Creating a Campus Culture for Diversity & Accessibility
After Section 508 Refresh passed in January, I began a journey on campus to ensure that our campus at a timeline of when to become an all-inclusive campus. While Accessibility has always been a passion of mine, it wasn't until after the refresh to the law that I began to gain momentum in ensuring our faculty, staff and students were working towards being an accessible campus. I reached out to our campus and interviewed those who were using assistive technologies. Then, I began designing courses with learning strategies for accessibility in mind. I'm currently working on a book chapter with our efforts at Emporia State University and how we have begun to adapt. Not only is it the law, it's the right thing to do. Here are a few of my projects and efforts -
Canvas Course
A Canvas Course shared to the Canvas Commons Library created to help faculty, staff, and students know Accessibility guidelines in ensuring content is accessible. Has been downloaded 1,650 times in the Canvas Community.
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A Mandated Accessibility Course for ESU Faculty, Staff, and Students
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Canvas Export
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Chair of the Accessibility Committee for Illinois Community Colleges Online (ILCCO)
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State-wide Accessibility Course to be published in May 2022
7-Things Series
An article series dedicated to 7-Things you should know about different types of assistive technologies.
Breaking Down the Barriers in the Heartland
“Now is the time for everyone to become architects of our own identities. What can be done in our own lives, on our campuses, and in our communities to humanize disability?” (Allies for Inclusion, 2013, #101) This research has become a prominent theme for Heartland Community College and its mission to begin the journey of creating a more inclusive learning environment with the primary goal of advocating for those who may not be able to advocate for themselves. The purpose of this white paper is to illustrate how beginning a journey to a more inclusive learning environment begins internally with institutions taking a deep look at their own practices first, instituting changes, and then branching out to other allies to form an army of accessibility warriors. When Heartland Community College began this journey, the college was not aware of many accessibility laws and regulations, especially when it came to Section 508 Refresh. Our college was not alone, in fact, after a poll completed in 2019, over 85% of community colleges in Illinois reported that they had no accessibility plan or timeline (Illinois Community Colleges Online, 2019). After speaking with various colleagues at community colleges across the state, we found out that many colleges in Illinois were also trying to determine how best to begin breaking down barriers and create informal learning environments that offered opportunities to learn and expand to a more inclusive culture. Recognizing this need for this change Heartland Community College began to take the initiative by leading the state through a state-wide unconference where faculty, staff, and administrators came together to explore best practices and approaches in inclusive design. This white paper proposal will share, in detail, how each of these steps created a domino effect at other institutions and created a large learning community throughout the state of Illinois. Through the advocacy efforts and templates shared through open educational resources with peers, breaking down barriers became the theme for all community colleges with university participation across the state. In addition, all of these strategies and implementations that will be discussed occurred during the onset of Covid-19, which in itself is a barrier that was overcome. The relationships between the partnering schools continue to foster a community of sharing and an overall feeling of inclusive responsibility.
Topics in this article will include:
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Heartland Community College developed an accessibility policy, timeline, and action plan to create a more inclusive learning environment for all aspects of the college. Items of this action plan will be included in this book white paper as a case study. The timeline was developed by a representative from every division at Heartland Community College and includes sections on procurement, governance, technology requirements, and document creation.
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Implementation of the Quality Matters quality assurance metric to ensure that course navigation facilitates ease of use, course design facilitates readability, courses provide accessible text and images in files, documents, LMS pages, and web pages, courses provide alternative means of access to multimedia content, multimedia facilitates ease of use, and vendor accessibility states are provided for all technologies required in the course.
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Design, development, and implementation of a course template that is used in all types of modalities and was made accessible to learners.
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Heartland Community College developed informal learning strategies to work with faculty on how to partner with students with disabilities. This created a safe environment where students and faculty felt safe in exploring best practices in instructional materials and creating accessible learning.
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Heartland Community College began and led a committee for all Illinois Community Colleges Online (ILCCO) where a state-wide event was planned. This event was scheduled for the month of May and met each Friday. Keynote presentations were solicited by Accessibility champions throughout the United States. In addition, this unconference provided a panel of students, all with disabilities, to discuss how inaccessible materials prohibit their learning and create barriers. Faculty had the opportunity to learn from students through the panel discussion and ask questions, recognizing their own metacognition.
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Heartland Community College created additional opportunities for advocacy by presenting at other area community colleges on the importance of creating an accessibility timeline and institutional policies.
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An online accessibility certification was developed for all employees at Heartland Community College to participate in and receive a digital credential. This certificate will be offered beginning in the Summer of 2022 as a direct result of the revamping of the Online Learning Framework. This framework was designed and developed to create a strategic plan for Online Learning for Heartland Community College. The Online Learning Framework is in alignment with many of the Quality Matters standards and in turn, includes eight pillars of excellence.
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Yuja Panorama recently was implemented improving the accessibility of course content in the LMS to expand even wider. Features of Panorama include providing document accessibility scores to faculty upon every document uploaded and a variety of formats of downloadable material. With its current implementation this fall, Panorama has been widely accessed by students with over 1500 alternative formats downloaded in just the months of August and September 2021.
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In addition, continuous improvement is a continued goal of Heartland Community College and additional technologies and resources have been secured to further strengthen our pledge to accessibility and to further break down the barriers for our learners.
All of the strategies completed were implemented in a two-year period. This white paper will reflect on the success of creating a more inclusive, accessible culture through strategic alignment and partnerships with internal and external stakeholders. This case study will also provide a blueprint for others to follow including templates and recommendations of best practices in moving their institution forward in developing their own accessible digital media resources.
Baker University Presentation 3.28.24