7 Pillars of Accessibility + Achieving Accessibility in Canvas
Accessibility is a practice of making information meaningful and usable. By implementing a learner-centered design approach through accessibility we enable users to learn from diverse resources. This session will guide you through the “whys” of accessibility, showcase seven basic principles, and teach you how to apply these in Canvas.
Okay. Hello, and welcome, everyone. Good to be a packed house on Friday morning. I'm sure by now, you're all instructed out. We appreciate you being here. So today's session, is on seven pillars of accessibility in how to achieve accessibility canvas.
So if you just walked in, this is a QR code that you can scan to follow today's presentation. Otherwise, if you're accessing that through the app, you would be able to access it through the presentation, which will actually take you to this site. So since we are demonstrating accessibility in Canvas, we went Canvas route and not PowerPoint route. As I learned from her, power points are not accessible. I have a slight show you with them.
Okay. Okay. So welcome. My name is Sasha Stojcito. I work as an instructional designer and instructor.
I come from a community college background as, a faculty in health and kinesiology and then distance education. I am on my year three with Oxford Union High School District as their dedicated instructional designer. And a lot of my projects for Oxnard Union High School District range from building their starter courses, their Oxnard, the online recovery courses, as well as spreading accessibility awareness. So today, we're going to feature seven pillars of accessibility course that we launched and trained hundreds of faculty. And today, I am here with my name is Daniel Cook.
I am a learning instruction technology coach assigned to Adolfo Cameron of High School, Knoxnard Union High School District, I'm a benefactor of, her instructional design services, and at Canvas. And, I, I did not have the tux that you see on the instructor app. I, I apologize for that. I was told I did need addressed it by our team that it's sitting right here that I cannot make eye contact with. Yeah.
We'll leave that one there. So we're gonna start with what is digital accessibility. So on the screen, you're gonna see a long definition of US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights's definition, and I'm gonna shorten it, and it says that accessible means that Users who, need to access material online have to have equitable and inclusive access as close as possible to individuals who do not have any disabilities. So what that means in our everyday terms is that digital accessibility refers to designing and building content where everyone can interact with it. So that means regardless what is their, personal mental or physical capacity or ability.
Accessible also means that we provide equitable access for everyone. Along the continuum of our learning. And accessibility also means that we create inclusive practice. So we are removing barriers that will prevent one to interact with material online. So throughout this presentation, you're going to see a one one y, which is or A11 Y, and this will be, used to abbreviate word accessibility.
So number eleven is for the eleven letters between A and Y. So how do we measure when something is accessible? It's just simply how well one can participate with and interact with online content. So we use accessibility as an umbrella term for all aspects which influence persons' ability to function within a given environment. Instead of asking you to menty with me today, because I'm sure you've done it through the last three days. I put up, input from previous sessions that we had and my prompt was asking audience, what is the one word that you associate with accessibility? I know this is not the most accessible, but it's mentee.
I couldn't change it. I did a screenshot, but you have an image description below if you need to read the image. So words that were associated with accessibility arranged from learning opportunities, equal opportunity, equity, access, flexibility, accommodations, screen readers, and so on. So you can see that accessibility can be interpreted in a variety of words. And at the same time, It is always student centric.
It is always student focused. So why accessibility matters? If we look at the image and the image is showing a bell curve with the bulk of users at the peak of this curve, and it says average users. That is most of our users who are utilizing online content. But there is more to accessibility than what meets the eye. So on the left side of that curve, we have people who are getting older.
So they need more accessible access to content, and then we have people with disabilities who would need accommodations. At the same time, if we look at the other side of that image, we have people who are using mobile devices like most of you today following this presentation, maybe on your phone, tablet, laptops, something like that. Most of our students are attending courses on their phones or laptops, but then we also have environment where we are interacting with content under heavy stress. Depending on our environment where we're attending our courses, that we are attending them online. So if we look at the statistics, One in four people have some form of disability, which is twenty seven percent just in US, and overall worldwide that is fifteen percent.
And disabilities can range from cognitive, visually auditory motor speech, but are all disabilities visible? How many of our students don't come forward to say that they need some type of accommodation. But at the same time, we do not want to wait for to come and say that they need accommodation. We need to have that proactive attitude of designing with accessibility in mind. We do not force students to self identify if they are not comfortable with that. So accessibility, there's more to it.
If we look at the next image, and you have a image description below as well. This one shows, four different types of disability divided on in categories of touch here, see and speak, and they are based on environment permanent, temporary, situational. And what I'm trying to to convey with this image is that This ability doesn't equal accessibility and vice versa. So you may have a student who is a brand new parent and has to hold the baby and attend the course online. They may have one hand available.
How is your course streamlined for their interaction so that they can do that? Maybe you have a student who got injured on a football field, and maybe they have a concussion or something like that. Maybe there is somebody who has very heavy accent. Mine is going away, but very heavy accent. It couldn't be easily understood. So those are all situational environments where we need to consider accessibility as well, not just for accommodations and for those who truly identify that they need it.
So who would benefit from accessibility? So if we reference the image that we just saw, everybody will benefit from accessibility. Right? We have many students who are ten core online that we're never able to do that in the past. So we open up a new avenue where they can complete their academic journey way earlier Students also have an opportunity to become online active contributors if our content is accessible, which may be in the past. They didn't have a chance to do that. And then also accessibility will allow for inclusion, equity, and diversity.
And if you look at some of the examples that I listed here, so we have temporary disability, injury, or medication. Maybe under certain medication, my judgement will be impaired, will I interact with that online content? Sitrational disability, and I think we had a lot of this throughout the pandemic. Maybe the quietest place for your students to attend courses was in the closet. And that's the only place where they would be able to attend the course online or maybe outside, but they have a glare from Sunshine on their laptop are we using colors that are accessible to convey what we're trying to say and them being able to witness that content? Also wearing glasses, And then at the same time, what about somebody who is a non native English speaker? They may need longer time to read. They may need to employ immersive reader and so on.
So you can see that the range for who would benefit from accessibility is really wide. So how did we come to seven pillars of accessibility course? When I started with, Oxford Union High School District, we did an assessment, especially I was I started with them a year, year into pandemic, and teachers had to become video editors, accessibility specialist, media designers, pretty much everything on top of their respective field that they're teaching. So we had to figure out what is it that we can do help them, and how to shift that retrofitting attitude to proactive attitude. So I don't have to go and fix things when I need to fix them. But how do I make them accessible right away? So we tried assessing what is it that we need to do so that we do things front loading versus back loading.
We wanted to figure out how to incorporate equitable learning and also increase student success and retention. So our initial goals with creating seven pillars of accessibility course was to educate Oxford Union high school district faculty on accessibility principles. Because to a lot of them when they started teaching through a pandemic, remotely, accessibility was brand new. Unless you had a student in your classroom who asked for accommodation or had accommodation, a lot of them would say, I don't need captions because I don't have hard of hearing students. Or I don't need this because I don't know ABC, but we don't know maybe because they don't say it.
So we wanted to provide tools that will help faculty design accessible content And at the same time to promote that inclusive and equitable environment, so we work towards a common goal of enhancing student experience. So we launched the course, train hundreds of faculty. We taught them on variety of different accessibility guidelines, how to apply the online course design, and then we decided to open this course for everyone. So we launched it June of last year, and we extended our mission. So we wanted to, spread awareness.
So you can see on the right hand side there under our mission, our statement is to spread awareness on the importance of disability in digital classroom by sparking discussion among faculty and designers for an inclusive and equitable student learning environment. And this is a map just about a month into launching this course for everyone. The course went into twenty five states. So we have hundreds and hundreds of faculty that already attended a course. There's very practical assignments that will help you design accessible content, and at the same time, For the recognition, you can earn a little badge because we're all about badges.
Right? So you, you would be able to, benefit from that. So what are seven pillars of accessibility? We are not reinventing hot water. We're not creating anything new. We just briefly summarized basic Wiki two point o accessibility guidelines, and they are headings, alt tags, links, color lists, tables, and closed captioning. So these are seven guidelines that are basic principles for us to create accessible content.
And what distinguishes this course from many others that you may find out there on principles of accessibility is that we tried putting teachers in the shoes of an end user. How does their content seem when it's not accessible? What will your student read here see if your content is not accessible. So we have a lot of screen reader examples, a lot of examples of what if this or that. So you would be able first hand to see What happens when I don't put alt tag or what if I have auto captioning on my videos? So that that's the difference between what's out there and what we created here. So we use headings to communicate structure as you all know, and I'm just gonna give a brief overview.
I'm gonna let you dive into the course, and I'll give you access to it in a All tags will describe images. They will not only benefit assistive technology users, but if your if your site doesn't load, Altag will stay in place of that image. So it's really helpful for all users, not just assistive technologies. We want to convey destination through, hyperlinks we don't want w w w w dot da da da da. Color, we need to provide sufficient contrast when it comes to tech and the background, but at the same time, we do not want to convey meaning only to only only through color if I was to say click on the white title.
But what is the white title or what if I can't see all of the colors? What if I'm seeing things in monochrome? So there's a lot to to think here. We want to use list tools. This one is very easy in Canvas. Whenever you want a list, use a tool. We need to make sure that lists are not fake so that assistive technology users get the same idea of items that are grouped together.
We wanna use tables not for styling images on our home pages. We want to use them for organizing complex data. So it has to serve a purpose. And at the same time, when it comes to closed captioning, we need to describe and communicate every spoken word and non spoken word on the screen. So I'm going to show you two examples.
And the first one is headings. So headings will communicate page structure and they will provide ease of navigation, and they will also allow assistive technology users to scan the page in the same fashion as the sighted user. If you look at the left side of the screen that says example with no headings, and I was your teacher, and I gave you this paragraph, and I asked you to find something, And you are a assistive technology user. You will have to read line by line to get to the point where of where I'm asking you to find. Most likely if you are sighted user, you're gonna skim through the content.
So statistics says about twenty five percent of of people would skim through the content to get where they need to interacting with everything. But what if my example was the one on the right and I actually had headings? And for this purpose, I highlight them in red and bold so that it's easier to to visually see. So I chunked this content into manageable segments. I added headings, so now not only my sighted users will be able to navigate through this but my assistive technology users can use the H key and drop down through the headings and get exactly to where they need to. So I'm providing ease of access right away.
So there's no obstacles to accessing the content. My second example is the links, And according to, DQ system study, they perform assessment of thousands website every year Links are top three. That's the most common error that you will find online. And links need to communicate where the user is going before they're going. So if I told you click here, would you know where you're going? Probably not.
Get started, read this download document I am not providing clear communication where I'm sending my users. While my sighted users may be able to click and actually read the link. What about those who are solely using assistive technology? I'm not really telling them where to go, and I need to tell them information before they need to go to the place. Of where I'm sending them. So they can decide.
Am I doing that now? Do I have time for it, or do I bypass it and move on with the content? So it's really important to communicate that evenly. And also often we link word link. So we would say link instructor con but the screen reader will read the link, so it's link link instructor con and so on. So on the left hand side here, you're gonna see very basic example where our link is a URL, and fingers crossed this audio player works. Relicic horizontal split access all the information about.
Link w w w dot I n s t dot com slash I n s t com slash two three faster risk seven a one y p zero one T y one a semicolon t one thousand two hundred ninety and s equals zero, not six hundred seventy two l one pan zero eight, a two page zero four b d t one equal slash k d links to an external site. Do you know do you know where I'm sending you? Probably not. Probably not. And this is commonly what our students will hear. This is commonly what our students will hear.
This also is applicable to alt tag. If you embed the image that you didn't change the alt tag, and remember when we had unsplash, in Canvas, and that link is four rows long, and screen reader reads every single letter symbol or character. And at the end, I have no clue where I'm going. So we want to make sure that we provide descriptive phrases for the links so we know where we're heading before we head there. And this is applicable across all.
And now Daniel is going to showcase How all this is applicable at his site at Adolfo Camarillo high school? So, my perspective as a user who benefited from her services is is, you know, a little bit interesting because, I have the task of putting together professional development on our site. And participate in professional development with our district. And, we I have, a site that was resistant to professional development. And it was resistant to collaboration. And so pushing us forward maybe pre pandemic or in our case pre Wask visit.
Our Wask visit was something that gave us an opportunity to really reset and rethink about what we were doing for our students. And then like all of us, we had an opportunity to reset and rethink about what our digital learning environment looked like for our students, after the pandemic. When we were forced to transition online, but not really ever having training on what it looks like. So we had a cultural shift and, mindset shift, like many of our districts, and higher eds have had that experience. We had the added benefit of having a really ad situation that made us rethink everything and retool, that allowed us to kind of revisit everything.
Many many of us are told to to revisit at the why for our students. And then I had the opportunity on the next slide to revisit the why on accessibility when we were talking with our students And I'm gonna bring you another lens, which is our credit recovery program as well. So these are our statistics that, it's from March, and these were shifted from the first time I did accessibility, presentation for our staff. And this mirrors very similarly to what what you see in a lot of regions. So our our special ed pop population, so students identified with an IEP is fourteen point two five percent of our our students.
Our five zero four students are six, percent. And then our EL students is twenty six point four eight, but the next, slide that I used in my presentation with my staff was what is our home language, other than English, and what is that spray? And we have something like forty two languages and we had an increase over four years of about three hundred percent. So I I'm not sure how much of that was students identifying their home language differently on their forms. Than they had prior. And I I don't know, why that would be.
We have had a cultural and demographic shift a little bit in our school. But going through these statistics and having, staff understand the why on, on accessibility, and also we want our students to engage with content with their families. We want our our parents to be participants in the education process. If we have a large amount of our content that's inaccessible, our students can't really connect in that way. And the first time I did it, we have a staff member, on our, on our site, who her primary language is Russian.
And she's, immediately skeptical of just about everything. And so when I said immersive reader and how flexible it is and how adaptive it is, she was obviously skeptical because that's her nature. And so I put it in Russian, and the look on her face was the first time I saw her pleasantly surprised in my eight years of working with her. So that's how I knew that the Canvas accessibility functions if designed properly and can utilize those tools are something that can really reach a much wider audience. And again, including our parents.
She's not here, so she won't hear this, but she knows who she is. So, the other lens that we have is our online credit So like like many school districts, we had an online credit recovery model that was a third party operation. Our our staff didn't fully believe in it. Particularly our our, you know, higher, AP teachers were really skeptical and and and it felt like it was devaluing their content and their work. If the student was gonna fail my class, they can just go to that, and they're gonna pass, and we know they're gonna pass.
And it it was a really This jointed model also, because as I found, I was a summer school administrator, during, right after, COVID shutdown. So we were hundred percent online and a hundred percent through this third party program. And I found that it had zero, language supports for any of our students. And it was so completely inaccessible. No closed captioning.
No no features to really support students of any kind of need. And so we shifted to a model, for a variety of reasons, it was already in, like starting to be designed. And then we we ramped it up, post pandemic, and it's called Oxford Online credit recovery or OOCR. And it's the idea behind it is multiple terms. Right now it's six but we're going into year three with it.
So we're always evolving and kinda going back to the table to discuss what is best for students. So four week terms. And the idea was to pull out anchor standards. It's CP, a through g, in our in California, a through g, UC CSU ready, content and curriculum and and engage our faculty with designing and implementing this program. So we're incentivizing our staff to design and build and also manage in their content area exclusively.
So what this does is instead of credit recovery being over there, and done by some program, it's done in house by one of their peers or themselves, but they're not content designers. They're not online designers. I didn't get my masters in curriculum and instruction that long ago, and I didn't take a single class on learning how to design a canvas course, or any online environment. And, I am not even in the mean of the age of our faculty. So we have a real lack of institutional knowledge of what this looks like, let alone make it accessible.
And that's where we kind of brought in Sasha or services because we kind of take an idea, from a content lens and make it fairly half baked, and that's probably, being lofty and kind. And she takes it and Here's what you need to do. Here's where where we've gone wrong. And now we have templates that are we're about to launch that are showing what accessibility looks like. And showing and allowing our faculty to adopt it, then put their content in, but showing best practices.
And one thing to add about OCR training So, also, all of our faculty, whether they've done it before or not, have to be retrained on our online credit recovery model. They it's an online course, and it shows that and we just redesigned that course, with our coordinator of online, learning, Erin Ferguson, and he told me I had to mention his name. And if I get it twice, I get a four pack. So create credit recovery courses for students, but also training model that's demonstrating best practices for our teachers. And again, creating stuff in the comments, creating content in the comments, Not only for best practices of turning a semester long course into a four week trim down.
They're not at a zero percent. They're at a forty to fifty five how do we get them to a passing grade and looking at those core content standards and then letting our instructional specialists and our department chairs have that conversation and then and tailor it to that. And then we talk about in the online course development, or on the onboarding course, not just the spirit and mission of our online curriculum for credit recovery, but also best practices in how you're going to implement it when you make your own tweaks because we want that autonomy for our teachers. We don't want it to be plug and play completely, but we do wanna make sure we're offering support. And one thing that I wanted to add is that students attend OCR courses on top of their regular semesters.
So we really had to ask teachers to narrow down these SLOs that we want to put in the OCR instead of them repeating a whole new course on top of their sixteen week course yet it is online Oxford -- Yeah. -- credit recovery. One one thing we really learned from the previous third party online credit recovery model is it had an onboarding assessment, and that assessment was, done in person. So we knew they weren't going in and googling the answers. And students were starting off between a forty five and fifty five percent.
So while they failed the class, It wasn't because they didn't learn anything. They just didn't show their learning or there were inequitable grading practices, and that's a different session for a different day. So we we wanted to show through a lot of data and a lot of tables. In our previous model, a lot of students did show learning. They just or or did show in the assessment that they learned.
They just never showed in the semester long class. So we really use that as a tool to kind of really pare it down. And then that mission with credit recovery and and Sasha's insight and and expertise allowed us to really focus on what is accessible, what is easy navigation, how do you limit scrolling, And Sasha did an amazing job in showing that in this presentation when they told us it had to be in slides, she we had to move it to Canvas and show and model what that expectation is We're not scrolling too much. We're making the functions usable on all devices because our students are on thirteen inch chromebooks, and and it's always a struggle. As you can see, a lot of you are on phones tablets yet screen.
So designed for this presentation had to fit that broad range that everything is scalable and responsive for every possible screen. I hope we succeeded in that. Well, we we we focused on, Apple users. So if you're an Android user, I don't know how well it's So so our our strategy is, and this goes for everything. In training, we need to accentuate that that importance of that why.
And so what we are the lens that we gave them was the students in your classes. Who is in your class? And then with my experience and interaction with Sasha is how much, how many students have an unidentified disability or someone like me didn't identify their disability until they were in grad school. I didn't know that I had the disability. I didn't know that I had a learning disability at ADHD. I didn't know that.
I knew there was something, but it wasn't identified until much later. And how many of our students have that same experience or how many interactions have we had with faculty And you're we're we're a high school district. So we're having these well, it's never identified before. Or we have itinerant students, McKinee Vento students, foster youth students that they're they're moving around so much. They never get identified.
And they never get services and then they come to us because we have several group home and different foster, systems in, in our area. And they come to us, and we need to make sure all of our content is accessible to them. And then post pandemic, everything is a blended learning environment. A lot of our teachers are doing some version of a blended learning and a lot of computer based interaction. There are so many students that are getting fatigue.
There's the, you know, the the color contrast, particularly early pandemic, how much as teachers were over designing and trying to make it homey on canvas. I do have a beef with bitmoji, so that's probably part of why I just said that. So so then our our professional development needed to focus on that and everywhere in our professional development has a conversation about about accessibility a conversation from an English learner lens. And we have workshop models. The other thing I found is, and teachers are really fatigued post pandemic.
I'm sure you feel it. So I stopped doing sessions that were large scale like this or like three or four sessions for eighty five staff. So they have a menu of options. And I started doing workshops more one on one. Bringing in a content expert, bringing in Aaron.
I, you know, taking all of these different tools and trying to trying to make it a little bit more bite sized chunks and let them come in and kind of do a walk through. We also used, poke tech, as a as a plug in, or added, LTI in, in, canvas and allowing them to see that. We're utilizing impact a little bit, to kind of have a help center. So we're trying to find different ways show them new tools, to allow them to help. And then the student benefits have been huge.
My own, course design, and we'll we'll look at an example of it. Was, not good. And then, last year, we did a little bit of research on a couple of our students, or a couple of our oxnard online courses, And the more third party and the more modules that existed, the higher theDF rate was. So the more simplistic, and we're not talking about lowering rigor or removing standards. We're talking about design and layout.
And so, that research really showed me that teachers were trying to over design And we also have a very, supportive district. So they gave us every tech tool there was. We have a subscription to basically everything. And if we don't have it, they'll let you pilot it. And what hap which is great.
Yeah. We're very spoiled. I know. I know. Thank you, mister Adams, for that lcap money.
So but what ended up thing, though, is then we have teachers that are over designing, and we have five, six, seven tools. And every module, every unit has another set of tools So the students are never really able to get comfortable with something because it's changing to a new tool. And just to put things in perspective, when I started working and redesigning courses, there would be a Google slide presentation with seventeen different fonts, thirty five colors, and seven tools interlaid in Google. I'm right here, Sasha. I'm right here.
So So this is We actually, Sasha and I were just connecting a few weeks ago, and I was venting about, something that looks a lot like on the left. And I'm gonna scroll so I can show you the lens. Summer school, four weeks, credit recoveries of two hour, per day, and so that students can take two classes. And, we have on the left, and this is actually a super pared down version of what one of our teachers used. So our our but prior to, getting in lesson or learning design services and Sasha, we did have a third party that started our, our starter center.
And a little bit of course builds. And it was overdesigned, but but there was no conversation in professional development to teachers of, like, we're giving you all this. Trim it down. It's a menu. Pick what you you don't go to Cheesecake Factory and get all those things.
Right? That's a lot. Cheesecake Factory is an overwhelming place for some people. So if that was triggering, I apologize. But what we wanna do is trim it down and how many times can you on a page, put like what you see on the right, and then also, you know, indenting. But I was talking to her about this.
It's always math. I'm sorry. If you're a math teacher, I struggle on my site with math. It's always math that it's so overdesigned in so many third party tools. And and it's just overwhelming.
A student opens this. You've all been to a professional development online session, and then you open the slides, and you're like, forty two slides? Nah. And you go and do you're doing something else while your face is still on zoom. This is what students see. They get overwhelmed, and they have six classes.
And so it's it's over just the initial view is overwhelming to students. Yes. And, this example that we used was a six week course, and elements in the module ranged from twenty two to forty two. And as a third party designing, redesigning this, it was overwhelming for me to redesign it, not even knowing the the the gist of the content, just a pure volume. Now look at that volume of pages, assignments, and everything times a sixteen week course.
So learning how to structure this so that we reduce that cognitive overload using best online design practices applying accessibility practices, and then narrowing this down to a manageable module of maybe ten elements it will be way less overwhelming for students to interact with that content. So I shared screen and Sasha immediately said. I fixed that already. So we we have this problem where we're going back and cleaning up over design content and then getting teachers to go back and stop re adopting their previous terms course, but actually go, Hey, we've rolled out a new one, and that's how we need to implement impact. To communicate that.
And and and re have teachers re come back and visit and go, Hey, well, now we have Sasha, and this is a Sasha, polished course And now you can put in some of your assessments. And you can put in your new quizzes, and you can do those things, but the content is designed in an accessible way. And with the indent and all that stuff. And here's And Sasha sounds very strict. Yeah.
Sasha is very strict. So so this was my before. The slide is not, loading. Load it's still loading right now. But so I designed a course.
We needed it more, Vapa, visual and performing arts, credit recovery options. We've implemented a CTE, pathway completer option, and we have world there's all these different things, and we have students that are not able to fit VAPA or or or don't have access on their court. Maybe their, their site doesn't have as many options for VAPPA, visual and performing arts. And what ended up happening with my course is I come in with my music background and and created a music appreciation course. And and I presented all this content that I thought was great.
And it was all in Google slides. And, Sasha had a really good poker face at first. And we met with Erin, and and she walked through she goes, okay. Yeah. So that's really that's good.
So just imagine here a slide. And, and an embedded YouTube video. And a couple images, and it was probably like slides mania or something like that. So it was a lot of colors and all it was bad. It was really not good, and I didn't know that until I met with Sasha.
And then Sasha fixed it. So then what we did on this next slide, we or slide page, rather say page. What we did is we took that Google slide lecture and designed it natively in Canvas. And we used headings to break out the content, use manageable chunks. We added a little bit of HTML styling here so that we can pack this into a segment where students can most easily navigate through the content.
So what used to be a slide with the text and a video, now students can go to these segments and just click on it and and learn individually through all of these. So it's like a table of contents, and then it's the actual content. And I'll never forget And it kind of just kind of popped to me when when she was talking about headings right now. I've I was in the fourth grade and our teacher showed us how to navigate the textbook. And how to look for headings and subheadings for different content.
And and that's what headings are, and we don't think about it as much. Or if you use Google Docs, if you use the headings, now you have the navigatable feature on the left side, the menu, if you're not familiar, that's a great way to organize and collaborate. And and I did not design in that way in my slides. It was slides, and you had to go and shop through all the slides. And so a student who is not as in it's not as intuitive or student who doesn't maybe lacks the curiosity or is not interested in the course might not be willing to go and click.
Whereas here, it's laid out completely in one place, and the the scrolling is minimal. And also this is accessible on any mobile device. Through Canvas app, tablet, phone, anything. So it will it will render the exact same way. And screen reader will navigate through these drop menus as a link It will announce it.
Should the user choose to navigate through it? They can click to proceed to read it. If not, they can bypass it to the next one. I do hyperlink. I did not put any long URLs So in my defense, I did have that handled. But but the immersive reader tool still was not at all functional in a slide, Whereas, in what Sasha did, allowed student to, launch their own accessibility tools and and my design did none of that.
So, accessibility, is it only for students who need accommodations? Is not. And furthermore, are all of your faculty going in and clicking on the IEP and reading all ten pages of a student's accommodations. And the answer to that question is illegally, no. They're not doing that. And in our district, it's a hundred and seventy five students, and we have twenty or fourteen percent, students with IEPs, That is a lot of reading.
Is it their due is it their responsibility to do it? Yes. But if we don't think about our students with IEPs and we don't think about our students with five zero fours, and we don't think about any of those things, and we just design with intention of serving all of our students then we will be able to have designed accessible content that reaches everyone, whether they initiate that conversation or not. And I always tell teachers, I know that this is more work, but do you want their case manager or parents to be reaching out to you because you didn't implement x or y, tool, or, or accommodation. And if you're proactive and you show what you do and you walk them with intention, how to navigate it and use immersive reader and those tools, you're going to have a lot more success and like we all need, you'll have a lot less emails. So I'm gonna close this presentation with talking a little bit about accessibility journey.
So we need to shift our views and look at accessibility as the human right as a destination, as a journey, versus a destination and as a progress over perfection as my shirt is saying. So the work is never done. It's not one and done. We always have to design better. And what we thought may have been accessible this year.
Guess what? Maybe next year, we have more knowledge, more tools, and we can make our content even better. This image that you see on the left is probably one of my favourite images, and I'm gonna zoom so that you are able to see and I will explain what this is. But I think that it's simply, portrays, a very strong statement of how to design for how people learn. We always want to design for how our students are learning, not how we want them to learn. So what you see on the top image is Ohio State University, They built the entire campus, but the paths connecting their campus.
They let their students walk it for years to establish desired paths then they flew the balloon up, look at those paths, and they paved them the way how their students, quote unquote, are learning. So that is truly the application that we want to have in our online course design. And I'm going to close it with a statement that says accessibility is not about accommodating disabilities. It is about addressing the mismatch between the environment and the person. This is why we should design for one, but then extend for many.
And from here, you would be able to navigate to our hub page once you click on enroll the course. You're gonna have all the steps of how to get access to seven pillars course. You can easily go through it in one hour. It's very straightforward, very linear. You will use a Canvas free for teacher account, enter the code learn create collaborate, earn badge, and then spread awareness through social media.
We have a hashtag seven pillars a11y, and, we would really appreciate if we continue this conversation to make our online digital classrooms more accessible for students. Thank you. We're putting a QR code back up, in case so you can access the entire presentation, and it also lets you access the course and with a link not a URL, but a hyperlink. Thank you so much for attending. Really appreciate it.
What was Aaron's name? Aaron for Ferguson. Got the four pack. Thank you for the assist. Appreciate you.
So if you just walked in, this is a QR code that you can scan to follow today's presentation. Otherwise, if you're accessing that through the app, you would be able to access it through the presentation, which will actually take you to this site. So since we are demonstrating accessibility in Canvas, we went Canvas route and not PowerPoint route. As I learned from her, power points are not accessible. I have a slight show you with them.
Okay. Okay. So welcome. My name is Sasha Stojcito. I work as an instructional designer and instructor.
I come from a community college background as, a faculty in health and kinesiology and then distance education. I am on my year three with Oxford Union High School District as their dedicated instructional designer. And a lot of my projects for Oxnard Union High School District range from building their starter courses, their Oxnard, the online recovery courses, as well as spreading accessibility awareness. So today, we're going to feature seven pillars of accessibility course that we launched and trained hundreds of faculty. And today, I am here with my name is Daniel Cook.
I am a learning instruction technology coach assigned to Adolfo Cameron of High School, Knoxnard Union High School District, I'm a benefactor of, her instructional design services, and at Canvas. And, I, I did not have the tux that you see on the instructor app. I, I apologize for that. I was told I did need addressed it by our team that it's sitting right here that I cannot make eye contact with. Yeah.
We'll leave that one there. So we're gonna start with what is digital accessibility. So on the screen, you're gonna see a long definition of US Department of Education Office of Civil Rights's definition, and I'm gonna shorten it, and it says that accessible means that Users who, need to access material online have to have equitable and inclusive access as close as possible to individuals who do not have any disabilities. So what that means in our everyday terms is that digital accessibility refers to designing and building content where everyone can interact with it. So that means regardless what is their, personal mental or physical capacity or ability.
Accessible also means that we provide equitable access for everyone. Along the continuum of our learning. And accessibility also means that we create inclusive practice. So we are removing barriers that will prevent one to interact with material online. So throughout this presentation, you're going to see a one one y, which is or A11 Y, and this will be, used to abbreviate word accessibility.
So number eleven is for the eleven letters between A and Y. So how do we measure when something is accessible? It's just simply how well one can participate with and interact with online content. So we use accessibility as an umbrella term for all aspects which influence persons' ability to function within a given environment. Instead of asking you to menty with me today, because I'm sure you've done it through the last three days. I put up, input from previous sessions that we had and my prompt was asking audience, what is the one word that you associate with accessibility? I know this is not the most accessible, but it's mentee.
I couldn't change it. I did a screenshot, but you have an image description below if you need to read the image. So words that were associated with accessibility arranged from learning opportunities, equal opportunity, equity, access, flexibility, accommodations, screen readers, and so on. So you can see that accessibility can be interpreted in a variety of words. And at the same time, It is always student centric.
It is always student focused. So why accessibility matters? If we look at the image and the image is showing a bell curve with the bulk of users at the peak of this curve, and it says average users. That is most of our users who are utilizing online content. But there is more to accessibility than what meets the eye. So on the left side of that curve, we have people who are getting older.
So they need more accessible access to content, and then we have people with disabilities who would need accommodations. At the same time, if we look at the other side of that image, we have people who are using mobile devices like most of you today following this presentation, maybe on your phone, tablet, laptops, something like that. Most of our students are attending courses on their phones or laptops, but then we also have environment where we are interacting with content under heavy stress. Depending on our environment where we're attending our courses, that we are attending them online. So if we look at the statistics, One in four people have some form of disability, which is twenty seven percent just in US, and overall worldwide that is fifteen percent.
And disabilities can range from cognitive, visually auditory motor speech, but are all disabilities visible? How many of our students don't come forward to say that they need some type of accommodation. But at the same time, we do not want to wait for to come and say that they need accommodation. We need to have that proactive attitude of designing with accessibility in mind. We do not force students to self identify if they are not comfortable with that. So accessibility, there's more to it.
If we look at the next image, and you have a image description below as well. This one shows, four different types of disability divided on in categories of touch here, see and speak, and they are based on environment permanent, temporary, situational. And what I'm trying to to convey with this image is that This ability doesn't equal accessibility and vice versa. So you may have a student who is a brand new parent and has to hold the baby and attend the course online. They may have one hand available.
How is your course streamlined for their interaction so that they can do that? Maybe you have a student who got injured on a football field, and maybe they have a concussion or something like that. Maybe there is somebody who has very heavy accent. Mine is going away, but very heavy accent. It couldn't be easily understood. So those are all situational environments where we need to consider accessibility as well, not just for accommodations and for those who truly identify that they need it.
So who would benefit from accessibility? So if we reference the image that we just saw, everybody will benefit from accessibility. Right? We have many students who are ten core online that we're never able to do that in the past. So we open up a new avenue where they can complete their academic journey way earlier Students also have an opportunity to become online active contributors if our content is accessible, which may be in the past. They didn't have a chance to do that. And then also accessibility will allow for inclusion, equity, and diversity.
And if you look at some of the examples that I listed here, so we have temporary disability, injury, or medication. Maybe under certain medication, my judgement will be impaired, will I interact with that online content? Sitrational disability, and I think we had a lot of this throughout the pandemic. Maybe the quietest place for your students to attend courses was in the closet. And that's the only place where they would be able to attend the course online or maybe outside, but they have a glare from Sunshine on their laptop are we using colors that are accessible to convey what we're trying to say and them being able to witness that content? Also wearing glasses, And then at the same time, what about somebody who is a non native English speaker? They may need longer time to read. They may need to employ immersive reader and so on.
So you can see that the range for who would benefit from accessibility is really wide. So how did we come to seven pillars of accessibility course? When I started with, Oxford Union High School District, we did an assessment, especially I was I started with them a year, year into pandemic, and teachers had to become video editors, accessibility specialist, media designers, pretty much everything on top of their respective field that they're teaching. So we had to figure out what is it that we can do help them, and how to shift that retrofitting attitude to proactive attitude. So I don't have to go and fix things when I need to fix them. But how do I make them accessible right away? So we tried assessing what is it that we need to do so that we do things front loading versus back loading.
We wanted to figure out how to incorporate equitable learning and also increase student success and retention. So our initial goals with creating seven pillars of accessibility course was to educate Oxford Union high school district faculty on accessibility principles. Because to a lot of them when they started teaching through a pandemic, remotely, accessibility was brand new. Unless you had a student in your classroom who asked for accommodation or had accommodation, a lot of them would say, I don't need captions because I don't have hard of hearing students. Or I don't need this because I don't know ABC, but we don't know maybe because they don't say it.
So we wanted to provide tools that will help faculty design accessible content And at the same time to promote that inclusive and equitable environment, so we work towards a common goal of enhancing student experience. So we launched the course, train hundreds of faculty. We taught them on variety of different accessibility guidelines, how to apply the online course design, and then we decided to open this course for everyone. So we launched it June of last year, and we extended our mission. So we wanted to, spread awareness.
So you can see on the right hand side there under our mission, our statement is to spread awareness on the importance of disability in digital classroom by sparking discussion among faculty and designers for an inclusive and equitable student learning environment. And this is a map just about a month into launching this course for everyone. The course went into twenty five states. So we have hundreds and hundreds of faculty that already attended a course. There's very practical assignments that will help you design accessible content, and at the same time, For the recognition, you can earn a little badge because we're all about badges.
Right? So you, you would be able to, benefit from that. So what are seven pillars of accessibility? We are not reinventing hot water. We're not creating anything new. We just briefly summarized basic Wiki two point o accessibility guidelines, and they are headings, alt tags, links, color lists, tables, and closed captioning. So these are seven guidelines that are basic principles for us to create accessible content.
And what distinguishes this course from many others that you may find out there on principles of accessibility is that we tried putting teachers in the shoes of an end user. How does their content seem when it's not accessible? What will your student read here see if your content is not accessible. So we have a lot of screen reader examples, a lot of examples of what if this or that. So you would be able first hand to see What happens when I don't put alt tag or what if I have auto captioning on my videos? So that that's the difference between what's out there and what we created here. So we use headings to communicate structure as you all know, and I'm just gonna give a brief overview.
I'm gonna let you dive into the course, and I'll give you access to it in a All tags will describe images. They will not only benefit assistive technology users, but if your if your site doesn't load, Altag will stay in place of that image. So it's really helpful for all users, not just assistive technologies. We want to convey destination through, hyperlinks we don't want w w w w dot da da da da. Color, we need to provide sufficient contrast when it comes to tech and the background, but at the same time, we do not want to convey meaning only to only only through color if I was to say click on the white title.
But what is the white title or what if I can't see all of the colors? What if I'm seeing things in monochrome? So there's a lot to to think here. We want to use list tools. This one is very easy in Canvas. Whenever you want a list, use a tool. We need to make sure that lists are not fake so that assistive technology users get the same idea of items that are grouped together.
We wanna use tables not for styling images on our home pages. We want to use them for organizing complex data. So it has to serve a purpose. And at the same time, when it comes to closed captioning, we need to describe and communicate every spoken word and non spoken word on the screen. So I'm going to show you two examples.
And the first one is headings. So headings will communicate page structure and they will provide ease of navigation, and they will also allow assistive technology users to scan the page in the same fashion as the sighted user. If you look at the left side of the screen that says example with no headings, and I was your teacher, and I gave you this paragraph, and I asked you to find something, And you are a assistive technology user. You will have to read line by line to get to the point where of where I'm asking you to find. Most likely if you are sighted user, you're gonna skim through the content.
So statistics says about twenty five percent of of people would skim through the content to get where they need to interacting with everything. But what if my example was the one on the right and I actually had headings? And for this purpose, I highlight them in red and bold so that it's easier to to visually see. So I chunked this content into manageable segments. I added headings, so now not only my sighted users will be able to navigate through this but my assistive technology users can use the H key and drop down through the headings and get exactly to where they need to. So I'm providing ease of access right away.
So there's no obstacles to accessing the content. My second example is the links, And according to, DQ system study, they perform assessment of thousands website every year Links are top three. That's the most common error that you will find online. And links need to communicate where the user is going before they're going. So if I told you click here, would you know where you're going? Probably not.
Get started, read this download document I am not providing clear communication where I'm sending my users. While my sighted users may be able to click and actually read the link. What about those who are solely using assistive technology? I'm not really telling them where to go, and I need to tell them information before they need to go to the place. Of where I'm sending them. So they can decide.
Am I doing that now? Do I have time for it, or do I bypass it and move on with the content? So it's really important to communicate that evenly. And also often we link word link. So we would say link instructor con but the screen reader will read the link, so it's link link instructor con and so on. So on the left hand side here, you're gonna see very basic example where our link is a URL, and fingers crossed this audio player works. Relicic horizontal split access all the information about.
Link w w w dot I n s t dot com slash I n s t com slash two three faster risk seven a one y p zero one T y one a semicolon t one thousand two hundred ninety and s equals zero, not six hundred seventy two l one pan zero eight, a two page zero four b d t one equal slash k d links to an external site. Do you know do you know where I'm sending you? Probably not. Probably not. And this is commonly what our students will hear. This is commonly what our students will hear.
This also is applicable to alt tag. If you embed the image that you didn't change the alt tag, and remember when we had unsplash, in Canvas, and that link is four rows long, and screen reader reads every single letter symbol or character. And at the end, I have no clue where I'm going. So we want to make sure that we provide descriptive phrases for the links so we know where we're heading before we head there. And this is applicable across all.
And now Daniel is going to showcase How all this is applicable at his site at Adolfo Camarillo high school? So, my perspective as a user who benefited from her services is is, you know, a little bit interesting because, I have the task of putting together professional development on our site. And participate in professional development with our district. And, we I have, a site that was resistant to professional development. And it was resistant to collaboration. And so pushing us forward maybe pre pandemic or in our case pre Wask visit.
Our Wask visit was something that gave us an opportunity to really reset and rethink about what we were doing for our students. And then like all of us, we had an opportunity to reset and rethink about what our digital learning environment looked like for our students, after the pandemic. When we were forced to transition online, but not really ever having training on what it looks like. So we had a cultural shift and, mindset shift, like many of our districts, and higher eds have had that experience. We had the added benefit of having a really ad situation that made us rethink everything and retool, that allowed us to kind of revisit everything.
Many many of us are told to to revisit at the why for our students. And then I had the opportunity on the next slide to revisit the why on accessibility when we were talking with our students And I'm gonna bring you another lens, which is our credit recovery program as well. So these are our statistics that, it's from March, and these were shifted from the first time I did accessibility, presentation for our staff. And this mirrors very similarly to what what you see in a lot of regions. So our our special ed pop population, so students identified with an IEP is fourteen point two five percent of our our students.
Our five zero four students are six, percent. And then our EL students is twenty six point four eight, but the next, slide that I used in my presentation with my staff was what is our home language, other than English, and what is that spray? And we have something like forty two languages and we had an increase over four years of about three hundred percent. So I I'm not sure how much of that was students identifying their home language differently on their forms. Than they had prior. And I I don't know, why that would be.
We have had a cultural and demographic shift a little bit in our school. But going through these statistics and having, staff understand the why on, on accessibility, and also we want our students to engage with content with their families. We want our our parents to be participants in the education process. If we have a large amount of our content that's inaccessible, our students can't really connect in that way. And the first time I did it, we have a staff member, on our, on our site, who her primary language is Russian.
And she's, immediately skeptical of just about everything. And so when I said immersive reader and how flexible it is and how adaptive it is, she was obviously skeptical because that's her nature. And so I put it in Russian, and the look on her face was the first time I saw her pleasantly surprised in my eight years of working with her. So that's how I knew that the Canvas accessibility functions if designed properly and can utilize those tools are something that can really reach a much wider audience. And again, including our parents.
She's not here, so she won't hear this, but she knows who she is. So, the other lens that we have is our online credit So like like many school districts, we had an online credit recovery model that was a third party operation. Our our staff didn't fully believe in it. Particularly our our, you know, higher, AP teachers were really skeptical and and and it felt like it was devaluing their content and their work. If the student was gonna fail my class, they can just go to that, and they're gonna pass, and we know they're gonna pass.
And it it was a really This jointed model also, because as I found, I was a summer school administrator, during, right after, COVID shutdown. So we were hundred percent online and a hundred percent through this third party program. And I found that it had zero, language supports for any of our students. And it was so completely inaccessible. No closed captioning.
No no features to really support students of any kind of need. And so we shifted to a model, for a variety of reasons, it was already in, like starting to be designed. And then we we ramped it up, post pandemic, and it's called Oxford Online credit recovery or OOCR. And it's the idea behind it is multiple terms. Right now it's six but we're going into year three with it.
So we're always evolving and kinda going back to the table to discuss what is best for students. So four week terms. And the idea was to pull out anchor standards. It's CP, a through g, in our in California, a through g, UC CSU ready, content and curriculum and and engage our faculty with designing and implementing this program. So we're incentivizing our staff to design and build and also manage in their content area exclusively.
So what this does is instead of credit recovery being over there, and done by some program, it's done in house by one of their peers or themselves, but they're not content designers. They're not online designers. I didn't get my masters in curriculum and instruction that long ago, and I didn't take a single class on learning how to design a canvas course, or any online environment. And, I am not even in the mean of the age of our faculty. So we have a real lack of institutional knowledge of what this looks like, let alone make it accessible.
And that's where we kind of brought in Sasha or services because we kind of take an idea, from a content lens and make it fairly half baked, and that's probably, being lofty and kind. And she takes it and Here's what you need to do. Here's where where we've gone wrong. And now we have templates that are we're about to launch that are showing what accessibility looks like. And showing and allowing our faculty to adopt it, then put their content in, but showing best practices.
And one thing to add about OCR training So, also, all of our faculty, whether they've done it before or not, have to be retrained on our online credit recovery model. They it's an online course, and it shows that and we just redesigned that course, with our coordinator of online, learning, Erin Ferguson, and he told me I had to mention his name. And if I get it twice, I get a four pack. So create credit recovery courses for students, but also training model that's demonstrating best practices for our teachers. And again, creating stuff in the comments, creating content in the comments, Not only for best practices of turning a semester long course into a four week trim down.
They're not at a zero percent. They're at a forty to fifty five how do we get them to a passing grade and looking at those core content standards and then letting our instructional specialists and our department chairs have that conversation and then and tailor it to that. And then we talk about in the online course development, or on the onboarding course, not just the spirit and mission of our online curriculum for credit recovery, but also best practices in how you're going to implement it when you make your own tweaks because we want that autonomy for our teachers. We don't want it to be plug and play completely, but we do wanna make sure we're offering support. And one thing that I wanted to add is that students attend OCR courses on top of their regular semesters.
So we really had to ask teachers to narrow down these SLOs that we want to put in the OCR instead of them repeating a whole new course on top of their sixteen week course yet it is online Oxford -- Yeah. -- credit recovery. One one thing we really learned from the previous third party online credit recovery model is it had an onboarding assessment, and that assessment was, done in person. So we knew they weren't going in and googling the answers. And students were starting off between a forty five and fifty five percent.
So while they failed the class, It wasn't because they didn't learn anything. They just didn't show their learning or there were inequitable grading practices, and that's a different session for a different day. So we we wanted to show through a lot of data and a lot of tables. In our previous model, a lot of students did show learning. They just or or did show in the assessment that they learned.
They just never showed in the semester long class. So we really use that as a tool to kind of really pare it down. And then that mission with credit recovery and and Sasha's insight and and expertise allowed us to really focus on what is accessible, what is easy navigation, how do you limit scrolling, And Sasha did an amazing job in showing that in this presentation when they told us it had to be in slides, she we had to move it to Canvas and show and model what that expectation is We're not scrolling too much. We're making the functions usable on all devices because our students are on thirteen inch chromebooks, and and it's always a struggle. As you can see, a lot of you are on phones tablets yet screen.
So designed for this presentation had to fit that broad range that everything is scalable and responsive for every possible screen. I hope we succeeded in that. Well, we we we focused on, Apple users. So if you're an Android user, I don't know how well it's So so our our strategy is, and this goes for everything. In training, we need to accentuate that that importance of that why.
And so what we are the lens that we gave them was the students in your classes. Who is in your class? And then with my experience and interaction with Sasha is how much, how many students have an unidentified disability or someone like me didn't identify their disability until they were in grad school. I didn't know that I had the disability. I didn't know that I had a learning disability at ADHD. I didn't know that.
I knew there was something, but it wasn't identified until much later. And how many of our students have that same experience or how many interactions have we had with faculty And you're we're we're a high school district. So we're having these well, it's never identified before. Or we have itinerant students, McKinee Vento students, foster youth students that they're they're moving around so much. They never get identified.
And they never get services and then they come to us because we have several group home and different foster, systems in, in our area. And they come to us, and we need to make sure all of our content is accessible to them. And then post pandemic, everything is a blended learning environment. A lot of our teachers are doing some version of a blended learning and a lot of computer based interaction. There are so many students that are getting fatigue.
There's the, you know, the the color contrast, particularly early pandemic, how much as teachers were over designing and trying to make it homey on canvas. I do have a beef with bitmoji, so that's probably part of why I just said that. So so then our our professional development needed to focus on that and everywhere in our professional development has a conversation about about accessibility a conversation from an English learner lens. And we have workshop models. The other thing I found is, and teachers are really fatigued post pandemic.
I'm sure you feel it. So I stopped doing sessions that were large scale like this or like three or four sessions for eighty five staff. So they have a menu of options. And I started doing workshops more one on one. Bringing in a content expert, bringing in Aaron.
I, you know, taking all of these different tools and trying to trying to make it a little bit more bite sized chunks and let them come in and kind of do a walk through. We also used, poke tech, as a as a plug in, or added, LTI in, in, canvas and allowing them to see that. We're utilizing impact a little bit, to kind of have a help center. So we're trying to find different ways show them new tools, to allow them to help. And then the student benefits have been huge.
My own, course design, and we'll we'll look at an example of it. Was, not good. And then, last year, we did a little bit of research on a couple of our students, or a couple of our oxnard online courses, And the more third party and the more modules that existed, the higher theDF rate was. So the more simplistic, and we're not talking about lowering rigor or removing standards. We're talking about design and layout.
And so, that research really showed me that teachers were trying to over design And we also have a very, supportive district. So they gave us every tech tool there was. We have a subscription to basically everything. And if we don't have it, they'll let you pilot it. And what hap which is great.
Yeah. We're very spoiled. I know. I know. Thank you, mister Adams, for that lcap money.
So but what ended up thing, though, is then we have teachers that are over designing, and we have five, six, seven tools. And every module, every unit has another set of tools So the students are never really able to get comfortable with something because it's changing to a new tool. And just to put things in perspective, when I started working and redesigning courses, there would be a Google slide presentation with seventeen different fonts, thirty five colors, and seven tools interlaid in Google. I'm right here, Sasha. I'm right here.
So So this is We actually, Sasha and I were just connecting a few weeks ago, and I was venting about, something that looks a lot like on the left. And I'm gonna scroll so I can show you the lens. Summer school, four weeks, credit recoveries of two hour, per day, and so that students can take two classes. And, we have on the left, and this is actually a super pared down version of what one of our teachers used. So our our but prior to, getting in lesson or learning design services and Sasha, we did have a third party that started our, our starter center.
And a little bit of course builds. And it was overdesigned, but but there was no conversation in professional development to teachers of, like, we're giving you all this. Trim it down. It's a menu. Pick what you you don't go to Cheesecake Factory and get all those things.
Right? That's a lot. Cheesecake Factory is an overwhelming place for some people. So if that was triggering, I apologize. But what we wanna do is trim it down and how many times can you on a page, put like what you see on the right, and then also, you know, indenting. But I was talking to her about this.
It's always math. I'm sorry. If you're a math teacher, I struggle on my site with math. It's always math that it's so overdesigned in so many third party tools. And and it's just overwhelming.
A student opens this. You've all been to a professional development online session, and then you open the slides, and you're like, forty two slides? Nah. And you go and do you're doing something else while your face is still on zoom. This is what students see. They get overwhelmed, and they have six classes.
And so it's it's over just the initial view is overwhelming to students. Yes. And, this example that we used was a six week course, and elements in the module ranged from twenty two to forty two. And as a third party designing, redesigning this, it was overwhelming for me to redesign it, not even knowing the the the gist of the content, just a pure volume. Now look at that volume of pages, assignments, and everything times a sixteen week course.
So learning how to structure this so that we reduce that cognitive overload using best online design practices applying accessibility practices, and then narrowing this down to a manageable module of maybe ten elements it will be way less overwhelming for students to interact with that content. So I shared screen and Sasha immediately said. I fixed that already. So we we have this problem where we're going back and cleaning up over design content and then getting teachers to go back and stop re adopting their previous terms course, but actually go, Hey, we've rolled out a new one, and that's how we need to implement impact. To communicate that.
And and and re have teachers re come back and visit and go, Hey, well, now we have Sasha, and this is a Sasha, polished course And now you can put in some of your assessments. And you can put in your new quizzes, and you can do those things, but the content is designed in an accessible way. And with the indent and all that stuff. And here's And Sasha sounds very strict. Yeah.
Sasha is very strict. So so this was my before. The slide is not, loading. Load it's still loading right now. But so I designed a course.
We needed it more, Vapa, visual and performing arts, credit recovery options. We've implemented a CTE, pathway completer option, and we have world there's all these different things, and we have students that are not able to fit VAPA or or or don't have access on their court. Maybe their, their site doesn't have as many options for VAPPA, visual and performing arts. And what ended up happening with my course is I come in with my music background and and created a music appreciation course. And and I presented all this content that I thought was great.
And it was all in Google slides. And, Sasha had a really good poker face at first. And we met with Erin, and and she walked through she goes, okay. Yeah. So that's really that's good.
So just imagine here a slide. And, and an embedded YouTube video. And a couple images, and it was probably like slides mania or something like that. So it was a lot of colors and all it was bad. It was really not good, and I didn't know that until I met with Sasha.
And then Sasha fixed it. So then what we did on this next slide, we or slide page, rather say page. What we did is we took that Google slide lecture and designed it natively in Canvas. And we used headings to break out the content, use manageable chunks. We added a little bit of HTML styling here so that we can pack this into a segment where students can most easily navigate through the content.
So what used to be a slide with the text and a video, now students can go to these segments and just click on it and and learn individually through all of these. So it's like a table of contents, and then it's the actual content. And I'll never forget And it kind of just kind of popped to me when when she was talking about headings right now. I've I was in the fourth grade and our teacher showed us how to navigate the textbook. And how to look for headings and subheadings for different content.
And and that's what headings are, and we don't think about it as much. Or if you use Google Docs, if you use the headings, now you have the navigatable feature on the left side, the menu, if you're not familiar, that's a great way to organize and collaborate. And and I did not design in that way in my slides. It was slides, and you had to go and shop through all the slides. And so a student who is not as in it's not as intuitive or student who doesn't maybe lacks the curiosity or is not interested in the course might not be willing to go and click.
Whereas here, it's laid out completely in one place, and the the scrolling is minimal. And also this is accessible on any mobile device. Through Canvas app, tablet, phone, anything. So it will it will render the exact same way. And screen reader will navigate through these drop menus as a link It will announce it.
Should the user choose to navigate through it? They can click to proceed to read it. If not, they can bypass it to the next one. I do hyperlink. I did not put any long URLs So in my defense, I did have that handled. But but the immersive reader tool still was not at all functional in a slide, Whereas, in what Sasha did, allowed student to, launch their own accessibility tools and and my design did none of that.
So, accessibility, is it only for students who need accommodations? Is not. And furthermore, are all of your faculty going in and clicking on the IEP and reading all ten pages of a student's accommodations. And the answer to that question is illegally, no. They're not doing that. And in our district, it's a hundred and seventy five students, and we have twenty or fourteen percent, students with IEPs, That is a lot of reading.
Is it their due is it their responsibility to do it? Yes. But if we don't think about our students with IEPs and we don't think about our students with five zero fours, and we don't think about any of those things, and we just design with intention of serving all of our students then we will be able to have designed accessible content that reaches everyone, whether they initiate that conversation or not. And I always tell teachers, I know that this is more work, but do you want their case manager or parents to be reaching out to you because you didn't implement x or y, tool, or, or accommodation. And if you're proactive and you show what you do and you walk them with intention, how to navigate it and use immersive reader and those tools, you're going to have a lot more success and like we all need, you'll have a lot less emails. So I'm gonna close this presentation with talking a little bit about accessibility journey.
So we need to shift our views and look at accessibility as the human right as a destination, as a journey, versus a destination and as a progress over perfection as my shirt is saying. So the work is never done. It's not one and done. We always have to design better. And what we thought may have been accessible this year.
Guess what? Maybe next year, we have more knowledge, more tools, and we can make our content even better. This image that you see on the left is probably one of my favourite images, and I'm gonna zoom so that you are able to see and I will explain what this is. But I think that it's simply, portrays, a very strong statement of how to design for how people learn. We always want to design for how our students are learning, not how we want them to learn. So what you see on the top image is Ohio State University, They built the entire campus, but the paths connecting their campus.
They let their students walk it for years to establish desired paths then they flew the balloon up, look at those paths, and they paved them the way how their students, quote unquote, are learning. So that is truly the application that we want to have in our online course design. And I'm going to close it with a statement that says accessibility is not about accommodating disabilities. It is about addressing the mismatch between the environment and the person. This is why we should design for one, but then extend for many.
And from here, you would be able to navigate to our hub page once you click on enroll the course. You're gonna have all the steps of how to get access to seven pillars course. You can easily go through it in one hour. It's very straightforward, very linear. You will use a Canvas free for teacher account, enter the code learn create collaborate, earn badge, and then spread awareness through social media.
We have a hashtag seven pillars a11y, and, we would really appreciate if we continue this conversation to make our online digital classrooms more accessible for students. Thank you. We're putting a QR code back up, in case so you can access the entire presentation, and it also lets you access the course and with a link not a URL, but a hyperlink. Thank you so much for attending. Really appreciate it.
What was Aaron's name? Aaron for Ferguson. Got the four pack. Thank you for the assist. Appreciate you.
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