Faculty How To's
DSPS Faculty Portal (AIM)
Each semester, as students request their approved accommodations for your class, a notification is sent to your 51反差黑料 e-mail address. Accordingly, at the start of each semester you may receive a number of these Faculty Notification Letters with details about your student's accommodations. If you're not receiving DSPS notifications in your Cuesta employee email inbox, please check your Junk Mail folder and to avoid missing future notifications.
In addition to receiving a Faculty Notification Letter when the student requests accommodations for your class, you may visit the for an overview of student accommodations, including the ability to view a student's Faculty Notification letter. Please see our Faculty AIM How-To for steps on how to login and view your students' accommodations.
In order for DSPS to proctor exams with a student's accommodations in place, we require faculty to complete an Alternative Testing Agreement specifying the parameters for an exam. This is required for all in-person classes in which faculty are unable to provide the student's accommodations and are thus unable to proctor the exam.
Before logging into the , please discuss the student's exam accommodations with the student in detail and complete the agreement accordingly. Please view the Faculty Alternative Testing How-To for instructions
Note: Due to our office hours, DSPS proctored exams may need to take place outside of class hours.
Online Instruction Accessibility
To avoid disadvantaging students with a disability, pre-recorded video shared with the class . For original content, best practice is to for accuracy. To ensure non-original content is captioned consider using the or contact the content creators. See the page for more information.
In fact, captions as well as transcripts are beneficial for many people, including:
- Non-native speakers of the language
- Viewers without access to audio on their device
- Viewers in a loud or quiet space
- Students who benefit from seeing and hearing information simultaneously
Consider the equity and legal implications of and .
Best practices for inclusive online teaching include:
- and distribute to participants ahead of time
- Understand that students may not have equal access to internet bandwidth, etc.; build in pauses when possible
- When screen-sharing, describe everything on screen. (Shared screens are inaccessible to screen readers.) Be descriptive and specific
Provide alternatives to online proctoring if necessary for accommodations
- Students who have testing accommodations may need to use a different proctoring solution if their accommodation is not compatible.
- Please ensure Honorlock settings are compatible with the student's accommodation using the . Note: if you have Browser Guard enabled for your class, we recommend that you create a separate copy of the exam that has that feature disabled for students using text-to-speech.
- Be flexible with your testing requirements, and provide students with the ability to communicate any barriers they experience with assistive technology
- Use question banks in Canvas to randomize questions and reduce the possibility of cheating
- Use instead of exams
Document Accessibility
Creating accessible documents in Microsoft Word relies on using for making links and images perceivable to all users.
Please review the steps below for a quick introduction on how to verify and implement document accessibility in MS Word.
How to run the Accessibility Checker
- Click the 鈥淩eview鈥 tab on the ribbon.
- Click the 鈥淐heck Accessibility鈥 icon. (Or in the 鈥淭ools鈥 menu, click 鈥淐heck Accessibility.鈥)
- In the pane that appears beside your document, you see a list of accessibility issues. Click an issue to highlight it in your document. The accessibility checker will suggest for how to fix the problem you鈥檝e selected.
How to access the Navigation Pane
- The Navigation pane in Word lets you quickly search or navigate through your document using the Heading structure.
- To show the Navigation pane in Word, click the 鈥淰iew鈥 tab in the Ribbon. For all document views other than 鈥淩ead Mode鈥, then check the 鈥淣avigation Pane鈥 checkbox in the 鈥淪how鈥 button group.
- If using 鈥淩ead Mode鈥, then select the 鈥淣avigation Pane鈥 choice from the 鈥淰iew鈥 tab鈥檚 drop-down menu, instead. By default, the Navigation pane appears at the left side of the application window.
How to apply Heading Styles
- Select 鈥淗ome tab>Styles鈥 (or 鈥淐trl+Alt+Shift+S鈥 to open the 鈥淪tyles pane鈥) and apply heading styles to the headings in your document.
- You can: Select the heading style you want and then type your heading, or
- Type your heading, place your cursor anywhere within the heading, and then select the heading style you want to use.
- You may also right-click on the Heading Style and select "Update Heading to Match Selection" to preserve the existing styling
- If you have different heading levels (such as chapter, article, section, topic, etc.), then you must use a different style for each heading type.
How to add Alt Text to Images
- Assistive technology cannot infer meaning from images and other objects. Images and other objects include pictures, images of text, images of tables, shapes, icons with hyperlinks, etc.
- To enter 鈥淎lt Text鈥, select the image, object, or shape. 鈥淩ight click鈥 or 鈥淪hift+F10鈥 and select 鈥淎lt Text" (Note: could say Format Picture, Format Shape, etc.>Alt Text). In the 鈥淒escription鈥 field, enter information that states the purpose (in as few words as possible while remaining clear) for a meaningful image or object or check 鈥淢ark as decorative鈥 as appropriate. Then select 鈥渃lose鈥.
How to create descriptive Link Text
- Assistive technology users rely on meaningful names to determine the destination, function, or purpose of links. For example, multiple 鈥渃lick here鈥 links are misleading if the name for each link is the same, while the destinations differ.
- To create a hyperlink, select or type the hyperlink text and either right click and select 鈥淗yperlink鈥 or use 鈥淐trl+K鈥 to open the 鈥淚nsert Hyperlink鈥 configuration window. Specify/verify the 鈥淭ext to display鈥 and the 鈥淎ddress鈥 for the link and its destination, and select 鈥淥K鈥.
How to check Font & Contrast
- The 鈥淎ccessibility Checker鈥 automatically checks for sufficient contrast between text and background.
- Ensure your font has good spacing and displays distinct characters accurately
- If needed, use text to duplicate the meaning of information communicated using color
How to ensure Accessible Lists
- Lists organize and structure content. Assistive technology users cannot infer meaning if you just format with tabs, a dash, or a number.
- Select 鈥淗ome tab>Paragraph鈥 and use the 鈥淏ullets,鈥 鈥淣umbering,鈥 or 鈥淢ultilevel List鈥 features when formatting lists in your document.
Plan your presentations with Accessibility in mind by recognizing the importance of the following choices.
- Slide Layouts
- Reading Order
- Images and Alt Text
- Descriptive Links
- Table Header Row
For detailed instructions, get started with the or review the .
For a detailed guide on creating accessible PDFs see this . For original content, consider the following.
- Good quality originals retain the majority of accessible features when converted to PDF
- To verify results, use the built-in Accessibility Checker (under Tools > Accessibility)
- Benefits of a searchable PDF include the ability to:
- Search text
- Select text
- Highlight text
- Create a Table of Contents
- Listen to text
Mathematical equations and scientific formulas are made accessible either by using special markup (such as MathML, which is automatically created by Canvas' Equation Editor) or by providing appropriate alt text along with an image of the equation or formula. This latter strategy is also available for making charts and graphs accessible.
To learn more about creating properly marked up equations in Canvas review the platform's . Another option for creating accessible maths is . This tool is also capable of remediating formulas in existing documents and is .
With regard to supporting STEM graphs and charts with alt text, please ,
- Identify the instructional merit of an image. What is the main point? Is the image more decorative than informative?
- Keep the explanation of an image brief. How would you describe its purpose in a sentence?
- Articulate the point of the image clearly. Would your explanation help the learner to understand the point of the image? Would learners be more confused?
- Ensure that your explanation is usable by all. How would you explain the image, if you need to do so to someone over the phone? This helps a sighted person perhaps better understand the experience of a non-sighted individual listening to alt text.
- It is often more accessible to provide a table rather than narrative alt text in cases where you're using a pie chart and/or bar chart.
- For graphics that illustrate processes (e.g. flow charts), these can often be presented in a nested list format instead/in addition.
- If the information conveyed in the image/graphic is already represented in the text, then a brief alt text description is all that's needed. The alt text could read "flow chart representing the process discussed in the following text" or something simple that directs the user to the text equivalent