Accessibility Tools

Accessible Online Materials

The Office of Distance Learning at Western Kentucky University helps online faculty to convert course materials into versions that blind, deaf, or otherwise physically challenged online students can use.

Step 1: Plan Ahead

• Select your textbooks and course materials as early as possible. This helps you to get the support you need from Distance Learning Center to verify that your materials are accessible.
• Captioning audio or video is part of the services that Distance Learning Center provides. However, try to inform us as soon as possible if you want to add captions to your A/V materials. We recommend that our faculty to use Tegrity multimedia platform since we continuously add captioning to videos recorded on this platform.
• Your syllabi and course materials need to be accessible. Either follow these tutorials on how to make your documents accessible, or visit us at Distance Learning Center to help you convert those materials to accessible ones.
  • Accessibility Presentation
  • How to make an accessible PowerPoint presentation.
  • Practice Material - PowerPoint
  • How to make an accessible Word document and a pdf file.
  • Practice Material - Word Document
• If you are using a website to deliver materials to your online students, make sure your website is accessible. Distance Learning Center can help you design your website. In addition, you can attend a training session on how to create an accessible website. Accessibility training information is available on the WKU IT website.
  
  Finally, you need to contact the Office of Equal Opportunity (section508@wku.edu) to confirm that your website meets accessibility criteria.

Step 2: Consider the Source

• Contact the publisher and ask for an electronic version of a textbook that could be read by text-to-speech software.
• If you are using Audio or Video from external resources, you may ask the source to provide you with the transcript. They may already have a transcript for that specific A/V you want to use. Sometimes, you may need to grant permission to modify it.
• If you are using materials from websites, colleagues, etc., you may ask the owners if they have a version in a more accessible format.
• For your course materials, don’t rely on inaccessible websites, especially if you are using those websites as part of your online course assignments.

Step 3: Convert to Accessible Format

• Contact the publisher and ask for an electronic version of a textbook that could be read by text-to-speech software.
• Dr. Leyla Zhuhadar has developed software, Universal Accessible Video (UAV), for adding closed captioning to Audio and Video contents. This software is an open source (please read our Open Source Licenses Agreement). The software provides a user-friendly interface for adding closed captions to a variety of video applications commonly used by online faculty, such as Tegrity, Windows Media Player, and QuickTime.

  Download the Universal Accessible Video software (Zip format). Download the UAV tutorial to learn how to use the software.

  For more information, contact Leyla Zhuhadar at leyla.zhuhadar@wku.edu.
• If you are using materials from websites, colleagues, etc., you may ask the owners if they have a version in a more accessible format.
• The following resources are useful if you want to learn about how to learn about web accessibility and why it is important:
  • Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind (watch the video) – Gain an appreciation of web accessibility by understanding the user perspective.
  • WebAIM.org – This website is one of the best resources in terms of developing and retrofitting web content for accessibility.