Faculty Support

We are committed to supporting faculty with ensuring accessibility for both on-campus and virtual learning environments.

Important information about implementing accommodations for online courses:

• Please remember ALL media included in online instruction should be accessible (e.g. videos must be accurately captioned, pictures and illustrations should have descriptions accessible to a screen reader).

• If you should have any questions about whether your instructional material is accessible to students, we would like to take this opportunity to reinforce the use of Blackboard Ally. This tool will let you know if your documents are accessible to students who may rely on the use of assistive technology and provide step by step instructions on addressing any issues.

  If you are using Blackboard for quizzes and tests, please extend the time permitted for the student to complete the exam or quiz accordingly.

• If you are unsure of how to do this please visit the following link from Blackboard. If you need help, reach out on the Moving to Remote Teaching site.

• If a student has alternate attendance as an academic accommodation, they will need to be able to have assignment, test, and quiz due dates adjusted as you ordinarily would if they were attending the class on campus. As always, if the absence is a disability-related issue, the students will still need to connect with Disability Services.

• For students who have the accommodation of assignments broken down or weekly meetings with instructors, they will still need to maintain contact with you. This may be accomplished in a variety of ways including phone calls, skype/WebEx, email, etc. DSS is happy to assist you in determining the best approach.

• For students who have the accommodation of recording lectures, record any live sessions in Collaborate or create your own and upload it to Medial. Instructions and webinars on both can be found at e.co. This will allow students to hear lecture materials repeatedly thus aiding in better comprehension of material.

If have any questions about how to implement an accommodation or how to best address the needs of a particular student, please do not hesitate to contact your campus DSS Coordinator or email [email protected].

Please see our For Faculty section for more details on policies and procedures.