Humboldt State University Help Desk FAQ

As you improve existing courses or develop new courses, think about the small ways you can make a big difference.

Absolutely.  No one expects faculty to become experts on this issue, nor do we expect you to become entirely accessible overnight. There are tremendous resources already on campus to assist you. The Faculty  Development Office, the Student Disability Resource Center and the Help Desk are pooling resources and will jointly develop a quick reference of "How To's" and develop trainings to support faculty.

It depends. Moodle is generally accessible. The problem arises when items and documents are added to Moodle without consideration to accessibility.  For example, if streaming videos are added to the online environment, they need to have captions or at least transcripts for students who are deaf. Also, documents need to be accessible for screen readers, etc. Some PDF documents are not automatically accessible.

The ATI requires us to have alternative format materials available at the same time they are available for non-disabled students. The alternate format conversion process is complex and time consuming.  On the average, the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC) needs 4-6 weeks to produce a text in alternate format.  Even if SDRC receives a book in electronic format from a publisher, it will likely need to be edited and converted to a format usable by a student. This is why timely adoption of text books is essential to the process.

You may not know.  While students with disabilities generally register with the Student Disability Resource Center (SDRC), the SDRC does not necessarily inform all faculty of all reported disabilities.  However, if a student has extraordinary needs, SDRC will work with the individual faculty to assure that reasonable accommodations are provided.  For example, students with blindness or low vision, severe hearing impairments, or physical impairments requiring wheelchair access may need reasonable accommodations that will be arranged by SDRC in collaboration with the faculty member.  But it

1.    Paper based print materials (books, reader packets, reserve readings, lab manuals, handouts, syllabi, written exams)
2.    Electronic print materials (web-based and Moodle-based content; electronic reserves, book bundled e-text, computerized exams)
3.    Multimedia materials (web-based video/audio, commercial DVDs, materials bundled with books, photographic slides or lab samples)

Instructional Materials (IM) are considered to be forms of
communication and must therefore be delivered in a manner that is
equally effective for persons with disabilities. Communication is
considered to be equally effective when it is:

• comparable in quality to those received by students without disabilities
• comparable in timeliness of delivery and availability
• provided in a manner and medium appropriate to the significance of
  the message and the abilities of the person receiving the material

Keep your eyes open for an announcement regarding training opportunities for web accessibility. Part of those training materials includes training on a product called AccVerify. This is an automatic web accessibility checker program that can check the accessibility of web pages. Keep in mind though, that not everything on a web page can be checked automatically. There are some manual checks that the developer/user has to perform. The training will cover the use of the AccVerify software in addition to how to perform the manual checks to do a complete check of a website.