the file. While the document looks like it is properly structured, the screen reader is not able to interact with or read any of the material. To learn more about making accessible PDF documents, see Meet PDF Accessibility Standards on the Adobe Acrobat website.

Be sure that you provide your students with clear expectations, instructions, and directions for all assignments and tests. Students with cognitive impairments or learning disabilities can have trouble focusing on even simple tasks. Clear directions and understandable expectations can help them focus, making them much more likely to succeed.

Using Blackboard Learn with a hearing impairment

While the Blackboard Learn product does not auto-caption media files, it does provide full support for captions in all media types that you can upload or view within your course content.

Using Blackboard Learn with a visual impairment

The following list includes the top five things to know about using Blackboard with a visual impairment:

Blackboard Learn is developed against the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to ensure its compatibility with the latest versions of assistive technology including screen readers such as JAWS and VoiceOver.

Pages in Blackboard Learn follow a common structure to ensure familiarity as you navigate through the system. A combination of headings and ARIA landmarks are used to define the structure of the page. Features such as the global navigation menu and Quick Links can help with faster, more efficient navigation. All keyboard navigation follows commonly used web navigation models.

The Quick Links feature goes beyond traditional skip links, allowing you to jump directly to any heading or ARIA landmark on the current page. You can open Quick Links with a keyboard shortcut (Shift+Alt+L) from anywhere in a page so that it's always easy to move around.

Alt tags are used to identify all images used within Blackboard Learn. When instructors are building course content, they are prompted to add alt text to images they upload, as well to ensure visual information is available to all users.

If you have defined high contrast settings on your computer, you can enable high contrast styles on the login page of Blackboard Learn. Doing so will inform the system to respect your operating system selections to ensure the best visual experience based on your personal needs.

Using Blackboard Learn with a mobility impairment

The following list includes the top five things to know about using Blackboard with a mobility impairment:

Keyboard navigation throughout the Blackboard Learn system follows common web navigation models to ensure consistency and familiarity with other web-based experiences.

Quick links will aggregate up a list of all the headings and landmarks on the page. This allows you to quickly find and navigate to elements in the middle of the page. You can open Quick Links with a keyboard shortcut (Shift+Alt+L) from anywhere in the page so that it's always easy to move around.

Keyboard shortcuts are available for a variety of tools in Blackboard Learn to increase efficiency for keyboard users. Keyboard shortcuts are specific to the current page or tool in use. Discover them by opening the Quick Links tool (Shift+Alt+L).

Located on every page where you can reorder items using drag-and-drop function, the keyboard accessible reordering tool displays the items on the page as a list. You can use keyboard commands to reorder the items.

Using Blackboard Learn with a learning disability

The following list includes the top five things to know about using Blackboard with a learning disability:

When you are in a course, you can collapse the course menu to reduce the clutter on the page and help you focus on the task at hand. Bring the menu back at any time by holding your mouse on the left of the screen and selecting the bar that appears. This control is also accessible with a keyboard.

Menu options, buttons, and controls that are not always needed only appear when the items they relate to receive focus from either the mouse or keyboard. This helps reduce the visual noise on the page and ensures access to the menus as soon as you need them.

Activity counters within the global navigation menu and My Blackboard tools can alert you to new items or information requiring your attention. As you review these items, the counters are cleared so that you are always aware of what is new or has changed since you last accessed the system.

If your system is enabled, you can set up individual notifications for new content, due dates, discussion posts, and other items within Blackboard Learn to alert you to information even when you are not logged into the system. These notifications are sent to you by email, shown in My Blackboard updates, or the Notifications Dashboard. If Blackboard Connect is installed, you can receive alerts by text message.

The Blackboard Learn system allows instructors to set up accommodations for tests based on individual needs. If you require more time, more attempts, different display options, or an alternative testing location, contact your instructor.

Accessibility features in Blackboard Learn

As a student or an instructor, awareness and use of these features and tools creates an accessible environment for success.

My Blackboard

My Blackboard aggregates information from across the Blackboard Learn system and focuses on the individual user. From a single place, users can get a quick overview of everything related to various tools and courses, as well as their academic or institutional network and community. This allows users to respond, review, and directly interact with the information presented there. Activity counters quickly call attention to items requiring a user's attention since he last accessed My Blackboard. Having a single place to go can simplify the overall experience for students with disabilities and help them feel more focused on the tasks they need to complete. Students can get an overview of outstanding information before diving into the details of their courses.

Global Navigation

The global navigation menu refers to the set of links that appears at the top of the Blackboard Learn interface. To access it, select your name or use a keyboard shortcut. This menu provides a consistent, quick, and easy way to find information. You can also navigate to tools like My Blackboard, your courses, and even some personal settings from anywhere in the system.

Adaptive Release

With adaptive release, instructors can create individualized learning paths for students. Adaptive release controls the release of content to students based on a set of rules an instructor creates. The rules may be related to availability, date and time, individual users, group membership, scores or attempts on any Grade Center item, calculated columns in the Grade Center, or review status of an item in the course. Instructors can use adaptive release to target alternative content formats or additional materials directly to the students who need them.

Quick Links

Located in the top left of the interface, the Quick Links icon opens a list of all the ARIA landmarks, as well as an outline of all content headings on the page you are viewing. Any available keyboard shortcuts for the current tool or page also appear. You can quickly locate any heading or section within any page in the Blackboard Learn application and jump directly to it. Quick Links is specific to the page you are viewing. You can open it at any time with a keyboard shortcut (Shift+Alt+L). This shortcut provides a significant increase in efficiency for users who rely primarily on their keyboards for navigating within the application.

Test Exceptions

New settings appear on the Test and Survey Options pages called Test/Survey Availability Exceptions. With these settings, instructors can select one or more groups or students and make a number of exceptions to the already established availability settings for a test or survey. Exceptions provide an accommodation to a student with a disability, such as allowing more time or attempts on the test, or providing accommodation for technology and language differences.

Keyboard accessible reordering

Located on every page where you can reorder items using drag-and-drop function, the keyboard accessible reordering tool displays the items on the page as a list. You can use keyboard commands to reorder the items.

YouTube player controls

The YouTube mashup allows an instructor to search for and embed YouTube videos directly in course content. When the video is displayed, students can use the accessible player controls that allow them to play, pause, stop, and control the volume of a video with a keyboard or screen reader. They are not required to interact with the more challenging Flash based controls that are present with the default YouTube videos.

Notifications

You can configure Blackboard to send out notifications through a variety of channels, informing users about changes to their courses. Notifications are specific to the individual user, so both instructors and students can set what notifications are sent to them, as well as when and how they want to receive notifications. Users can select a link within a notification and go directly to the individual item without the need to consume all the surrounding content. When integrated with Blackboard Connect, users can optionally receive notifications by text (SMS), text-to-voice, and telephone. These capabilities allow all users to understand what is happening with their courses in the medium that is most comfortable for them.

Display options and content folders

Instructors can control the visual display of content on content pages or within folders in their courses. Options include showing only the text, showing only an icon to represent a content object, and showing both the text and the icon. With a lot of content on a page, students with cognitive disabilities can find it challenging to consume the information. Instructors can use folders and formatting to control the amount of clutter and help students to focus on one element at a time.

Content Editor

The content editor in Blackboard Learn is based on third-party technology from TinyMCE. It provides accessible controls, as well as keyboard shortcuts for formatting content created within it. The editor properly cleans up unnecessary HTML code that may be included when content is copied from Microsoft Office documents. This clean HTML ensures that screen reader users can fully consume any content created in or copied into the editor.

The formatting controls in the editor also ensure that headings added to content by an instructor do not conflict with the overall semantic structure of the page the content is displayed in. Building accessible content within a course is key to the success of all students. The content editor helps ensure that any content you create within it meets user and system expectations.

High contrast styles

On the login page for the Blackboard Learn system, you can choose to enable a high contrast setting. This ensures the system uses the contrast settings you already defined in your operating system to display text, menus, and other navigation controls within the Blackboard Learn environment. For users with visual impairments, the contrast settings defined within the operating system likely provide the most comfortable manner to view and consume information. The high contrast support in Blackboard Learn allows you to continue to use them.

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Accessibility Features in Blackboard Learn

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The goal of Blackboard Learn is to provide an accessible platform for students and instructors for equal access to online courses. Instructors have some responsibility to make their course content accessible. Students need to ask for accommodations if they need them.

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(Non Visual Desktop Access) A free-open source screen reader for Microsoft Windows

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Empowering lives through non-visual access to technology

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90 day trial period

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Drive Meaningful Progress

Customizable tools in Kurzweil 3000 align with research-based learning strategies and provide support throughout the learning process. As a result, students are able to independently grasp and articulate concepts more effectively.

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text reader reading adaptive accessibility

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Assistive Learning Technologies & Literacy Software from Kurzweil Education

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Customizable tools in Kurzweil 3000 align with research-based learning strategies and provide support throughout the learning process. As a result, students are able to independently grasp and articulate concepts more effectively.

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Free license ends June 30th

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Educational institutions in the United States with up-to-date multi-user licenses of JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion, are qualified. All students, faculty, and staff with an active email address are entitled to receive free home annual licenses for their personally owned equipment.

In addition, special licenses have been created to assist students and workers who must remain home during the COVID-19 crisis. A free short-term Home Annual License of JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion (expires June 30, 2020) is available to anyone with a personal email address in the United States and Canada.

These products require either a Microsoft Windows 10 or 7 operating system. Remote desktop and Citrix support are not provided. Contact Freedom Scientific Customer Service at 727-803-8000 with any questions.

Copyright © 2020 Freedom Scientific Inc.™ - A Vispero Brand

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Is my email eligible to download a license?

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Educational institutions in the United States with up-to-date multi-user licenses of JAWS, ZoomText, or Fusion, are qualified. All students, faculty, and staff with an active email address are entitled to receive free home annual licenses for their personally owned equipment. In addition, special licenses have been created to assist students and workers who must remain home during the COVID-19 crisis.

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Blackboard All Accessibility Checklist (quick 1 pager)

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Blackboard All Accessibility Checklist (quick 1 pager)

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WebAIM: Captions, Transcriptions, and Audio Descriptions 

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WebAIM: Captions, Transcriptions, and Audio Descriptions 

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For a more in-depth information on these practices, check out the info here.

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Transcripts

For multimedia, a transcript can also help users who can neither hear the audio nor see the video. Beyond the spoken words, a transcript should include descriptions of important audio information (like laughter) and visual information (such as someone entering the room). Transcripts help deaf/blind users interact with content using refreshable Braille devices.

Transcripts also allow anyone that cannot access content from either web audio or video (or both) to read a text transcript instead. For most web video, both captions and a text transcript should be provided. For content that is audio only, a transcript will usually suffice-captions are not necessary for audio-only media like a podcast.

Transcripts make multimedia content searchable by search engines and users. Screen reader users also may also prefer a transcript over real-time audio, since most proficient screen reader users set their assistive technology to read at a rate much faster than natural human speech.

In order to be optimally accessible to users with auditory disabilities, web multimedia should include both synchronized captions and a transcript.

Audio Descriptions

Visual content within multimedia must be described via audio in order for the multimedia to be optimally accessible to users with visual disabilities.

Audio descriptions help users with visual disabilities perceive content that is presented only visually, and are necessary for WCAG 2 Level AA conformance. On television, this is often called Descriptive Video Service (DVS). Typically, a narrator describes the visual-only content in the multimedia. Audio descriptions can be provided with the primary video, or in another audio track, or via an alternate version of the video that includes audio descriptions.

Here's a short example of an audio description that you might recognize. Can you visualize what is being described?

Producing audio descriptions can be expensive and time-consuming. However, they are unnecessary if the audio already presents the necessary visual content. If a video displays a list of five important items, the items should be read aloud instead of the audio presenting, "As you can see, there are five important points". Instead of, "Click here and then here," the presenter should describe what is being clicked. This way, no separate audio description track is necessary.

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Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Descriptions

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For multimedia, a transcript can also help users who can neither hear the audio nor see the video. Beyond the spoken words, a transcript should include descriptions of important audio information (like laughter) and visual information (such as someone entering the room). Transcripts help deaf/blind users interact with content using refreshable Braille devices.

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Learn how to add captions to your content.

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How-to and overviews of how to create with accessibility and gain perspective on accessibility for all.

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Inclusive Design: Bring Web Accessibility to Your Nonprofit

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It is not enough to understand accessibility principles. You must be able to apply these principles using the tools like word processors and text editors that you rely on to add content to your website.

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Often times it's easier to create content with accessibility in mind, rather than to re-mediate. You'll find tips for your creation provided by Washington's State Board for Community and Technical Colleges.

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SBCTC's Library of Accessibility Resources

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Accessibility Features in Microsoft Word

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Accessibility Features in Microsoft Word

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You may be surprised to learn how many features you already have access to!

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Feature overview - Microsoft accessibility

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Discover how people at home, school, and work can achieve more with the built-in accessibility tools and features in Microsoft technologies.

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By Jamie Martin

Dictation is an assistive technology (AT) tool that can help kids who struggle with writing. You may hear it referred to as "speech-to-text," "voice-to-text," "voice recognition" or "speech recognition" technology. Kids can use dictation to write with their voices, instead of writing by hand or with a keyboard. This can be helpful for kids with dysgraphia, dyslexia and other learning and thinking differences that impact writing.

Read more about what dictation technology is and where to find it.

Types of Dictation Technology

Dictation technology converts spoken words into digital text on a screen. With dictation, kids can write words by speaking them aloud. Kids can use dictation not only to write, but also to edit and revise their writing-all by using their voice.

There are several types of dictation technology kids can use.

Built-in dictation technology: Today, many devices have built-in dictation tools. This includes desktop and laptop computers (Windows and macOS), smartphone and digital tablets (Android and iOS), and Chromebooks (Chrome OS). If you have any of these devices, you probably don't need to buy special software. The microphone and the dictation tools come with the device, but you may need an Internet connection.

Dictation apps: Along with using built-in dictation tools, your child can also download dictation apps on smartphones and digital tablets. One example is Dragon Dictation (iOS).

Chrome tools: A number of tools for Chromebooks and the Chrome browser also offer dictation, like Co:Writer Universal, WordQ and Read&Write for Google Chrome. When used in the Chrome browser, Google Docs also has its own dictation tool called Voice Typing.

Dictation software programs: The most full-featured dictation technology is found in software programs for desktop and laptop computers. These programs can adapt to how a child speaks, which makes them more accurate the more a child uses them. Some dictation programs can also convert audio recordings into digital text. Examples of dictation software include Dragon for PC, Dragon for Mac and WordQ+SpeakQ.

Kids with writing issues can have a hard time with assignments like essays and papers, and even writing emails. Dictation technology can help in several ways. By using dictation technology:

Kids with motor skills issues can write more comfortably and accurately. This includes kids who have trouble typing on a keyboard.

Kids with poor handwriting can use dictation to create text that's easier for others to read.

Kids who struggle with spelling can say a word or sound it out, and then see how it's spelled on-screen.

Kids who think faster than they can write by hand or type on a keyboard can more easily get all their thoughts into words.

Dictation technology is a powerful tool, but using it properly is a skill. There are commands kids have to learn. And some aspects of dictation can be difficult for kids with certain learning and thinking differences.

Here's what you need to know:

When dictating their writing, kids need to speak clearly and pronounce words correctly. If kids mumble or mispronounce words, the dictated text might not be correct. This may be hard for kids who struggle with spoken language.

While dictating text, kids don't only have to say the words they want to write. They have to say the punctuation, too. For example, they may need to say "period" or "question mark" at the end of a sentence.

In general, dictation is more accurate if kids say whole phrases and sentences, not just individual words. While kids who have slow processing speed or struggle with working memory may benefit from dictation in other ways, they may have trouble saying large groups of words at a time.

Editing or navigating a document with dictation can be challenging. Kids have to learn how to use special verbal commands. For example, to delete the previous sentence, a child might have to say "select previous" and "delete that." To navigate a document, a child might have to say "move backwards 10 words" to move the cursor, or "new paragraph" to start a new paragraph.

Many teachers recommend that kids start with an outline before writing a paper with dictation. That's because when kids dictate, they can sometimes lose focus on what they're writing about. An outline helps kids stay organized.

Kids can use dictation in combination with keyboarding. For instance, some kids find it easier to write a first draft with dictation, but then use a keyboard and mouse for editing and moving around in a document.

It's important to keep in mind that dictation technology isn't perfect. It may not always be accurate when putting what your child says into text. And as with all AT tools, dictation may not help every child with writing issues. Some kids may do better with other types of accommodations for writing, like a scribe to write down what they're saying. Others may prefer physical tools to support their writing.

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Dictation is an assistive technology (AT) tool that can help kids who struggle with writing. You may hear it referred to as "speech-to-text," "voice-to-text," "voice recognition" or "speech recognition" technology. Kids can use dictation to write with their voices, instead of writing by hand or with a keyboard.