Educational Course Accessibility Guidelines

IOA is committed to making educational opportunities accessible to all. Course instructors should use the below guidelines to ensure presentations are accessible to participants. At a minimum, IOA allows for closed captioning, makes transcripts available, and allows for translated captions via Zoom for all virtual education courses. IOA also provides additional accommodations such as ASL interpreters upon request.

Overall ADA Compliance Guide

Format - Offer handouts, slides, and other material in accessible formats

Use formats that allow users to adapt the presentation to meet their needs, such as word processing, HTML, or EPUB. (Most users are more skilled at adapting word processing formats.) Avoid providing material only in formats that users cannot adapt, including PDF and protected Word documents. Even tagged PDF is not accessible to users with low vision and cognitive disabilities who need to change font size, line spacing, colors, zoom, reflow, and print; and has significant exceptions for screen reader users. 

Some participants will need print material in alternative formats such as large print and braille. If you give participants accessible digital material in advance, then you usually don’t need to provide these alternative print formats.

• https://www.w3.org/WAI/teach-advocate/accessible-presentations/

PDF Accessibility

• http://www.sigaccess.org/welcome-to-sigaccess/resources/accessible-pdf-author-guide/

ADA Compliance Toolkit Resource

• https://www.disability.state.mn.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/ADA-Digital-Toolkit.docx

Other Considerations:

• Remember that disabilities may not always be visible or obvious. It is wise to assume there will be some members of your audience who will have trouble seeing visual aids (such as slides, overheads, video clips, etc.) and/or some who will have difficulty hearing what is said. https://www.apa.org/pi/disability/resources/convention
  

• https://www.sde.idaho.gov/_files/district/CTD-Accessible-Student-Content.pdf

• https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/micro-credential/micro-accommodations/p02/

• Describe the image(s) as you go through the presentation.

• Ensure you are using images that reflect a commitment to diversity.

• Describe all visuals for people who have a visual impairment, who are sitting a far distance from the screen, and who may not understand the visuals:

1. State what you are showing, for example, “This graph demonstrates …”
2. “Shows … ,” “These results indicate …”
3. Do not to leave out information that is depicted in your visuals. For example, if you say “if you look here, you see in this graph…” or “as you can see...” you are excluding people who cannot see the slide.
4. When you ask a question of the audience, summarize the response, such as, Speaker: “How many of you use CBT in your practice? Please raise your hand.” ...then state the results: “less than half raised their hand.”