Strategies to Increase Accessibility in General Courses

We can’t just adapt the course in the beginning of the semester. Ongoing support of the instructor is also essential. By providing the instructor with teaching strategies to increase accessibility, they will not only be prompting the students in the FPCTP program to use the strategies they already know, but they will also provide all the students in the course with new techniques for becoming a better student. One example from a program was the use of text to speech tools. The student in the FPCTP program knew how to use her computer to read the quizzes using her computer and headphones. That student then shared the process with the instructor who then asked her to share it with the class and offered it as an option for test taking. The adaptation for the student with disabilities became a learning tool for the entire class.

Some strategies that instructors can use and share with their students can be found in a variety of places on the web. These ideas, videos, resources can be part of a professional development activity or can be shared in monthly newsletters or emails. Below are some of these locations and an annotation to help direct the user. A resource for professional development activities can be found in the resources for this section.

• More Methods; Less Madness (The University of Alabama: K. Patricia Cross Academy). This site provides short How-To Videos for accessibility strategies. Included are Lecture Wrapper, Digital Stories, Guided notes, Lecture/pause, Readiness assurance tests; Quick write, Active reading, Think/pair/share, Engagement logs, and more. Select Video Library options to see the wide variety of videos
• Making videos accessible. The University of Washington’s Do-IT website offers to make their videos accessible with captioning. Of course, YouTube also enables captioning when videos are placed on their website.