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Accessing Higher Ground Virtual Conference 2016
This year Penn State is sponsoring streamed sessions from the Accessing Higher Ground accessibility conference in November. If you are at the University Park campus, the following sessions will be hosted at University Libraries from November 16-18.
Registration
The cost for this event is free ($0) for anyone at Penn State.
Food and Drink Options
It is possible to bring food and drinks into the scheduled rooms. Depending on your schedule, you can purchase food and drinks from Mackinnon’s Café (West Patee Basement), Au Bon Pain (Kern Building) or other nearby locations.
Parking (Not NLI Deck)
The NLI deck will not be available Wed. or Thurs. until 4:00 PM. However, you may be able to park at the East Halls Deck and the Hub Deck unless your parking pass provides you additional options. The Link/Loop services will also be available.
Wednesday, November 16
Note: Sessions, locations and times may be subject to change.
| Time | Pattee W315 | Mann Assembly Room |
|---|---|---|
| 10 to 11 am | Effectively Accommodating Low Vision Students | Automated Testing Tools Crash Course (double session) |
| 11:15 am to 12:15 pm | Promoting the Universal Design Paradigm on Campus – Everywhere | Automated Testing Tools Crash Course (continued) |
| 1:15 to 2:15 pm | GrackleDocs: Google Docs Acccessibility Checker and PDF/UA | An Introduction to Accessibility Testing for Mobile apps |
| 2:50 to 4 pm | No Session | Keynote Talk: Tommy Edison, the Blind Film Critic |
| 4:15 to 5:15 pm | DIY Captioning – Using Camptasia & YouTube to create caption files | Generating and Using Accessible Math on the Web (goes to 5:30) |
| 5:30 to 6:30 pm | Talking to Faculty about Accessibility | No Session |
Thursday, November 17
Note: Sessions, locations and times may be subject to change.
| Time | Pattee W315 | Paterno E403 |
|---|---|---|
| 10 to 11 am | A Review of Apps & Strategies for Converting and Accessing Print and Digitall Material | Open Source Tools for Evaluating and Inspecting Web Accessibility |
| 11:15 am to 12:15 pm | No session | PDFs and Professors: What is Reasonable to Ask of Instructors |
| 1:15 to 2:15 pm | Translating Visual Information into Tactile Information | No session |
| 2:50 to 4 pm | Plenary Panel: Sorting out certifications for Accessibility Professionals, Application Designers & Developers, Hadi Rangin, University of Washington, moderator | Plenary Panel (Same as Patee W315): Sorting out certifications for Accessibility Professionals, Application Designers & Developers, Hadi Rangin, University of Washington, moderator |
| 4:15 to 5:15 pm | LaTeX and MathML – What Content Creators Need to Know | When to test or trust vendor accessibility evaluations |
| 5:15 to 6 | Break – No Session | Break – No Session |
| 6 to 7 pm | Interactive maps: how do you make them accessible? | Building an Accessibility Procurement Process in Higher Education |
Friday, November 18
Note: Sessions, locations and times may be subject to change.
| Time | Pattee W315 | Paterno E403 |
|---|---|---|
| 11:15 am to 12:15 pm | Accessibility and the California Community Colleges Online Education Initiative – Lessons Learned | Advanced Techniques for PDF Accessibility (double session) |
| 12:30 to 1:30 pm | A Little Means a Lot: Simple Ways to Improve Online Course Accessibility | Advanced Techniques for PDF Accessibility (continued) |
| 1:45 to 2:45 | WordPress & ATAG Compliance | The Universal College Campus – Accessible Technology for All |
Paula Bigatel’s Post on Accessibility and Usability
Faculty Development has added a blog for faculty to their informative site. Read Paula’s recent post
7 Tips and 7 Principles for Accessibility and Universal Design.
Qualtrics Information Page Added
Information about making Qualtrics forms more accessibility is available at http://accessibility.psu.edu/qualtrics
How to Navigate Courses if You Have a Disability: JooYoung Seo’s Student Perspective
Corner of College & Allen blog post
My name is Sonya Woods and I am an accessibility consultant with World Campus Learning Design and I met JooYoung when I took a Learning Design and Technology course this semester. He has a great story, so I decided to interview him for the Corner of College & Allen blog so that people can benefit from his experience and perspective as a student who is blind.
edX to Improve Access to MOOCs for People With Disabilities
Sent in by Christian Johansen
Description
Under a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Thursday, edX, the nonprofit MOOC provider created by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has agreed to make its offerings more accessible to people with disabilities.
The settlement agreement, which marks the department’s first effort to challenge the accessibility of massive open online courses, affects the colleges that are members of edX as well as the nonprofit consortium itself.
Full Story
3PlayMedia offering timely free webinars on various accessibility topics
Sent in by Elizabeth J. Pyatt
Description
3PlayMedia is offering some timely free webinars on captioning including Copyright and Captioning (April 2, 2-2:45 PM) and Captioning Quickstart (May 7, 2-2:45). They also have some nice (captioned) recorded webinars focusing on workflow issues in particular. Web accessibility is a hot topic right now, with lawsuits, a Section 508 refresh, and the impending requirements of WCAG 2.0 fresh on people’s minds. There are also some recorded webinars to check out.
Full List and Registration links
At Museo del Prado, Blind Visitors Can Touch Masterpieces
Sent in by Alexa Schriempf
Description
A small, highly unusual exhibition, “Touching the Prado,” designed to give the blind or those with limited sight an
opportunity to create a mental image of a painting by feeling it. The show, which runs through June 28, occupies a side passage of the museum, near a room that contains an original of another work copied for the blind: a version
of the Mona Lisa by a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci. Altogether, six 3D copies are on display, all of them rendering famous works in the Prado. They include Goya’s “The Parasol”; a still life by van der Hamen; “Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan” by Velázquez; and “Noli Me Tangere,” Correggio’s painting of Christ meeting Mary Magdalene.
The exhibition is one of the most sophisticated yet in efforts to unlock the beauty of the visual arts for those unable to see them. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery in London are among several museums that organize activities for blind visitors, including special guided tours, drawing classes, and “touch” workshops, in which blind people can feel sculptures. The Louvre in Paris also has a Tactile Gallery that contains
copies of some of its sculptures.
Full Story
New proposed rules for Section 508 and Section 255 published by Access Board
Sent in by Christian Vinten-Johansen
Description
The proposed standards replace the current product-based approach with a functionality-based approach. The proposed technical requirements, which are organized along the lines of ICT functionality, provide standards to ensure that covered hardware, software, electronic content, and support documentation and services are accessible to people with disabilities. In addition, the proposed standards include functional performance criteria, which are outcome-based provisions for cases in which the proposed technical requirements do not address one or more features of ICT.
Given the trend toward convergence of technologies and ICT networks, the Access Board is updating the 255 Guidelines at the same time that it is updating the 508 Standards. The existing guidelines include detailed requirements for the accessibility, usability, and compatibility of telecommunications equipment and customer premises equipment. For example, the guidelines require input, output, display, control, and mechanical functions to be accessible to individuals with disabilities. The compatibility requirements focus on the need for standard connectors, compatibility of controls with prosthetics, and TTY compatibility. The guidelines define “usable” as providing access to information about how to use a product, and direct that instructions, product information, documentation, and technical support for users with disabilities be functionally equivalent to that provided to individuals without disabilities. The proposed guidelines include many non-substantive revisions to the existing requirements for clarity along with a few important new provisions.
Full Story
Students With Disabilities Meet Challenges in Online Courses
Sent in by Terry Watson
Description
While some of the more popular, commercial systems, such as Moodle, Blackboard and Desire2Learn, are built in a way that makes them accessible, some of the platforms designed by schools are more limited.
Those systems can be particularly challenging for students who have print disabilities – physical, visual, cognitive and other impairments that prevent them from effectively reading their course materials.
Once students with disabilities are accepted into an online program, they should prepare to be direct and open about what they need to succeed, experts say.
Even if a school uses a learning management system that is completely accessible to students with vision, hearing or other impairments, the odds are that at some point some students will hit a snag, says Lissner of the Association on Higher Education And Disability, who also works at Ohio State University.
Full Story
The Future of Video Player Accessibility Webinar
Sent in by Alexa Schriempf
Topic : The Future of Video Player Accessibility
Description
There’s no denying that online video makes up an increasingly important part of our everyday lives: online video traffic is expected to make up 79 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2018. There’s also no denying that individuals with disabilities represent a growing percentage of the population: in the 2010 U.S. Census, 19% of the population had a disability, a number that is only increasing with medical advancements and an aging society.
For software developers, this means keeping pace with technological improvements that accommodate all users—which is not easy. In this webinar, developers from YouTube/ Google, JW Player, Video.js, and University of Washington will come together to discuss video player accessibility. Taking a look at their different players, we will discuss the current capabilities, known shortcomings, and plans for future development. This webinar will provide a forum for major developers to take a top-level look at the future potential of video player accessibility.
Time, Date, Registration
- Wednesday, April 22
- 2PM
- Registration: 3PlayMedia
Free Section 508 Webinar
Sent in by Sonya Woods
Topic : Section 508 ICT NPRM – an Overview
Description
This webinar will provide an overview of the U.S. Access Board’s ICT Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that was released for public comment on February 18, 2015. The public comment period on the ICT NPRM will be open for 90 days. Staff from the U.S. Access Board will review the proposed text of the rule which jointly updates the Section 508 Standards and the Section 255 Guidelines. They will give an overview of the proposed changes and will cover the process for commenting on the proposed rule. Major proposed changes that will be covered include:
- The incorporation of the WCAG 2.0 Success Criteria, and applying those associated success criteria to websites as well as to offline electronic documents and software;
- Requiring real-time text functionality (text that is transmitted character by character as it is being typed) for products providing real-time, two-way voice communication;
- Specifying the types of non-public facing electronic content covered; and
Describing the required compatibility of covered technologies, including operating systems, software development toolkits, and software applications with assistive technology.
Time, Date, Registration
- Tuesday, March 31
- 1PM
- Registration: CIO.gov
Site has Moved to Word Press
The Accessibility Web site team is pleased to announce that we are migrating to Word Press by March 16, 2015. The site was rebuilt with the idea of improving navigation and streamlining content maintenance.
If you find an error on this site or cannot find some content, please contact us at accessibilityweb@psu.edu.
Harvard and M.I.T. Sued for Uncaptioned Videos
On February 12, 2014 the National Association of the Deaf (NAD at nad.org) announced it was filing two class action suits against Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alleging discrimination against the deaf and hard of hearing communities by providing video content which is either uncaptioned or inaccurately captioned.
You can read more at