UDL is Universal Design for Learning. It was developed by the people at CAST, the “Center for Applied Special Technology”, based outside of Boston Massachusetts. You can find out more at the CAST website http://udlguidelines.cast.org
UDL is a principle-based approach to designing university teaching and learning to meet the learning needs of all students. It offers a framework that helps us consider and embrace our diverse classrooms. The UDL framework provides us with the tools we need to take all learners into consideration when planning and designing our teaching, learning and assessment approaches and activities. We hope the following tips will provide you with some guidance on how UDL might be used and applied in practice. To chat about all things UDL, we would love to hear from you.
Allen Higgins (allen.higgins@ucd.ie) and Linda Dowling-Hetherington (linda.dowling@ucd.ie), University for All Faculty Partners
Accessible Communication Tip #1.
Offer your audience as much discretion and autonomy as possible by providing communications and resources in an accessible format that they can adapt to their own preferences, e.g. to enable them to manipulate things like text colour and font size. Use alternative text (‘alt text’) to describe images. Include captions in videos. Before making your materials available on Brightspace, use the ‘check accessibility’ feature in Word and Powerpoint.
If available use automatic voice transcription to create a .vtt text file. Closed Captioning (CC) can playback transcripts alongside video and audio recordings.
What is A11y?
A11y = Accessibility. Whatever way you write it, A11Y, a11y (that’s right, A eleven Y) is a coded shorthand for “accessibility”. A “numeronym” is a number-based word used as shorthand for a much longer word. The number typically indicates the number of letters substituted.
Brightspace Power Tip! a11y Alternative Formats:
Anyone can now click on the “Alternative Formats” button beside the slides and other material in Brightspace. It opens a menu that enables you to download the file converted into one of 6 selectable accessible formats. From HTML, Tagged PDF to MP3 file versions for audio listening.
Brightspace Power Tip! Accessibility Score:
Documents and files uploaded to Brightspace are now given an A11y score: High, Medium, Low. Click the dashboard for each item for tips on how to improve the score.
Tagged PDF versus un-tagged PDF?
A tagged PDF includes accessibility markups that, when properly applied, help to make a PDF file accessible to people who use screen readers and other assistive technology (AT). Usually export to PDF in most applications applies auto-tagging (good) e.g. “File > Export to PDF” or “File > Save as PDF” will create a PDF file using the outline/style tags in your document. Unfortunately, “File > Print to PDF” often generates an un-tagged PDF (bad) making it difficult for people who read using assistive technology.
[The original designers of the PDF document standard wanted to make electronic pages look like printed pages. Accessibility came later.]
Tags and Markup are good but don’t forget design and layout.
Edit your document in an outline view to get a sense of how assistive technology will consume it. Try to avoid unnecessarily complex tables. If you need images or infographics, make sure you provide meaningful ALT text.
Brightspace Power Tip! Accessibility Checker:
The “eyeball plus tick” icon is Brightspace’s built-in accessibility checker. Find it on the extended page edit menu when adding or editing content with the: Create, Edit, and New commands/buttons (you may need to click “…” to find it).
The Accessibility Checker presents simple tips to improve or address accessibility issues detected.
Word Power Tip! Select “Tools > Accessibility”
The Microsoft Word Accessibility pane provides inspection results for the current document. Microsoft also provide a selection of accessibility tools on both the “Review Ribbon” and the “View Ribbon”.
Try using the “Focus”, “Immersive Reader” or “Read Aloud” options to experience some assistive technologies.
PowerPoint Power Tip! “Tools > Accessibility”
Complex diagrams tables and infographics provide huge obstacles for people who depend upon assistive technology.
The Microsoft PowerPoint Accessibility pane offers inspection results and tips for improving accessibility for the current document. Errors like missing alt text, missing navigation information like a slide title. A nice touch is Microsoft's Intelligent Services which offers surprisingly relevant (at times) suggested text.
PowerPoint Power Tip! “Slideshow > Subtitles options”
Microsoft PowerPoint provides powerful real-time closed captioning (CC) or sub-titling of recorded speech during a presentation. Spoken words are displayed as text on screen, a useful tool for supplementing the audio experience.
Word Power Tip! “View > Focus”
The "View>Focus" interface is great for reducing the cognitive load of the limiting screen distraction when writing.
Word Power Tip! “Word > Preferences > General > Personalise”
To turn on/off "Dark Mode" and select page colour dark/white options.
Word Power Tip! “Word > Preferences > General > Ease of Access”
To turn on automatic alt text generation and/or run the accessibility checker while working.
Word Power Tip! “Word > View Ribbon > Immersive Reader”
To present the text you are writing/reading in ways that aide comprehension and cognition.
The "Syllables" option reveals the syllable structure of words via spacing dots to improve readability.
The "Text Spacing" displays text with larger font and a spacious view.
The "Read Aloud" option starts the built-in text-to-speech reader to let you listen to the text rather than read it with eyes alone.
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| MS Word Immersive Reader options |
