5.3 Reflection: Accessibility

As I pondered the questions for this module I realized how truly inaccessible my online tools often are for my students. My web pages do not meet the requirements of Section 508. Recently, I opened an email from one of my 6^th graders asking a question about an assignment due the next day. I had the assignment and an example posted on our 6^th grade homework corner web page. At first read, I was stunned that the student did not know what to do. However, my assumption was that the student actually accessed the web site as instructed in class and once there that they actually knew what to do. I was wrong on both assumptions.

The video that Danielle Forst created for us in this module really reminded me of the fact that there is a real need for me to hand-hold 6^th graders through the technology and self-reliance piece of middle school. Additionally, I’m assuming that they have a fairly good comprehension level of the written word. Not all of my students do have a good comprehension level, and I need to make my instructions fully accessible to all of them. By creating a video that they could use with my instructions I would be making the process a lot more clear to all of the students in my class. Even having an audio button available so that the instructions could be listened to for those with better audio comprehension than visual would assist in a lot of the cases.  In addition, utilizing headers in my instruction set would really set my students up for success and help them formulate a better understanding of the structure of assignments.

I had no idea that you could set up an alternative text for images. But now that I know, I will add that for all of my students. Even students without disabilities can end up on a device that may not allow the picture to be downloaded – in this way at least they know what it is that they are missing.

When watching videos in class I always turn on closed caption so that those students that do better with the written word have access to that aspect of the film as well. I really like to use BrainPop videos as openers or refreshers on a topic, since they are short and combine vocabulary, graphic organizers, images, and closed captioning on all of their videos. The students enjoy them as well which truly helps. The resource department at my school is amazing and they ensure that all the teachers are aware of students with accommodations and IEPs. They provide us with specific methods to help each child. However, those methods usually have nothing to do with the online information that we use with students.

I do make PowerPoint slides for most of the material that we discuss in class and I post those online for the students to use as study notes or review at their leisure. Additionally, I post links for any videos that we watch in class so that students that are absent or that need to review material can access it from home. I post samples of projects and rubrics so that students and parents have guidelines to follow and checklists to help them. For each of my classes I set up an Edmodo page so that students can help each other, take online quizzes and access additional material that I post. I have accounts for my students to use Glogster and Animoto so that they can use online tools to collaborate and create projects. This year we created Google accounts for all of our students and have been training them in how to use shared documents, presentations, forms, and documents. However, after reading through this module I realize that there’s a lot more that I can do to help support the academic success of my students.

This module was a real eye-opener on so many levels. Starting with the laws that mandate accessibility, to the struggles that those with disabilities encounter on some web sites, to the possibilities for web authors to make their information more accessible and the job is ours to accomplish. It is not easy by any stretch of the mind; however, it is achievable and there are lots of tools available to help you make your web information much easier to access for all. I did struggle with the transcript but that was my own fault. There are tools that are available to help make this chore easier and I’ll look into them more in the coming weeks. My challenge this week was to accomplish the task at hand and I’ve found sometimes I complicate the matter by trying to learn how to use too many new software products at the same time.