Accessible Course Materials

No matter what you use in the classroom, it’s important to ensure that all students can access and use those materials effectively. Accessible materials means that they can be used by everyone — regardless of the method the student chooses to use.

Ensuring your materials can be used by everyone is important, not only for students, but for you as well. Making your materials accessible from the outset reduces the need to translate them into accessible formats later and allows you to reuse your materials regardless of who will be using them next.

Remember, true accessibility means proactively taking action to create access across our institutions —it’s not individual accommodations or retrofits that occur after the fact.

Accessible documents

There are a few simple principles that can be applied when creating documents that will improve the readability and usability of your course materials. For step-by-step instructions on preparing accessible materials, review the below support articles on Niagara College’s Accessibility Hub.

• Creating Accessible Word Documents
• Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations
• Creating Accessible PDF Documents
• Creating Accessible Excel Files
• Understanding STEM Accessibility
• Math Accessibility: MathPix with Microsoft Word (Part 1)
• Math Accessibility: MathPix with Microsoft Word (Part 2)

Accessible videos

If you’re making your own videos for your course, it’s important to ensure that your videos are accessible to students. Learn how to make your videos and lesson recording accessible by reviewing the Video Accessibility support articles.

If you’re using videos in your course which you did not generate yourself, it’s equally important to ensure that they are also accessible to students. At a minimum, this means that they should be properly captioned – in many programs, automatically generated captions are not sufficient to meet accessibility standards.

• When searching for videos in certain programs, like YouTube, you can set up your search filters to eliminate any options that are not fully captioned. Search for videos with captions – YouTube Help (google.com)
• Other common video sources, such as TED Talks, routinely make accurate captions available in a variety of languages. Please ensure that you check all videos that you plan on using in your course to ensure that the captions are accurate. How do I activate subtitles for videos on TED.com or the TED app? – TED
• If you are looking for alternatives to a poorly or non-captioned video that you are currently using in your course, library staff may be able to help you find what you need. Contact ncLibraries.

Open Education Resources (OERs)

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are materials that can be used for teaching and learning.  They’re freely available and, in many cases, are licensed so that they can be altered or adapted to meet the needs of different courses. They can include any kind of open learning tool, such as worksheets, videos, modules, and textbooks.

Watch the video below from ncLibraries for a basic introduction to OERs.

There are many benefits for using OERs in teaching and learning. For instance, OERs can increase access to education by providing learning resources with cost-saving, quality, and flexibility of access. Studies also show a “positive relationship between the use of OER and student academic achievement” [PDF] and suggest that OER may help to decrease withdrawal rates while increasing overall student grades (BCCampus, n.d.). They can also reduce your course preparation time.

As you begin creating or revising your course materials, we encourage you to consider using OERs within your course. The NC library has updated its subject guides to include subject specific OER suggestions. You can consult your appropriate subject guide for options and speak with your program liaison to help you navigate options. For more information visit the ncLibraries Open Educational Resources (OER) guide.

It is important to note that while we may do our best to ensure our courses are accessible, individual accommodations for students can still be required. Continue to the next section to learn about academic accommodations.

References

What are Open Educational Resources? (n.d.). BCCampus. Retrieved August 3, 2022, from https://open.bccampus.ca/what-is-open-education/what-are-open-educational-resources/