Accessibility in the Classroom
Ensuring equal opportunity to a quality education for all students requires the commitment of every faculty and staff member at Rockhurst University. If you have questions about how to accommodate a student with a disability best, please contact the Student Accessibility Services Coordinator.
Why Accessibility?
Rockhurst's reason for being is "To create a more just world through inclusive, innovative, and transformative education." That "inclusive" is one of three words with which we choose to modify education to highlight who we are, a place where everyone should feel safe and valued. Each term, Rockhurst University currently provides accommodations to 5% of the undergraduate population and 15-20 students in the graduate school. Whether you are a staff member or a faculty member, at some point you will be interacting with a student (or another employee) who has a disability. We all have an obligation to provide access and services to every student.
▼ Universal Design
Rockhurst strives to provide accessible coursework to our students. Although accessibility and UDL are not synonymous, they do support one another. UDL provides a framework for designing courses with a diverse group of learners in mind, and accessibility ensures that all materials, activities, and technology used in the class are accessible to students. Captioned videos are a good example of how UDL and accessibility work together. By captioning videos, you not only make them accessible for students who are Deaf or hard of hearing, but this also benefits English language learners and students who absorb information more thoroughly through reading. Accessible materials benefit all students, not only those with disabilities.
▼ Syllabus Statement and Accessibility
Syllabus Statement
Rockhurst University is committed to ensuring equal access to all qualified students with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). If you have a disability that may impact your ability to access or participate in any aspect of my class, please contact Student Accessibility Services (SAS) at sas@rockhurst.edu or (816) 501- 4037. SAS will work with you to determine what disability documentation/information is needed in order to provide accommodations. Accommodations are determined on an individualized basis and may take some time to put in place, so early notification to SAS is helpful. If accommodations have already been approved, please communicate with the instructor (s) of this course. More information is available on our Student Accessibility Services page.
▼ Closed Captioning on Videos
Although providing video with closed captions involves several steps, none of these steps are that difficult or time-consuming.
- Generate automated speech-to-text captions to your file. These are a good start, but do not meet ADA requirements for closed captions (see video description on how to do this below)
- Edit your captions
- Publish your captions
Caption Requirements
The FCC clarifies that captions should be:
- Accurate: Captions must match the spoken words in the dialogue and convey background noises and other sounds to the fullest extent possible.
- Synchronous: Captions must coincide with their corresponding spoken words and sounds to the greatest extent possible and must be displayed on the screen at a speed that can be read by viewers.
- Complete: Captions must run from the beginning to the end of the program to the fullest extent possible.
- Properly placed: Captions should not block other important visual content on the screen, overlap one another or run off the edge of the video screen.
▼ Accessibility Features in Canvas
Becca Hedge has created instructions for using Studio to generate, edit and publish captions. For further assistance, contact eLearning or Becca Hedge.
Making Documents Accessible
Blackboard Ally
What is Blackboard Ally? How does it help with accessibility? Blackboard Ally works seamlessly with your Learning Management System (LMS) to gauge the accessibility of your content while providing tips on improving student accessibility. Blackboard Ally is directly integrated into our Canvas site. The main benefits of checking your Ally report are:
- Receive feedback on the accessibility of your content
- Improve content accessibility with Ally's step-by-step instructions
In addition to providing you with insight to your content's accessibility, Ally automatically creates alternative versions of your files. This allows students to choose the type of file they want that best suits their needs.
Note: You're encouraged to think about accessibility in every iteration of your course. If you work on the process of making each aspect of your course accessible over time, the task is less daunting.
▼ Note-taking Assistance for Faculty & Staff
The role of a note taker is essential to ensuring that a student who needs accommodations has equal access to course content. Notetakers should be able to focus and take comprehensive, well-structured notes. In addition, notetakers must maintain confidentiality at all times.
Recruiting Notetakers
Students with the notetaker accommodation can solicit their own notetakers and may not need your assistance. However, if you receive an email notifying you that a student is requesting assistance in obtaining a notetaker, you may choose to do one of the following:
- Make an announcement in class. If you choose to make an announcement, please do not identify the student with the accommodation. Keep information about the individual student confidential.
- Post an announcement to the class on Canvas. If you are looking for wording ideas, please contact the Student Accessibility Services Coordinator for help.
- Ask someone in your class who you feel would provide sufficient and quality notes if they’d be willing to volunteer. If someone is identified, refer them to the Student Accessibility Services Coordinator on how to move forward as a notetaker
- Provide the student a copy of your slides and/or class notes, if available.
Benefits to Notetakers
Notetaking is a volunteer assignment and cannot be forced upon. This can be a relatively easy way for students who regularly attend class and take adequate notes to earn money. Benefits to the notetaker include:
- The gratification of helping another student.
- Adding this experience to a résumé.
- Notetakers are reported to be taking better notes and listening more attentively during lectures, labs, etc.
- Notetakers are eligible to receive a stipend at the end of the semester for sending in timely and updated notes (between $30 and $120).
Further Assistance
If you are still struggling to find a volunteer notetaker after two announcement attempts, please contact SAS for further assistance.
Frequently Asked Questions
⛛ If a student has a “Consideration of” accommodation, how should I approach it?
Please refer to our policy on “Consideration of” Accommodations. Click here to read the policy.
⛛ If a student has a "Consideration of" accommodation, how can grading for participation or late assignments be affected?
Instructors can still hold students to course expectations. A 'Consideration of' accommodation does not mean that students are exempt from completing assignments or participating in class as expected, and reductions in grades could be appropriate depending on the situation. Faculty and student should factor this into their discussion.
Whatever agreement the student and faculty reach should be the new metric for determining grades. For example, if an instructor has an established course policy for all students that the score on a paper will be reduced by 5% every day that the paper is late, then students with a Consideration of Flexible Deadlines accommodation should not have their grade reduced for lateness if they turn it in by a new agreed-upon date. However, if the student fails to meet that new deadline, the instructor may begin reducing the grade for every day thereafter.
⛛ What if a student delivers an accommodation letter with a "Consideration of" accommodation AFTER they have already missed an assignment deadline or the established maximum number of classes?
All accommodations established through Student Accessibility Services are not retroactive. This means that if a student has missed the maximum number of classes per Rockhurst's policy, and then provides their accommodation letter, the instructor is not required to allow them to miss additional courses.
That being said, some students are not able to set up disability accommodations until later in the semester for a large number of reasons. Instructors should use discretion when determining how these accommodations could be applied going forward.
⛛ What if a student with a "Consideration of" accommodation misses a quiz, test, or another type of assessment?
Instructors must consider the flexibility appropriate for their class and the different elements of their course. Flexibility may be appropriate across the board (lecture material is easily caught up on, and tests can be rescheduled a day or two later), or maybe differentiated (the student may be able to miss a lecture with minimal impact, but tests need to be taken on the test day to maintain appropriate class progress and to receive timely feedback of performance). Instructors need to consider the resources available to them when deciding whether rescheduled tests are feasible. The Learning Center requires 48 business hours' notice before proctoring an exam for an SAS student; departmental resources may need advance notice as well.
⛛ What if I'm unsure how to determine how a "Consideration of" accommodation could be applied to a specific situation?
Contact Student Accessibility Services at 816-501-4037 or sas@rockhurst.edu.