Online Accessibility Resources

Arcadia’s online accessibility work is driven by the following principles:

• Technology accessibility is an institution-wide responsibility that requires commitment and involvement from leadership across the university.
• Technology access for individuals with disabilities must provide comparable functionality, affordability, and timeliness and should be delivered in as seamless a manner as possible.
• The implementation of Universal Design principles should reduce the need for, and costs associated with, individual accommodations for inaccessible technology products.

Information and communication technology is considered accessible if it can be perceived, understood, navigated, and interacted with in a similar capacity by people with disabilities as it can by those without.

Comparable access to information must be provided, taking the needs of all users and learners into account. True accessibility provides for not just the vision and hearing impaired but also the color blind, those prone to seizures, and people with physical limitations that require keyboard navigation rather than the use of a mouse. With that in mind, we have developed tools and resources to help you make your web content accessible.

ACCESSIBILITY BEST PRACTICES FOR ARCADIA.EDU CONTENT EDITORS

Today, more and more instructors are using video and audio recording of class sessions and student projects. These recordings are primarily utilized to allow students to watch a missed session, to review an earlier session, or to share with a future class. If any student is identifiable in a recording of a class or other educational event, it may constitute an educational record protected under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (“FERPA”). To ensure FERPA compliance, consult the Faculty Classroom Recordings Best Practices, a document which was prepared as part of a collaborative effort between faculty and administration.

Below you will find a list of audio/visual tools and their accessibility components that are available to faculty and students at Arcadia University.

Blackboard Ally

Blackboard Ally helps to make course content accessible by providing:

• Alternative formats - Automatically check for accessibility issues and generate alternative accessible formats for students.
• Step by Step Instructions - Guide instructors on how to improve the accessibility of their course content and learn ways of making future materials accessible when creating them.

Zoom

Zoom tests its products with keyboard-only, and with the latest screen readers. Using knowledge gathered from customer feedback and from its own testing, Zoom trains its teams to sustainably build accessible products.

Its products are compliant, with exceptions, with the following standards:

• WCAG 2.1 AA Standards
• Revised Section 508 Standards
• EN 301 549 Accessibility requirements

For more detailed information, view Zoom's Accessibility Features.

Canvas 

The Canvas platform was built using the most modern HTML and CSS technologies, and is committed to W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative and Section 508 guidelines. For more specific information, view this Canvas accessibility guide.

Panopto

Panopto offers accessibility features that allows users to easily navigate and read the Panopto web interface. The web interface supports screen readers for all available creator and viewer interfaces. The web interface also supports keyboard access, allowing you to use the tab key to access all available functions. All sessions fully support adding and displaying captions

• Brief -  Panopto features ASR (automatic speech recognition) generated captions to your video. These are easily editable. Learn how to add ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) captions into a video. 
• Scripted - If you have a script written and it is in these formats *.srt, *.ashx, *.vtt, and *.dxfp, they can be uploaded. Learn how to upload a caption file for a video.
• Longer - For Instructor created content that is lengthy see the Panopto guide on how to request captioning. Captioning services provides a four day turnaround.

For more detailed information, view Panopto's guide to accessibility features. 

What is required?

If your event is open to the public or displayed on the public facing website, you need to have closed captioning and/or a transcript. If it is a closed event, you can choose to provide services only if requested. If you need live captioning for Zoom meetings with students, please contact Disability Support Services. If you need live captioning for Zoom meetings with staff or faculty, please contact Human Resources. You must provide information for participants to make accommodation requests. 

The following statement should be included in communications for all events: If you require accommodations in order to participate in this event, please contact (name of point person for event that will schedule services) at (email) or (phone).

Ensuring that our digital content is created using best practices with accessibility in mind helps us be able to provide information to all Arcadia community members. Not everyone will engage in the content in the same way. When content is available to the public, it is vital that it meets accessibility standards. These standards are also useful and should be implemented with content geared toward the Arcadia community (i.e. all students, all faculty/staff). Below you will find a basic checklist of top barriers and resources on proactively creating accessible content.

Digital Accessibility Checklist

There are many educational tools used by faculty and students with various accessibility features and limits. Please see below list for accessibility statements of common education techonolgy tools use at Arcadia.

Accessibility of Educational Technology Tools