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<p class="MsoNormal">It is the University’s responsibility, bottom line. It depends on your campus’s policies on whether instructors are tasked with providing accessible documents or not, and if there is any enforcement mechanism to make faculty actually do
that work. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We as DS professionals have the experience and know-how, but faculty often don’t. While in a perfect world everything would come already accessible, we know that isn’t the case. And even if the vast majority of PDFs came in an accessible
format, we’d still have those students that cannot utilize a PDF in the first place, no matter how accessible it is.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Several things come to mind for your problem, Debbee, and this is how we’ve solved them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<ol style="margin-top:0in" start="1" type="1">
<li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Provide students with a high-quality text to speech program that runs a scan and OCR of any material fed to it. Of course I’m talking about Kurzweil and Texthelp. If your campus
is not doing this, they need to be. Most image-only PDFs process just fine in these text-to-speech readers, and this should serve the vast majority of your sighted reading-disabled student population.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">Remind students that letting us know about inaccessible materials in plenty of time for us to remediate the documents is their responsibility. Most faculty have all of their materials
uploaded for the semester early on. It is the rare faculty who is feeding out things week by week. Students should be looking ahead at reading materials, opening in their text-to-speech program, and if they don’t work, send them in for remediation. Give
them a set amount of time needed for the production of these things. Our set time is a four-day turnaround. I usually don’t need a full four days, but it can be a volume issue and having that four days helps me prioritize and get things done on time for
the student.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">For instructors who are feeding out materials too late for them to be remediated, a friendly reminder to them about your policies on alternate format production and the lead time you
need can be helpful. You also should be teaching your students to advocate for their needs with their instructors. This is an interactive process, and students need to learn to speak with professors and explain clearly what their needs are, what the parameters
are, etc. They are the person closest to the instructor. We can step in if a professor reacts poorly or appears to not understand the assignment (as the kids say these days).<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">You can also inform select instructors, primarily the violators, about how to look for better quality PDFs online, so that those base materials end up being much better quality, and
you may not need to remediate them at all.<o:p></o:p></li><li class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1">For things that look like they were scanned from a textbook, if you can figure out what the textbook is, you may be able to find nice clean copies by requesting them yourself from
the publisher, or finding them on Bookshare. I do this if I see a pattern in scans – like several things are called “Smith” followed by whatever part of the book it is. Getting good clean working copies can really cut down on production time. Sometimes,
what you get from a publisher or Bookshare is almost ready to hand to a student, when it is just a chapter or two or three. I produce those materials just like I produce textbook materials, I’m just not giving the student the entire book.<o:p></o:p></li></ol>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hopefully this help. While we’d love it if faculty were more mindful, generally, campuses have no enforcement power over faculty to make them do the right thing. Which is why we all still have jobs, and why we also have quite a bit of
job security, as annoying as the work can be sometimes.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none">Susan Kelmer
</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none">Alternate Format Production Program Manager<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none">Disability Services<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none">Health and Wellness Services<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#CFB87C;mso-ligatures:none">T</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#1F497D;mso-ligatures:none"> </span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black;mso-ligatures:none">303
735 4836</span><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#1F497D;mso-ligatures:none"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#CFB87C;mso-ligatures:none"><a href="http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices"><span style="color:#CFB87C">www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices</span></a>
<o:p></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#CFB87C;mso-ligatures:none"><o:p><span style="text-decoration:none"> </span></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><u><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#CFB87C;mso-ligatures:none"><o:p><span style="text-decoration:none"> </span></o:p></span></u></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica Neue";color:black;mso-ligatures:none"><img border="0" width="150" height="56" style="width:1.5625in;height:.5833in" id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.png@01DB6E6B.E28C8EA0"></span><span style="color:#0070C0;mso-ligatures:none"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D;mso-ligatures:none"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#1F497D;mso-ligatures:none">Due to the nature of electronic communication, the security of this message cannot be guaranteed. If you’ve received this email in error
please notify the sender immediately and delete this message.</span></i><span style="mso-ligatures:none"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none">From:</span></b><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ligatures:none"> athen-list <athen-list-bounces@mailman12.u.washington.edu>
<b>On Behalf Of </b>Deborah Armstrong via athen-list<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Friday, January 24, 2025 2:16 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> 'Access Technology Higher Education Network' <athen-list@u.washington.edu><br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Athen] Thoughts about inaccessible PDFS in Canvas courses<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-ligatures:none">[External email - use caution]<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;mso-ligatures:none"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal">This quarter, I’ve had a number of students with this problem, and I wonder how much is the responsibility of the disabled student services, and how much the professor’s responsibility.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Your thoughts are welcome.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The course is in Canvas and I’ve had five students taking five different courses with this same issue. The Canvas platform itself is very accessible and the Canvas pages the teachers post are also quite accessible.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But for the course readings, what are posted are pages from a variety of textbooks, all scanned by the professors and presented as image-only PDF files.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve been steadily converting them as students send them to me, but unlike traditional alternate media, where the student can request a textbook early, these inaccessible PDFS keep popping up a day or so before the student is supposed to
have read them.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All of them are relatively short, and I am sure it is saving students money not having to buy textbooks, but instead to have material from a huge variety of books as part of their course.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But it’s a nightmare for the poor student who doesn’t know if the material he will get will be accessible until almost before it is due. Plus it’s a hassle for alt media production.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve talked to the person here who trains folks on Canvas and he knows a lot about accessibility. But right now they are focusing on something called RSI (regular and substantive interaction) in courses because apparently California law
is requiring professors master this stuff. So accessibility he told me is on the back burner until they get through all the RSI training.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When is it our responsibility to make materials accessible, and when is it the professor’s responsibility? And what have you done to shove some of that responsibility back to the teacher?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">--Debee<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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