Accessibility – Teaching Hub

“Inclusive College Classrooms: Teaching Methods for Diverse Learners” offers 200 examples for your classrooms

December 13, 2022

Book cover of Inclusive College Classrooms: Teaching Methods for Diverse Learners.

UA English professor Lauren Cardon published a book co-authored with Dr. Anne-Marie Womack of Rice University. It will be published on on December 27, 2022. Here is what Dr. Cardon has to say about it: Our book emerged from a series of conversations Anne-Marie and I have had over the years about teaching––what has worked for us, what we wish we had known when we started teaching, and perhaps most importantly, how we have worked to make our teaching more […]

Confused About Accommodations? Streamline the Process in 5 Easy Steps!

January 13, 2020

by Brittany Gregg, Assistant Director, Office of Disability Services The beginning of the semester is always a busy time — we are inundated with emails, updates, meetings, and requests. This is also when students start to send their accommodation letters, adding to the communications you receive. The Office of Disability Services (ODS) offers the following five steps to streamline the accommodations process for faculty. 1. Don’t wait for an emailed accommodation letter. You can sign in to the portal to […]

Accessibility and Library Instruction

January 10, 2020

by Sara Maurice Whitver, University Libraries Anyone who teaches knows that disability is present in our classrooms. As you get to know your students throughout the semester, you collectively work on learning strategies and develop a relationship that supports a productive classroom environment that helps your students achieve their learning goals. This relationship building is critical to understanding the learning needs of your students and helps you gain insight into the possible alternative ways of achieving the learning that is […]

Thanks for Accommodating Your Students!

January 9, 2019

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies Experiences with faculty are pivotal to everyone’s learning experience at our University. You, too, might remember more than a few teachers whose words and actions played a vital role in your education. In order to learn more about how we affect our students today at UA, a poll was sent out to 1,945 students by Brittany Gregg at the Office of Disability Services. Many responses illustrate how faculty across UA are doing their […]

Creating Accessible Online Courses

November 1, 2017

by Jessica Porter, Office of Educational Technology (eTech) This post answers some of the most frequently asked questions about online course accessibility. To learn more about the accessibility of specific instructional technologies, visit accessibility.ua.edu or consult the official documentation for that technology. What does making a course accessible actually mean? Accessibility means all students can access and use your course from the beginning, including those with visual, auditory, cognitive and physical impairments. More specifically, it means your course follows the […]

Resources for Creating Accessible Blackboard Shells

January 19, 2016

by Jessica Porter, Office of Educational Technology (eTech) There has been a lot of talk about accessibility lately, and you may be wondering how this applies to your face-to-face classes. The truth is accessibility touches all aspects of your course, from multimedia to course documents, and it’s a good idea to ensure this content is accessible. So what do I mean by accessibility? Accessibility is about making all course content available to and usable by all students, including those […]

How We Made a Course with Complex Symbols Accessible

January 13, 2016

by Torin Alter, Department of Philosophy In December of 2013, Marion Stevens, assistive technology specialist at the Office of Disability Services, contacted me about a Tree Mabry, a blind student who was close to finishing his undergraduate degree and needed to satisfy the core mathematics requirement. His major, communications, did not require advanced mathematics, and he neither knew nor wished to learn the Braille versions of mathematical symbols. Marion knew I teach PHL 195: Introduction to Deductive Logic, which has […]

All-Access Teaching

October 23, 2015

Image of graffiti stating "that will learn them" from Sheila Blige

The ubiquity of digital media and telecommunications leads to claims that “the world is flat” and that everybody has access to almost all services and information. Tom Friedman rather ominously says that this ubiquity of access establishes an “iron rule”: “whatever can be done, will be done. And if you are not doing it, it will be done to you.”Is this actually the case? Is everyone subject to this iron rule? Does everyone have an all-access pass?

How to Write Alt Text

October 9, 2015

Alternative text, or alt text, is the descriptive word or phrase read by screen readers in the place of an image, allowing its content and function to be conveyed to those with visual impairments. It also replaces an image when a browser doesn’t load, and it can help search engines identify an image’s content. In other words, alt text makes images accessible across devices and abilities. When it comes to writing good alt text, context is everything. In certain cases, you […]

How to Write Meaningful Link Text