Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Turn and face the strange
Ch-ch-changes

-“Changes,” David Bowie

It’s been a minute since I shared an update in this space.

I am now pursuing a PhD in Instructional Leadership with an Instructional Technology concentration at The University of Alabama. I hope to complete by degree in 2024.

In July 2021, I started in a new role in the University of Alabama’s Center for Instructional Technology, where I had been serving as a Technology Accessibility Specialist. As the Center’s Assistant Director – Education & Outreach, I planned and directed instructional technology education and outreach activities and served as the Director’s backup in all areas of CIT operations and administration while continuing to serve as the primary accessibility training resource for the campus.

I joined the graduate faculty of the University as an adjunct instructor in Spring 2022, teaching in the School of Library and Information Science. I teach LS 513: Professional Paths, a graduate course in the College of Communication and Information Sciences’ School of Library and Information Studies. This course introduces students to the variety of professional paths that an MLIS-holder might pursue and encourages students to explore diverse areas of library and information practice that may interest them. In Spring 2022, I taught synchronously online using Blackboard Learn and Zoom, as well as Panopto, Flipgrid, and other instructional technologies offered by the university. This semester, I am teaching on campus and participating in a pilot of Blackboard Learn’s Ultra Course View.

Last month, I accepted a position with Knowbility as a Senior Digital Accessibility Specialist. Knowbility is an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to create an inclusive digital world for people with disabilities. As a member of the organization’s Accessibility Services Team, I conduct accessibility audits, guide clients on how to avoid, recognize, and fix accessibility issues, and contribute to Knowbility’s programs that support our mission of improving global web and digital accessibility.

The decision to leave my full-time staff position at UA and was a difficult one. I have been affiliated with the university since 2008, first as a graduate student, then as an employee, working in the University Libraries, HR Learning and Development, and the Office of Information Technology. I love helping people teach with technology, and, as anyone who’s ever had the fortune to deal with my CIT/OIT colleagues will tell you, I was able to do it with a wonderful team. I needed something different, though, and, having followed Knowbility’s work for many years, I decided to “turn and face the strange” with a return to the non-profit space, which is where I began my career. I am thrilled and proud to be a new member of an award-winning accessible information technology organization whose mission speaks to my heart. I am grateful that my adjunct work will enable me to remain connected with the UA community and friends and colleagues supporting teaching and learning while working to make UA a more accessibile, diverse, equitable, and inclusive place.

Thanks for reading! For more regular updates, you can follow me on Twitter.

Direct link to tutorial: Introducing Blackboard Ally

TERC 2020 Poster (PDF)

Resources referenced in my session are listed here.

Texthelp

Texthelp offers a collection of Mac and PC desktop software, Google Chrome apps and extensions, and iOS and Android apps that support reading, writing, language learning and STEM subjects. The University of Alabama has licensed these tools for use by all UA students, faculty, and staff on both university and personal devices. They are particularly beneficial for English language learners, students with learning disabilities, and students who can benefit from writing supports, but are useful to all.

Read&Write

Read&Write supports reading, writing, researching, and studying. It offers a simple toolbar at the top of the screen that offers support with tasks like reading text out loud, understanding unfamiliar words, researching assignments, and proofing written work. The Read&Write toolbar is available as a Google Chrome extension and as desktop software for Windows and Mac. There are also iPad and Android tablet apps that offer many of the features of the Chrome and desktop tools.

Snapverter

Snapverter is easy to use add-on for Read&Write for Google Chrome and iOS app that transforms papers and files into readable PDF documents.

After installing the Snapverter Chrome app, you can use your smartphone to snap a picture of text in a book, handout, or other paper-based item or select a saved inaccessible digital file from your phone or computer and upload it to the Snapverter folder in your Google Drive. Files are converted to readable text using optical character recognition (OCR) and stored as PDFs in your Google Drive. If you’d like, you can then use Read&Write to hear text read aloud, see words explained, access translation features, and more.

EquatIO

EquatIO supports math and STEM subjects. It lets you type, handwrite, or speak to create equations, formulas, and other math and chemistry expressions on a computer or Chromebook; there’s also a library of ready-made expressions you can use to add STEM content to a document. EquatIO also supports LaTex (lay-tech), a typesetting and mark-up language that’s widely used for mathematical and scientific documents.
EquatIO is available as a Google Chrome extension and as desktop software for Windows and Mac.

UA users also have access to the EquatIO mathspace collaborative workspace and EquatIO Mobile, a mobile companion that lets you use your phone or tablet to draw, dictate, or take a picture of math and add it to a document open on your computer or Chromebook.

Video demonstrations of many of the features I shared during the session can be found on the Texthelp YouTube channel.

Microsoft Learning Tools

Microsoft Learning Tools are free tools designed to improve reading and writing for learners regardless of their age or ability. They are available across a wide variety of applications.

This Microsoft Educator Community page brings together top tools and resources to help you get the most out of Microsoft’s inclusive tools for the classroom, including Learning Tools: Helpful links for Microsoft’s inclusive classroom experiences

I shared these videos during the session:

Other Tools

This session’s focus was tools for reading, writing, research, studying, and STEM work, but there are also many tools to help with organization and staying on task.

Free Apps & Extensions That Improve Productivity and Learning (PDF)

The apps, extensions, and program features described in this ADDitude publication “make it easier for distractible students (and adults) to make better use of their time spent on tablets and computers, to stay organized, and to practice better reading and writing skills — no matter the platform.”

I also like these:

• StayFocusd (Transfusion Media, Free): a Chrome browser extension that “increases your productivity by limiting the amount of time that you can spend on time-wasting websites”
• Marinara (Chris Schmidt, Free): a Chrome browser extension that supports the Pomodoro technique, a time management method in which a timer is used to break work into intervals (usually 25 minutes each) separated by short breaks.
• Dayboard (Dayboard, Free (Basic) / $5 (Pro)), a Chrome browser extension that replaces the browser’s New Tab page with a daily to do list of five items and can be used to block distracting sites
• Reminders (Apple, Free): an iOS app offering the ability to add and check off reminders and set notifications that alert you when reminders are due
• I Can’t Wake Up (Kog Creations, Free): an iOS alarm clock app that requires users to complete a task before turning off or lowering the volume
• Habitica (HabitRPG, Free): an iOS app allows that serves as a “gamified task manager,” allowing users to turn all tasks into monsters they have to conquer

Since my last post, I completed my master’s program and am now the proud holder of an MEd in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in assistive technology from George Mason University!

I chose Mason because, in addition to boasting the second oldest AT program in the nation and the higher-ed leading Assistive Technology Initiative, they offered me the opportunity to learn online, allowing me to earn my degree while continuing my work at UA. When I started the program, I hoped to learn things I could apply to my work in libraries while preparing to move into a role more focused on accessibility and/or assistive technology when the right opportunity came along—and came along it did!

I am thrilled to share that I have joined The University of Alabama’s Office of Information Technology Emerging Technology and Accessibility team, helping to ensure that technology users, including those with disabilities, have a functional and accessible technology experience with the university’s web presence and instructional and emerging technologies. I am delighted to be collaborating with faculty and other instructors in the development of accessible instructional materials and universally designed curricula and working with friends and colleagues to make UA a more inclusive and accessible place.

Due to the change in the nature of my work, I’ve removed the Publications and Presentations pages from this site; however, presentation files and related resources are still available via individual posts. For more regular updates, you can follow me on Twitter.

Sources referenced in my session, along with some related resources, are listed here. They are also available via the Diigo collaborative bookmarking site: mbfortson’s library tagged dm2017a11y.

Thanks for visiting!

The case for accessibility

Accessibility – W3C
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
“To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others… to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems.”

Who are we leaving out?

Disability Statistics from the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS)
“In the year 2013, an estimated 12.6 percent (plus or minus 0.05 percentage points) of non-institutionalized, male or female, all ages, all races, regardless of ethnicity, with all education levels in the United States reported a disability.”

Table 311.10. Number and percentage distribution of students enrolled in postsecondary institutions, by level, disability status, and selected student characteristics: 2007-08 and 2011-12
From the National Center for Education Statistics Digest of Education Statistics, 2013.

WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan’s message on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2014 (IDPD, 2014)
“A billion people in the world, 15% of the population, have a disability severe enough that it limits their participation in family, community and political life.”

Designing for accessibility benefits everyone

Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities
“People with disabilities using computers have similar interaction limitations as people without disabilities who are using mobile devices. Both experience similar barriers when interacting with websites and web applications. There is also significant overlap between the design solutions for both.”

Financial Factors in Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization
“Web accessibility can make it easier for people to find a website, access it, and use it successfully, thus resulting in increased audience (more users) and increased effectiveness (more use).”

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Helping users find mobile-friendly pages
“A page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

• Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
• Uses text that is readable without zooming
• Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
• Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped”

Applicable laws and requirements

In the United States

WebAIM: United States Laws – Introduction to US Laws
“The following sections cover key US laws pertinent to web accessibility. This information will help you understand the conditions under which you must create web content that is accessible to individuals with disabilities under US law.”

In higher education

Carrots and Sticks: Making the Case for Accessibility – HighEdWeb Alabama
“Institutions have a legal and ethical responsibility to make technology more accessible to everyone, but many struggle with making a commitment to address this need. This session will present some of the “carrots” we get from a focus on accessibility, including better designed sites, positive PR, and reaching more users. We will also look at the “sticks”: law suits, civil rights reviews, and neglecting our users’ needs. This session shares ways to make the case for accessibility to executives and other stakeholders, gives a template for a campus technology accessibility plan, and offers suggestions to foster a culture of inclusion throughout the campus.”

Joint – Dear Colleague Letter: Electronic Book Readers
“As officials of the agencies charged with enforcement and interpretation of the ADA and Section 504, we ask that you take steps to ensure that your college or university refrains from requiring the use of any electronic book reader, or other similar technology, in a teaching or classroom environment as long as the device remains inaccessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision. It is unacceptable for universities to use emerging technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to all students.”

Around the world

WebAIM: World Laws – Introduction to Laws Throughout the World
“The following sections of this article cover key laws, documents, and events that relate to web accessibility in many countries and regions throughout the world.”

Standards and guidelines

WebAIM: Accessibility Evaluation Tools
“Many web designers, developers, and evaluators are introduced to web access through accessibility tools. All accessibility tools perform automated checks of web pages for accessibility issues and all generally have additional features, but each tool targets different audiences. In order to help web designers, developers, and evaluators choose an appropriate tool for their purposes, this article discusses the general types or classifications of accessibility tools.”

WebAIM: Introduction to Web Accessibility
“This introduction should help you understand how people with disabilities use the web, the frustrations they feel when they cannot access the web, and what you can do to make your sites more accessible.” This excellent resource is also referenced throughout the remaining sections of the presentation.

WebAIM: Section 508 Checklist
“The following standards are excerpted from Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, §1194.22. The pass/fail criteria in this document represent an interpretation of Section 508 web standards.”

Designing for accessibility

WebAIM: Quick Reference – Web Accessibility Principles

Headings and lists

Headings – Page Structure
“Headings add structure and meaning to pages by labeling each content part and indicating the relative importance of those parts.
Assistive technologies and some browsers provide mechanisms to present a list of headings to the user that allows users to jump to individual headings. Headings also provide visual clues that help to skim the page or find a specific section, this is especially useful for people that are easily distracted.”

Microsoft Word
“Microsoft Word is currently the most common word processor on the market. Because it is so common, the .doc (and to a lesser extent, .docx) format has become the de facto format for text documents. Word is often used to create files that end up in PDF and HTML. This article will cover several things that you can do to make web content created in Word more accessible.”

Semantic Structure
“As with the original intention of the web, screen readers and other assistive technologies largely ignore visual styling and focus primarily on semantics and structure.”

Text equivalents

Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, table, SmartArt graphic, or other object
“You can create alternative text (alt text or Alt Text) for shapes, pictures, charts, tables, SmartArt graphics, or other objects in your Office document. Alternative text helps people with screen readers understand the content of pictures. When you use a screen reader to view your document, or save it to a file format such as HTML or DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System), alternative text appears when you move the pointer over a picture in most browsers. This article discusses adding alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, table, SmartArt graphic, or other object and shows you how you can make the Alt Text command always available.”

Alternative Text
“Adding alternative text for images is the first principle of web accessibility. It is also one of the most difficult to properly implement. The web is replete with images that have missing, incorrect, or poor alternative text. Like many things in web accessibility, determining appropriate, equivalent, alternative text is often a matter of personal interpretation. Through the use of examples, this article will present our experienced interpretation of appropriate use of alternative text.”

Alt Text in Word: Title vs Description
“So, which field(s) should you use? Answer: It depends…”

Alt Text On Tables In Word
Adding alt text to a table in Excel provides a textual alternative to a visualization, allowing the content and function of the image to be accessible to those with visual or certain cognitive disabilities.

Welcome to Tableau Desktop – Export as an Image
After selecting Tableau’s Copy to Another Application or Export to an Image File option and adding the image to a Word document, you would then right-click to access the Format Picture window and add your alt text.

Color

Choosing Colors for Accessibility
“If you are using color to code important data, you should think about using color palettes that accessible to color blind people.”

ColorBrewer 2.0
A “diagnostic tool for evaluating the robustness of individual color schemes.”  The “Color Blind Friendly” icon “indicates that a given color scheme will not confuse people with red-green color blindness. Red-green color blindness affects approximately 8 percent of men and 0.4 percent of women, although its severity varies and so some schemes will have a “?” indicating it may be a problem for some, but not all folks with color vision impairment.”

Color Contrast Checker
“Simply select or enter a foreground and background color in RGB hexadecimal format (e.g., #fd3 or #f7da39). Select the lighten and darken options to modify the colors slightly. You can use the color picker to change colors or change luminosity. WCAG 2.0 level AA requires a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (14 point and bold or larger, or 18 point or larger). Level AAA requires a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.”

Designing For (and With) Color Blindness
“Some apps and programs have done a great job of catering towards those who suffer from color blindness. Trello, a web-based application that allows users to organize tasks, does a great job of allowing a user to activate a color-blind mode. This small function allows a user, like myself, to be able to quickly distinguish between labels.”

5 Tips on Designing Colorblind-Friendly Visualizations
“Here are some tips for designing vizzes that are colorblind-friendly.”

The dude map: How Americans refer to their bros
This map uncovers geographic trends in the use of some nouns referring to people: bro, buddy, dude, fella, and pal. Researchers searched for occurrences of these words in a Twitter dataset, then used spatial analysis to compare frequency of use in nearby counties. While this map presents some color-related accessibility challenges, it uses simple language and empty space to improve readability: “not common” and “very common” vs. “lower comparative frequency” vs. “higher comparative frequency,” for example.

The T
Example of how a route map might use different patterns for the lines instead of colors: solid, dashed, dotted, etc..

Visual Disabilities – Color-blindness
“Make sure that colors are not your only method of conveying important information.”

Hyperlinks

WebAIM: Links and Hypertext – Introduction to Links and Hypertext
“Hypertext links are one of the most basic elements of HTML, as its name implies (HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language). As such, making hypertext links accessible is one of the most basic and most important aspects of web accessibility.”

Captions, transcripts, and audio description for multimedia

WebAIM: Captions, Transcripts, and Audio Descriptions
Captions “are text versions of the spoken word presented within multimedia.”
Transcripts “provide a textual version of the content that can be accessed by anyone.”
Audio descriptions “provide additional information about what is visible on the screen…If web video is produced with accessibility in mind, then audio descriptions are often unnecessary, as long as visual elements within the video are described in the audio.”

Frozen – Trailer with Audio Description

Captioning Key
Captioning guidelines and preferred techniques from the Described and Captioned Media Program.

How-To Guides for Video Captions, Subtitles, Transcripts
Step-by-step instructions on how to add captions to Adobe, Apple, Blackboard, Camtasia, Facebook, Tegrity, Vimeo, Windows Media, YouTube and other projects.

Creating Closed Captions with Amara and Overstream
“Amara.org and Overstream.net are two websites that offer free applications through which users can subtitle or closed caption other users’ videos uploaded to YouTube and Vimeo. ”

YouTube

Add subtitles & closed captions – YouTube Help
“Subtitles and closed captions open up your content to a larger audience, including deaf or hard of hearing viewers or those who speak languages besides the one spoken in your video.”

CAPTCHA

The Official CAPTCHA Site
“A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot.”

Captcha SUCKS! | IceflowStudios – YouTube
“One of my biggest peeves online: Captcha. It’s completely useless! Judge for yourself!”

The accessibility of Google’s No CAPTCHA » Simply Accessible
“Google has released a game-changing version of its reCAPTCHA. They’ve called it No CAPTCHA and it makes some pretty significant steps forward to removing barriers for people with disabilities and still defending against bots.”

Evaluation

Accessibility Evaluation Tools

WebAIM: Accessibility Evaluation Tools
“Many web designers, developers, and evaluators are introduced to web access through accessibility tools. All accessibility tools perform automated checks of web pages for accessibility issues and all generally have additional features, but each tool targets different audiences. In order to help web designers, developers, and evaluators choose an appropriate tool for their purposes, this article discusses the general types or classifications of accessibility tools.”

Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List
“Web accessibility evaluation tools are software programs or online services that help you determine if web content meets accessibility guidelines. This page provides a list of evaluation tools that you can filter to find ones that match your particular needs. To determine what kind of tool you need and how they are able to assist you, see Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools.”

Strengths and Limitations of Automated Tools
Strengths and limitations of automated accessibility tools, from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Writing effective ALT text – University of Leicester
An accessibility checker can tell you whether or not alt text is present, but it can’t tell if the description it contains is meaningful.

WAVE

WAVE Web Accessibility Tool
“WAVE is developed and made available as a free community service by WebAIM. Originally launched in 2001, WAVE has been used to evaluate the accessibility of millions of web pages.” See also WAVE Help http://wave.webaim.org/help

Accessible University Demo Site – Inaccessible Version
“Accessible University (AU) is a fictional university, and this is its fictional home page. This page is designed to demonstrate a variety of common web design problems that result in visitors withdisabilities being unable to access the content or features of a web page. Although the heading at the top of this section of the page suggests that AU may be a welcoming institution, the inaccessible design of this page sends the opposite message.”

This page is an improved version, with 18 accessibility issues corrected: Accessible University Demo Site – Accessible Version 

WebAIM Color Contrast Checker

WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker
“Simply select or enter a foreground and background color in RGB hexadecimal format (e.g., #fd3 or #f7da39). Select the lighten and darken options to modify the colors slightly. You can use the color picker to change colors or change luminosity.”

ColorZilla for Chrome and Firefox
WebAIM suggests using these tools to get color values to input in the Color Contrast Checker.

Microsoft Office Accessibility Checker

Check for accessibility issues – Office Support
“Like the spelling checker tells you about possible spelling errors, Accessibility Checker in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint tells you about possible accessibility issues in your Office file so you can fix these issues so someone with a disability can read and get to your content.”

Rules used by the Accessibility Checker – Office Support
To make sure that everyone can read your file, run Accessibility Checker. It flags issues and provides instructions for fixing them. Accessibility Checker tests content for factors that affect accessibility in three categories:
Errors, Warnings, Tips.”

Adobe Acrobat accessibility tools

Using the Acrobat Pro DC Accessibility Checker
“The accessibility checking tools in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC – Accessibility Checker (Full Check) and the Make Accessible action wizard – can identify many issues in PDF documents that may be in conflict with Adobe’s interpretations of the accessibility guidelines referenced in the application and its documentation.”

Accessibility in DH

The following represent some of the conversations happening around DH and accessibility.

“Accessibility and the Digital Humanities”

Accessibility and the Digital Humanities | ProfHacker
ProfHacker post by Jen Guiliano, assistant director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, and George H. Williams, a regular ProfHacker contributor. This “call to digital humanists” asked: “What is your project doing to address accessibility for people with disabilities?”

Disability, Accessibility, and the Digital Humanities
George H. Williams posted a link to this survey in a comment on the ProfHacker post he co-authored with Jen Guiliano, Accessibility and the Digital Humanities.

“Accessibility in Digital Environments: Language, Law, and the Question of Inclusion”

September 2013 Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) presentation by George Williams.

George Williams: Accessibility in Digital Environments: Language, Law, and the Question of Inclusion from MITH in MD on Vimeo.

Building an Accessible Future for the Humanities Project

The Building an Accessible Future for the Humanities Project organized five 2-day workshops during which participants learned about technologies, design standards, and accessibility issues associated with the use of digital environments. From their website:

While scholars who offer courses have been able to turn to their University-level instructional technologies staff for accessibility, scholars who are designing, building, and implementing digital products outside of the classroom (as most humanities-research projects do) have been unable to get the help or guidance that they need. These types of research and the issues of accessibility that they raise with are not the same accessibility issues usually addressed by disability support services offices on university campuses. These campus resources generally concentrate on students and their engagement with course materials (exams and textbooks) or the physical environment (assistive devices). As a result, humanists, librarians, and others looking for assistance in building, designing, and implementing digital projects for assisted users have been largely ignored. Accessible Future will engage those working in digital humanities, information studies, librarianship, and cultural heritage work with resources, training, and a community of people that can assist them with accessibility issues in their own research, training, and teaching.

Readings and more are available on the Accessible Future website.

Digital Humanities Summer Institute: Accessibility & Digital Environments

Erin E. Templeton and George H. Williams will offer an Accessibility & Digital Environments course during DHSI, June 5-9, 2017.

“Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities”

Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities | Debates in the Digital Humanities
Open-access edition of George H. Williams’s “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities,” published in Debates in the Digital Humanities. Ed. Matthew K. Gold. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

The Principles of Universal Design | Center for Universal Design
Defines universal design as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.”

About UDL | CAST
“Universal Design for Learning is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone–not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.”

THATCamp Accessibility

THATCamp Accessibility 2012
THATCamp Accessibility 2012 was a one-day unconference exploring digital humanities, technology, and issues of accessibility. It was held October 27, 2012, online and at Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada. This Google doc lists the day’s sessions.

#thatcampaccess
#THATCampAccess is the Twitter hashtag used by THATCamp Accessibility participants.

Conclusion

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
“Disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”

Redefining Disability according to the World Health Organization
Valerie Fletcher on redefining disability: “Disability is a phenomenon of the experience that occurs by the individual intersecting with the environment, including physical, information, communication, social and policy environments.”

Let’s create accessibility.

• I became a graduate student in George Mason University‘s College of Education and Human Development. I am pursuing a Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in Assistive Technology. In the fall, I took Introduction to Assistive Technology, Assistive Technology for Individuals with Sensory Impairments, and Software and Mobile Applications for Individuals with Disabilities; this semester, I’m enrolled in Augmentative Communication, Assistive Technology Assessment, and Universal Design for Learning. Being a full-time student while working full-time is incredibly challenging, but I’m thrilled that Mason’s well-regarded AT program is offered 100% online, allowing me to earn my degree while continuing my work at UA.
• My first book chapter was published! I was thrilled to contribute “LibGuides: Creating Accessible User Experiences” to Integrating LibGuides into Library Websites.
• I joined the expert panels for the NMC Horizon Report > 2017 Higher Education Edition and the NMC Horizon Report > 2017 Library Edition. The NMC Horizon Project “charts the landscape of emerging technologies for teaching, learning, and creative inquiry,” and I’ve greatly enjoyed contributing to two publications so valuable to my work and the work of my colleagues.
• Speaking of the Horizon Report, I’m looking forward to presenting on the 2017 Library Edition at the ACRL 2017 Conference. Melissa Mallon (Vanderbilt), Rachel Thompson (UA), and I will present a panel session examining, through the lens of accessibility, the important developments in technology presented in the report: how they are expected to transform teaching and learning and their potential to enhance and diminish accessibility and learning for students with disabilities.
• Last, but certainly not least, I have moved to the Libraries’ Gorgas Information Services department. While we’re still working out the details, for now, I’m continuing to offer instructional support for academic technologies while taking on some additional reference and instruction responsibilities. GIS is familiar territory, as I previously worked as a Research & Instructional Services Librarian in the department.

That’s all for now! For more regular updates, you can follow me on Twitter.

Sources referenced in my session, along with some related resources, are listed here. They are also available via the Diigo collaborative bookmarking site: mbfortson’s library tagged msudata16a11y.

A pdf of my slide deck is available here: Accessible Data Visualization for Non-Programmers (PDF). If this document is not accessible to you, please contact me so I can get it to you in a format that is.

Thanks for visiting!

The case for accessibility

Accessibility – W3C
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
“To enable persons with disabilities to live independently and participate fully in all aspects of life, States Parties shall take appropriate measures to ensure to persons with disabilities access, on an equal basis with others… to information and communications, including information and communications technologies and systems.”

Who are we leaving out?

Disability Statistics from the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS)
“In the year 2013, an estimated 12.6 percent (plus or minus 0.05 percentage points) of non-institutionalized, male or female, all ages, all races, regardless of ethnicity, with all education levels in the United States reported a disability.”

Table 311.10. Number and percentage distribution of students enrolled in postsecondary institutions, by level, disability status, and selected student characteristics: 2007-08 and 2011-12
From the National Center for Education Statistics Digest of Education Statistics, 2013.

WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan’s message on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2014 (IDPD, 2014)
“A billion people in the world, 15% of the population, have a disability severe enough that it limits their participation in family, community and political life.”

Designing for accessibility benefits everyone

Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities
“People with disabilities using computers have similar interaction limitations as people without disabilities who are using mobile devices. Both experience similar barriers when interacting with websites and web applications. There is also significant overlap between the design solutions for both.”

Financial Factors in Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization
“Web accessibility can make it easier for people to find a website, access it, and use it successfully, thus resulting in increased audience (more users) and increased effectiveness (more use).”

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Helping users find mobile-friendly pages
“A page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

• Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
• Uses text that is readable without zooming
• Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
• Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped”

Applicable laws and requirements

In the United States

WebAIM: United States Laws – Introduction to US Laws
“The following sections cover key US laws pertinent to web accessibility. This information will help you understand the conditions under which you must create web content that is accessible to individuals with disabilities under US law.”

In higher education

Carrots and Sticks: Making the Case for Accessibility – HighEdWeb Alabama
“Institutions have a legal and ethical responsibility to make technology more accessible to everyone, but many struggle with making a commitment to address this need. This session will present some of the “carrots” we get from a focus on accessibility, including better designed sites, positive PR, and reaching more users. We will also look at the “sticks”: law suits, civil rights reviews, and neglecting our users’ needs. This session shares ways to make the case for accessibility to executives and other stakeholders, gives a template for a campus technology accessibility plan, and offers suggestions to foster a culture of inclusion throughout the campus.”

Joint – Dear Colleague Letter: Electronic Book Readers
“As officials of the agencies charged with enforcement and interpretation of the ADA and Section 504, we ask that you take steps to ensure that your college or university refrains from requiring the use of any electronic book reader, or other similar technology, in a teaching or classroom environment as long as the device remains inaccessible to individuals who are blind or have low vision. It is unacceptable for universities to use emerging technology without insisting that this technology be accessible to all students.”

Around the world

WebAIM: World Laws – Introduction to Laws Throughout the World
“The following sections of this article cover key laws, documents, and events that relate to web accessibility in many countries and regions throughout the world.”

Standards and guidelines

WebAIM: Accessibility Evaluation Tools
“Many web designers, developers, and evaluators are introduced to web access through accessibility tools. All accessibility tools perform automated checks of web pages for accessibility issues and all generally have additional features, but each tool targets different audiences. In order to help web designers, developers, and evaluators choose an appropriate tool for their purposes, this article discusses the general types or classifications of accessibility tools.”

WebAIM: Introduction to Web Accessibility
“This introduction should help you understand how people with disabilities use the web, the frustrations they feel when they cannot access the web, and what you can do to make your sites more accessible.” This excellent resource is also referenced throughout the remaining sections of the presentation.

WebAIM: Section 508 Checklist
“The following standards are excerpted from Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, §1194.22. The pass/fail criteria in this document represent an interpretation of Section 508 web standards.”

Designing for accessibility

Introduction to Data Visualization: About Data Visualization
“Data visualization: an umbrella term, usually covering both information and scientific visualization. This is a general way of talking about anything that converts data sources into a visual representation (like charts, graphs, maps, sometimes even just tables).”

WebAIM: Quick Reference – Web Accessibility Principles

Content and structure

Headings – Page Structure
“Headings add structure and meaning to pages by labeling each content part and indicating the relative importance of those parts.
Assistive technologies and some browsers provide mechanisms to present a list of headings to the user that allows users to jump to individual headings. Headings also provide visual clues that help to skim the page or find a specific section, this is especially useful for people that are easily distracted.”

Microsoft Word
“Microsoft Word is currently the most common word processor on the market. Because it is so common, the .doc (and to a lesser extent, .docx) format has become the de facto format for text documents. Word is often used to create files that end up in PDF and HTML. This article will cover several things that you can do to make web content created in Word more accessible.”

Semantic Structure
“As with the original intention of the web, screen readers and other assistive technologies largely ignore visual styling and focus primarily on semantics and structure.”

The dude map: How Americans refer to their bros
This map uncovers geographic trends in the use of some nouns referring to people: bro, buddy, dude, fella, and pal. Researchers searched for occurrences of these words in a Twitter dataset, then used spatial analysis to compare frequency of use in nearby counties. While this map presents some other accessibility challenges, it uses simple language and empty space to improve readability: “not common” and “very common” vs. “lower comparative frequency” vs. “higher comparative frequency,” for example.

Which chart or graph is right for you?
Another aspect of well-structured and clearly written content is choosing the right visualization to start with and ensuring it is labeled clearly. The makers of Tableau data visualization software have published a paper titled “Which chart or graph is right for you?” that provides guidance on how to select the best charts for the type of data you’re analyzing and the questions you want to answer.

Text equivalents

Add alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, table, SmartArt graphic, or other object
“You can create alternative text (alt text or Alt Text) for shapes, pictures, charts, tables, SmartArt graphics, or other objects in your Office document. Alternative text helps people with screen readers understand the content of pictures. When you use a screen reader to view your document, or save it to a file format such as HTML or DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System), alternative text appears when you move the pointer over a picture in most browsers. This article discusses adding alternative text to a shape, picture, chart, table, SmartArt graphic, or other object and shows you how you can make the Alt Text command always available.”

Alternative Text
“Adding alternative text for images is the first principle of web accessibility. It is also one of the most difficult to properly implement. The web is replete with images that have missing, incorrect, or poor alternative text. Like many things in web accessibility, determining appropriate, equivalent, alternative text is often a matter of personal interpretation. Through the use of examples, this article will present our experienced interpretation of appropriate use of alternative text.”

Alt Text in Word: Title vs Description
“So, which field(s) should you use? Answer: It depends…”

Alt Text On Tables In Word
Adding alt text to a table in Excel provides a textual alternative to a visualization, allowing the content and function of the image to be accessible to those with visual or certain cognitive disabilities.

Welcome to Tableau Desktop – Export as an Image
After selecting Tableau’s Copy to Another Application or Export to an Image File option and adding the image to a Word document, you would then right-click to access the Format Picture window and add your alt text.

Color

Choosing Colors for Accessibility
“If you are using color to code important data, you should think about using color palettes that accessible to color blind people.”

ColorBrewer 2.0
A “diagnostic tool for evaluating the robustness of individual color schemes.”  The “Color Blind Friendly” icon “indicates that a given color scheme will not confuse people with red-green color blindness. Red-green color blindness affects approximately 8 percent of men and 0.4 percent of women, although its severity varies and so some schemes will have a “?” indicating it may be a problem for some, but not all folks with color vision impairment.”

Color Contrast Checker
“Simply select or enter a foreground and background color in RGB hexadecimal format (e.g., #fd3 or #f7da39). Select the lighten and darken options to modify the colors slightly. You can use the color picker to change colors or change luminosity. WCAG 2.0 level AA requires a contrast ratio of 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text (14 point and bold or larger, or 18 point or larger). Level AAA requires a contrast ratio of 7:1 for normal text and 4.5:1 for large text.”

Designing For (and With) Color Blindness
“Some apps and programs have done a great job of catering towards those who suffer from color blindness. Trello, a web-based application that allows users to organize tasks, does a great job of allowing a user to activate a color-blind mode. This small function allows a user, like myself, to be able to quickly distinguish between labels.”

5 Tips on Designing Colorblind-Friendly Visualizations
“Here are some tips for designing vizzes that are colorblind-friendly.”

The T
Example of how a route map might use different patterns for the lines instead of colors: solid, dashed, dotted, etc..

Visual Disabilities – Color-blindness
“Make sure that colors are not your only method of conveying important information.”

Data tables

Tables – Accessibility at Penn State

WebAIM: Creating Accessible Tables – Data Tables
“The purpose of data tables is to present tabular information in a grid, or matrix, and to have column or rows that show the meaning of the information in the grid. Sighted users can visually scan a table. They can quickly make visual associations between data in the table and their appropriate row and/or column headers. Someone that cannot see the table cannot make these visual associations, so proper markup must be used to make a programmatic association between elements within the table. When the proper markup is in place, users of screen readers can navigate through data tables one cell at a time, and they will hear the column and row headers spoken to them.”

Hyperlinks

WebAIM: Links and Hypertext – Introduction to Links and Hypertext
“Hypertext links are one of the most basic elements of HTML, as its name implies (HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language). As such, making hypertext links accessible is one of the most basic and most important aspects of web accessibility.”

Evaluation

Accessibility Evaluation Tools

WebAIM: Accessibility Evaluation Tools
“Many web designers, developers, and evaluators are introduced to web access through accessibility tools. All accessibility tools perform automated checks of web pages for accessibility issues and all generally have additional features, but each tool targets different audiences. In order to help web designers, developers, and evaluators choose an appropriate tool for their purposes, this article discusses the general types or classifications of accessibility tools.”

Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List
“Web accessibility evaluation tools are software programs or online services that help you determine if web content meets accessibility guidelines. This page provides a list of evaluation tools that you can filter to find ones that match your particular needs. To determine what kind of tool you need and how they are able to assist you, see Selecting Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools.”

Strengths and Limitations of Automated Tools
Strengths and limitations of automated accessibility tools, from the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Writing effective ALT text – University of Leicester
An accessibility checker can tell you whether or not alt text is present, but it can’t tell if the description it contains is meaningful.

WAVE

WAVE Web Accessibility Tool
“WAVE is developed and made available as a free community service by WebAIM. Originally launched in 2001, WAVE has been used to evaluate the accessibility of millions of web pages.” See also WAVE Help http://wave.webaim.org/help

Accessible University Demo Site – Inaccessible Version
“Accessible University (AU) is a fictional university, and this is its fictional home page. This page is designed to demonstrate a variety of common web design problems that result in visitors withdisabilities being unable to access the content or features of a web page. Although the heading at the top of this section of the page suggests that AU may be a welcoming institution, the inaccessible design of this page sends the opposite message.”

This page is an improved version, with 18 accessibility issues corrected: Accessible University Demo Site – Accessible Version 

WebAIM Color Contrast Checker

WebAIM: Color Contrast Checker
“Simply select or enter a foreground and background color in RGB hexadecimal format (e.g., #fd3 or #f7da39). Select the lighten and darken options to modify the colors slightly. You can use the color picker to change colors or change luminosity.”

ColorZilla for Chrome and Firefox
WebAIM suggests using these tools to get color values to input in the Color Contrast Checker.

Microsoft Office Accessibility Checker

Check for accessibility issues – Office Support
“Like the spelling checker tells you about possible spelling errors, Accessibility Checker in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint tells you about possible accessibility issues in your Office file so you can fix these issues so someone with a disability can read and get to your content.”

Rules used by the Accessibility Checker – Office Support
To make sure that everyone can read your file, run Accessibility Checker. It flags issues and provides instructions for fixing them. Accessibility Checker tests content for factors that affect accessibility in three categories:
Errors, Warnings, Tips.”

Adobe Acrobat accessibility tools

Using the Acrobat Pro DC Accessibility Checker
“The accessibility checking tools in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC – Accessibility Checker (Full Check) and the Make Accessible action wizard – can identify many issues in PDF documents that may be in conflict with Adobe’s interpretations of the accessibility guidelines referenced in the application and its documentation.”

Sources referenced in my session, along with some related resources, are listed here. They are also available via the Diigo collaborative bookmarking site: mbfortson’s library tagged msudata16.

A pdf of my slide deck is available here: Bibliographic Data Analysis: NVivo and Paper Machines (PDF). If this document is not accessible to you, please contact me so I can get it to you in a format that is.

Thanks for visiting!

NVivo

About NVivo

NVivo Product Suite Overview
“If you want to get an edge by better understanding the explosion of unstructured data in the world today, you need NVivo – powerful software for qualitative data analysis. Whether you are working individually or in a team, on Windows or Mac, are new to research or have years of experience, there’s an NVivo option to suit you. Can you afford to miss the insights your data is trying to show you?”

NVivo 11 Pro for Windows Getting Started Guide (PDF)

NVivo for Mac Getting Started Guide (PDF)

Resources for Literature Review

EndNote and NVivo – Improving your Literature Review – NVivo Brown Bag Webinar – YouTube
“If you are thinking about or already use EndNote, watch this video to see the value of combining EndNote with NVivo to produce a quality literature review. Find out how this powerful combination supports you in writing robust literature reviews.”

EndNote: Import into NVivo
“You can export selected EndNote references or an entire EndNote reference library from EndNote X2, X3 or X4 to an XML file, which you can then import into NVivo. When you export your references from EndNote, make sure you save the exported data as an XML (*.xml) file.”

Hone your NVivo skills with literature reviews – The NVivo Blog
“There are some excellent resources available about using NVivo for your literature reviews. Here, I describe some ways in which I use NVivo for literature reviews, which you might find useful. I believe working with NVivo during literature review is an excellent way to manage research, a practical way to learn and practice with NVivo, honing practical skills.”

Importing EndNote references in NVivo (PDF)
“These instructions are applicable if your EndNote library and NVivo are installed on different computers. These instructions also apply when NVivo is installed on a virtual Windows environment (e.g. Apple Boot Camp, Parallels, VMware Fusion) on a MACand EndNote is installed on the MAC side.”

Improving Your Literature Review with NVivo 11 for Windows – YouTube
“Find out how NVivo 11 for Windows supports you in writing robust literature reviews. With NVivo 11 for Windows, you can import journal articles, tag (code) sources for major themes in the literature and share data with popular reference management software.”

Improving Your Literature Review with NVivo for Mac – YouTube
“Find out how NVivo for Mac supports you in writing robust literature reviews. With NVivo for Mac, you can import journal articles, tag (code) sources for major themes in the literature and share data with popular reference management software.”

NVivo 11 for Windows Help – Exchange data between NVivo and reference management tools
“If you conduct a literature review using a reference management tool such as EndNote, Zotero, RefWorks or Mendeley, you can import the references into NVivo. If you start by collecting your bibliographical data in NVivo, when you are ready to write up your findings, you can export this data to a reference management tool.”

NVivo for Mac Help – Exchange data between NVivo and reference management tools
“If you conduct a literature review using EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks or Zotero, you can import the references into NVivo.”

Paper Machines

Paper Machines
“Paper Machines is a plugin for the Zotero bibliographic management software that makes cutting-edge topic-modeling analysis in Computer Science accessible to humanities researchers without requiring extensive computational resources or technical knowledge. It synthesizes several approaches to visualization within a highly accessible user interface.”

How to Use Paper Machines

Digital History @ Rice – Paper Machines Debriefing
“I hope you enjoyed playing around with Paper Machines in our workshop with Jo Guldi. As promised, here’s a brief summary of how I constructed the corpus we used for our visualizations. I’ll follow that with some of the visualizations you made, and invite you to comment on what you see that’s of interest.”

Introducing Paper Machines
“Historians of the twentieth century have to contend with a technological problem, the issue of archives too large to process by traditional methods. While textual encoding, tagging, and n-grams can reveal certain patterns in digital archives, topic modeling and topic frequency, applied to hand-tailored archives, can help the historian make informed decisions about where in an archive to start looking. Digital methods, in this way, are driving historians to longer and longer time scales, making it possible for even younger scholars to perform a ‘distant reading’ on big questions that range over nations and centuries. The talk will follow parts of the argument of The History Manifesto (2014), comparing how a historian’s search for periodization, agency, and causality in the data compare with use and abuse of digital data in other digital fields.”

Introduction to Topic Modeling with Paper Machines (PDF)
“One of the most user-friendly options for topic modeling is available right in your Zotero library: Paper Machines.”

Journal of Digital Humanities – Review of Paper Machines, produced by Chris Johnson-Roberson and Jo Guldi
“Paper Machines is a promising and visually appealing teaching tool that would be particularly useful for introducing students to topic modeling, but needs some improvements to the code and documentation to be world class.”

Paper Machines Wiki
“This is a space for user-contributed content related to Paper Machines.
Getting Started — Installing PaperMachines, Getting Data, Running Paper Machines for the First Time
Basic Troubleshooting — Error messages and common problems
Curating Your Corpus for Better Analysis
Getting Lots of Data
Working with JSTOR Data for Research”

Supercharge Your Zotero Library Using Paper Machines: Part I – Global Perspectives on Digital History
“Paper Machines, the add-on that integrates a range of text analysis tools into Zotero, has generated quite a buzz in the short period of time since its release. For those of us that store notes, citation information, PDFs, and article links in huge Zotero libraries, Paper Machines has the potential to be a game-changer in terms of how we visualize our research.”

Supercharge Your Zotero Library Using Paper Machines: Part II – Global Perspectives on Digital History
“In my last post I discussed how Paper Machines, the text analysis add-on for Zotero, can help you visualize your research. Some of Paper Machines’ features are pretty self-explanatory, but others are less intuitive. Here I’ve tried to expand on some of the potentially complicated aspects of Paper Machines to supplement the documentation available on the developer’s site.”

Topic Modeling Workshop: Guldi and Johnson-Roberson on Vimeo
“Speakers at a one-day workshop on topic modeling and the humanities, held November 3, 2012. For more information, please see mith.umd.edu/topicmodeling. This video contains a talk from Jo Guldi and Christopher Johnson-Roberson.”

Zotero
“Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources.”

Sources referenced in my session, along with some related resources, are listed here. They are also available via the Diigo collaborative bookmarking site: mbfortson’s library tagged aabig_udl.

A pdf of my slide deck is available here: Universal Design for Library Instruction. If this document is not accessible to you, please contact me so I can get it to you in a format that is.

Thanks for visiting!

“Disability”

UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
“Disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”

Redefining Disability according to the World Health Organization | Art Beyond Sight: Handbook
Valerie Fletcher on redefining disability: “Disability is a phenomenon of the experience that occurs by the individual intersecting with the environment, including physical, information, communication, social and policy environments.”

Universal Design

Principles of Universal Design Quick Reference
Universal Design (UD) is “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.”

Designing for accessibility benefits everyone

Universal design principles can be applied to the information environment, too, and designing for accessibility benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities.

Shared Web Experiences: Barriers Common to Mobile Device Users and People with Disabilities
“People with disabilities using computers have similar interaction limitations as people without disabilities who are using mobile devices. Both experience similar barriers when interacting with websites and web applications. There is also significant overlap between the design solutions for both.”

Financial Factors in Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for Your Organization
“Web accessibility can make it easier for people to find a website, access it, and use it successfully, thus resulting in increased audience (more users) and increased effectiveness (more use).”

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Helping users find mobile-friendly pages
“A page is eligible for the “mobile-friendly” label if it meets the following criteria as detected by Googlebot:

• Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash
• Uses text that is readable without zooming
• Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom
• Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped”

The Myth of Average

The Myth of Average: Todd Rose at TEDxSonomaCounty (Video)
In a TEDx talk titled “The Myth of Average,” Todd Rose “describes how in the 1950s the Air Force had a problem. Despite huge technological advances in fighter airplanes and the recruitment of great pilots, the reactions of pilots in critical situations were getting slower. The problem turned out to be the cockpit design; it was built to fit the average man – which meant the cockpit fit nobody. The Air Force learned to design flexible fighter cockpits that fit the margins of people’s sizes, not the “average”- sized pilot. The goal became to build in flexibility from the outset. As a result, the Air Force tremendously expanded the potential to get the very best pilots – both men and women. By designing to the margins, the Air Force implemented universal design” (The Myth of the Average Child).

The Myth of Average Infographic — Center for Individual Opportunity

Universal Design for Learning

7 Things You Should Know About Universal Design for Learning | EDUCAUSE.edu
“Universal Design for Learning is a framework for the design of materials and instructional methods that are usable by a wide range of students. One aim of UDL is to provide full access to students with special needs, but it offers significant affordances for all students, allowing them to benefit from learning presented through multiple sensory avenues and a variety of conceptual frameworks. Early research about the influence of UDL is positive, showing that it improves engagement and performance among all students.”

About UDL | CAST
“Universal Design for Learning is a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone–not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.”

UDL: Principles and Practice (Video)
“National Center on UDL Director David Rose explains how UDL helps meet the most pressing issues facing educators today. Drawing on brain research and the latest learning sciences, Dr. Rose describes the three UDL principles and what they mean for classroom practice.”

UDL and Library Instruction

Supporting Student Success: UDL and Your Library
“Supporting Student Success: UDL and Your Library, is a presentation about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) created by Claire Holmes, Sarah Burns Gilchrist, and Sarah Espinosa for the 2015 Joint Library Conference, MLA/DLA, in Ocean City, Maryland.”

Universal Design for Learning in Library Instruction (PDF)
Poster presented by Rebecca Marrall at the 2011 American Library Association Annual Conference.

Making Makerspaces Accessible with UDL | Designer Librarian
In her blog about instructional design and technology in libraries, “Designer Librarian” Amanda Hovious applies UDL principles to makerspaces in libraries.

Checklist for Inclusive Teaching

Universal Design of Instruction | DO-IT
“The universal design of instruction (UDI) framework is gaining increased attention and application by educational researchers and practitioners at K-12 and postsecondary levels. UDI means that, rather than designing for the average student, you design instruction for potential students who have broad ranges with respect to ability, disability, age, reading level, learning style, native language, race, and ethnicity. Regarding students with disabilities, UDI challenges the instructors to go beyond legal compliance to proactively design an accessible course and integrate practice so that other students benefit as well. UDI can be applied to all aspects of instruction, including class climate, interaction, physical environments and products, delivery methods, information resources and technology, feedback, and assessment.”

The Checklist for Inclusive Teaching (PDF) provides examples of UDI practices. Numbers in brackets at the end of each item in the checklist refer to relevant UD and UDL principles.