Estimated reading time for this article:
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Speakers:
Amanda: Hi, everyone, and welcome to our Open Education Network's Pub101 session for today. I see that some people are still streaming in from the waiting room, so I'll just take a moment to say hello and introduce myself. My name is Amanda Hurford, and I'm the Scholarly Communications Director at PALNI, and I'm also serving on the Pub101 committee, and I'll be your host and facilitator today. And I don't know about you all, but I'm enjoying some spectacular, amazing spring weather out there. We have the redbuds blooming and it's absolutely gorgeous. And I'm so happy that spring is finally here, and apparently here to stay hopefully. So as I mentioned, I'll be the host today and I'll be handing it over to our speaker here in a moment. But just a few housekeeping items, I wanted to share a link to our orientation document.
And this document is, as I'm sure you're aware, our roadmap for our activities in these sessions. And it includes things like our schedule, and the links to the session slides, and video recordings. So I definitely invite you to check that out. So as I mentioned, again, I'll be handing it off to Jacqueline Frank here pretty soon. She is the Instruction and Accessibility Librarian at Montana State University, and she's going to be talking with us today about accessibility. And I hope that we're able to have a really good conversation and hear some great tips and tricks from Jacqueline. So we'll have lots of times for our questions and conversation. And I hope that if some of you have things to share as well, that you'll feel comfortable adding to the topic, in addition to our guest, and that you'll share your experience and resources with us. So just a couple more housekeeping things, this webinar is being recorded and it's going to be added to the YouTube playlist for Pub101. And I'll share that document or I'll share that link here in a sec.
There you go. So that is the link to the playlist where all of the other recordings will be found as well. And another thing I wanted to mention is our community norms. We're definitely committed to providing a safe and friendly environment for you all for these sessions. So I wanted to make sure that you're aware of the community norms and you'll review those and help us in creating this safe and constructive space to share information. So the community norms, they are in the chat as well. So now, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Jacqueline to talk to us about accessibility.
Jacqueline: Great. Thank you very much. And I am also going to post a link in the chat to today's slides. Those will be linked from the orientation document but are not yet. So if you want the slides, there's the direct link. And I am going to share my screen and get my slides up and start presenting. So I'm happy to be here today to talk about accessibility and inclusion in open educational resources. I am Jacqueline Frank, the Instruction and Accessibility Librarian, Montana State University. And today, we're going to briefly talk about some challenges, what it means to have an accessibility mindset, and why accessibility matters in general. And then we're going to dig into some best practices, including some accessibility checkers that will help check those best practices, some different document formats to be aware of for OER when you are publishing OER, and then some more resource and training options as well. First, before we get into the challenges, if you did, for those that had a chance to review Unit 1 already, a lot of this is covered, but we're highlighting some of those areas to pay attention to for accessibility.
I do want to start out by acknowledging that there are quite a few different challenges. And first, accessibility often can be seen as an add-on or something to do at the end. And so we're going to talk about trying to think about accessibility from the beginning and how that can ultimately help you through the process. It does take time to both learn about accessibility and then to create accessible materials. Ultimately, it never ends, 100% accessible doesn't exist, unfortunately. And so we will look at the best practices and try to do the best that we can. And it never ends because what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for someone else. So we have to shift our thinking and just be aware of the accessibility best practices, and hopefully, that will help us in the end.
And then one of the biggest challenges is the misconception that it doesn't have a big impact. So hopefully, when we see the Why Accessibility Matters section, that ultimately, accessibility does help all users in the end and it does have a pretty big impact. So acknowledging some challenges. And we do have three different polls throughout the presentation. And so I am... oh, but now my toolbar went away. Of course, I tried to practice this before. Let's see... Amanda, are you able to start the poll by chance?
Amanda: Let me look.
Jacqueline: I didn't... Ah, I found it. Here we go. Yes, looks like the poll is open. And there are three different polls. You can, of course, answer all three of them if you would like. But we're just going to focus on the results for question one, what type of institution are you from? And we'll give you one more minute. Actually, it looks like almost everyone has participated. I'll give you a couple more seconds, and I will end the poll and share the results. Looks like most people are in a university or college setting, we have about 25% from community colleges, and 4% other. Interesting.
It's cool. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing. And moving on, we're going to talk a little bit about accessibility, universal design, and inclusive design. Ultimately, they mean somewhat different things. The definitions that are actually included in the Pub101 Unit 1 are, that universal design is the process of creating products that are usable by people with the widest range of abilities, and operating within the widest possible range of situations. Inclusive design means that you're creating a lot of different ways for people to participate so that as many people as possible can feel as though they belong, and it doesn't necessarily mean designing one thing for all people.
Accessibility, in contrast, often refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. Ultimately, they all have a shared goal. They are all trying to help design content in a way that more users can access with more needs. So that's the main point that we want to take away from this. And thinking about an accessibility mindset and why accessibility matters. Oh, and here's my poll number two, I thought this was before. Anyway, poll number two, are you mostly supporting other textbook authors or are you authoring content yourself? And I will share those results. And it looks like most are supporting other textbook authors, and 2% are authoring content yourself. Great. I'll stop sharing. Thank you.
So jumping into the accessibility mindset. One of the goals of creating open textbooks is that so they can be accessed by more people with fewer barriers, and therefore, we also want to follow accessibility best practices so that they can be accessible. And overall, about 19% of undergraduates report having a disability, 26% of people worldwide live with a disability, and if you really think about it, 100% will experience a disability at some point in your life if you are lucky enough to live long enough. And that's because accessibility can be permanent, temporary, or situational. So for example, we have an image here on the screen that shows the example of a permanent disability, being, if you only have one arm or one arm is physically disabled. But a temporary disability could be an arm injury or your arm is in a sling.
And situational is if you are a new parent or you are carrying a child, or maybe you are carrying a big box, and therefore you only have one other arm available to help. So there are lots of different ways that disability can present itself in day-to-day life. And accessibility is a spectrum. There are many assistive technologies, from wearing glasses or contacts, all the way up to screen readers, mobility aids, hearing aids. And ultimately, which I mentioned before, what works for one person does not necessarily work for another person.
So thinking about OER, one option is to provide as many options and formats that allows users to choose what works best for them. So we will see some different formats for publishing OER and you can publish in multiple formats as well. And like I said, accessibility ultimately benefits everyone. So for example, some things that were created originally, specifically for users with disabilities, help everyone. For example, automatic door openers or curb cuts. Curb cuts were created, that's like in a sidewalk, where the raised sidewalk then slopes down to the street level, for example, and that can be helpful if you are pushing a stroller or a shopping cart. Automatic door openers can be helpful if you are carrying something, for example. And then headers in documents, which we will see, they allow users to navigate by section and see different areas of the document. Closed captioning allows users to view the content without sound. Maybe you're in a noisy environment without headphones or you're in a super quiet environment without headphones. The transcripts also allow users to read the content. And like I said, 100% of people will experience a disability at some point in life, so this ultimately benefits us all.
Now, we are going to dig into those accessibility best practices. And a lot of these were covered in the Unit 1 as well. And so if you want more information, you can go back to Unit 1, but we will highlight them here as well. And these polls... I thought they were before each section, but they're showing up after each section, so I apologize for that. But we have our last poll here. How much accessibility knowledge, and or experience do you have? Zero, low, moderate, or advanced? And I am going to share those results. It looks like about 50% of folks have a moderate level, 25% have low level, 7% have zero, and then 15% have advanced knowledge, which is great. So please share your own knowledge or comments in the chat as well.
Amanda: Jacqueline, while we're at a pause point, I thought I would go ahead and ask you a question from the chat. Michael asked, "When you mentioned disability, are you referring to physical disabilities, or could they also include things that are hidden?"
Jacqueline: Good question. They are also hidden. So both, we are talking about physical disabilities, but also, the majority of disabilities are actually invisible, and those can include cognitive disabilities, for example, with dyslexia, or ADHD and PTSD can also be categorized as disabilities. And so it is really across the spectrum. But yes, good points to make, lots of them are invisible as well. Let me know at any point if there are more questions.
Okay. So digging into accessibility best practices. First, a note about who is ultimately responsible for making sure the content is accessible. It comes down to, the creator or the author of the content is generally responsible for accessibility. However, when we are helping to publish, publishers also want to help publish accessible content, which means knowing what to look for, and then being able to provide resources or guidance to authors if needed.
And so ultimately, this is a challenge as well, figuring out who is going to fix something if something needs to be fixed. But knowing the best practices will help us know what to look for, and then we will also provide resources so that we can support authors along the way. These best practices come from WCAG 2.1, now, I thought I had updated that, and this is the web content accessibility guidelines. And we are going to look at the best practices for structuring headings, including meaningful hyperlinks, considering color, adding captions and transcripts, and alt text for images, which I know, at least, quite a few of you have already looked at because there was a homework assignment that people have already submitted ahead of time for alt texts.
Headings is one of the most important things to know about for OER. And headings are ultimately a formatting tool, but they are used to help separate sections of a document. They help users navigate, and either visual users to see the visual formatting of the headings, or they can also be used by people with a screen reader. And you can jump to different headings within the document. You apply headings in an outline format and they act as a map for the textbook or the document.
So if we're thinking about a book with multiple chapters, for example, the book title would be heading one, and then all of the chapter titles would be heading twos. And then if there are subsections within a chapter, those would be heading threes. So each under a heading two, the next heading level for a subsection would be heading three, but they can go back up, for example, and then the next chapter would again be a heading two.
Meaningful hyperlinks. Meaningful hyperlinks means that you tell the user where the link is going rather than just pasting in the full URL, and also avoiding using "click here" as a link, and let the link be the title of the content itself. So for example, if I was saying in a document, "More information can be found at the MSU library website," I would put the link behind MSU library website. And so the text is actually the link itself.
Amanda: Jacqueline, can we go back to headings real quick for a question?
Jacqueline: Yes, please.
Amanda: A question here about headings, "So when you say heading two, do you mean in terms of the coding? So is this something that's under the hood or not?"
Jacqueline: Good question. Yes, this is under the hood. For example, in Word, two... and whoops, go back again. Many times, you will select the text that would be heading two, for example,... sorry, I keep clicking with my mouse. So you would select the chapter title in your document, and in Word, for example, at the top, in the ribbon on the home tab, there would be a button to click to make it formatted as a heading two. It does come with some formatting options, but you can update how that formatting appears. And that is similar in lots of different authoring tools and technologies. So yes, it is behind the scenes, but when you select it, it also can make it change the formatting so it's also visible on the front end. Does that answer your question?
Yes, thank you. Okay. I did pull up the chat as well, so I'll try to pay attention if I see other ones. But yes, please stop me along the way. And also, if you do know specific coding, you can do it in a backend with code as well. But lots of times, it is on the front end user interface and they make it fairly easy.
Okay. We talked about hyperlinks. And also considering color, this is mainly about color contrast, and so we want to use high color contrast for both text, and diagrams, and charts. And then we also don't want to rely on color alone to convey meaning. And what that means is, for someone who is colorblind, for example, we wouldn't want to just change the color of text to highlight an important note, for example. So if you wanted to highlight something that was really important, don't just change it to be the color red, for example, you would want to bold it and change the color if you would like, but the bold would help highlight it as well.
And then similar with diagrams and charts, using color can be fine, but it is also good to just make sure that the colors are different enough so that if they were viewed in gray scale, or if someone was colorblind, they could still denote the difference between either the line color, or the bar chart color, and things like that. So there is an option usually to include gray scale diagrams, and that is one way to check and make sure that they can be distinguished without the color alone.
Captions. I see a question, "In a math course, if you are creating a quiz that had a pie chart or bar chart, how would you describe the chart without giving away the question's answer?" Oh good, good question. Ultimately, I'm trying to think about that one. The short answer is, I'm not 100% sure. It would depend on the question, but if you could see it, if you could see the bar chart, and if that is telling you the answer, then it is basically trying to describe what you can see. So the short answer... and I see another comment, perhaps create a table with the data and add a table, header, and row, and that's less interpretation and more data presentation. Yes, that is a great recommendation as well, but ultimately, they can be tricky, which we will see.
So coming back to captions, captions benefit people with hearing impairment without access to audio. They benefit folks who speak English as a second language. They can help others if they are viewing the video in a noisy or quiet environment. And you can generate automatic captions for videos using YouTube. And then there are lots of other captioning software. YouTube includes it for free, but there are other captioning softwares available. I know here at the Montana State University Library, MSU has a captioning software that is available for everyone in the university including students. So for those of you at... Actually, on any institution, you can check to see if they have another option as well. For some recording tips for captions, if you speak clearly, slowly, and close to the microphone, those automatic captions will be much cleaner.
You should go back and edit the captions and look quickly at them, and that can take a variable amount of time honestly. But if you are aware of using a microphone and getting good, clear audio from the beginning, that will make the automatic captions much better from almost every software available. Transcripts also benefit people with vision impairments, and they are a separate written document of the audio. They don't have to be verbatim accounts of the spoken word, so they can be written beforehand, and one of the biggest benefits is that they can be searchable by all users. So if you remembered someone talking about headings, for example, in a recorded video, you could go to the transcript, search for headings, and then find that section.
Alt text for images. This is a written description of an image. It is read by screen readers in place of the image, and it is also displayed if an image file doesn't load properly. So it can also be displayed when the user has chosen not to view images. And so alt text shows up in many different ways. And alt text guidelines. This is just a brief snapshot, there is a whole book of guidelines for alt text. I am not personally an alt text expert, I know some of the general guidelines, but I will say there are lots of different nuances to it, and it can be challenging to figure out exactly the best way to represent the alt text.
So one of the biggest things is to consider the context. Is it purely decorative? Sometimes there are horizontal lines in between different content, but it shows up actually as an image. And so you can mark things as decorative, and that means if you are using a screen reader, or the image didn't load, it would just skip it completely.
But if it provides context or information, then you need to include alt text. You want to be as concise as possible. Generally, for a photo, for example, this is one or two sentences. You don't want to repeat information that's provided elsewhere. So if in the text you mentioned a yellow zebra and then you had an image of a yellow zebra, then you wouldn't necessarily need to repeat that. But you want to focus on the added information that it is presenting and then be as objective as possible. Don't try to interpret or analyze and use the same writing style and terminology as the surrounding text. So if we're thinking about writing an open textbook, for example, if it is very formal, you would want to also include alt text in a formal writing style. If it was more informal, then your alt text could be more informal in tone. Charts and graphs are much more difficult, I will admit.
And ultimately, the alt text for charts and graphs can be longer. You don't have to stick to one to two sentences for something like a chart that is super complicated. It is best to link to the full data table from the text, because the full data tables can also be made accessible. And then if the chart is compiling a table of data and showing percentages, for example, then the alt text might include those percentages. And if we have time, we can look at the alt text homework assignment and view a few of the alt text entries that you guys created. And if not, if we don't get there, I will be going into that document and providing feedback as a reply to your different comments as well. So I mentioned the prior homework assignment. If you haven't done this, it is an interesting exercise to go and try your hand at writing some alt text for one of the images in this example. And there are more alt text guidelines under the accessibility section in the Pub101 Unit 1.
Okay. Now, we are going to jump into some different open textbook formats. And I see it. Sorry, I'm just checking chat again. One of you shared this resource for a guide for writing alt text and image descriptions and that is super helpful. Thank you for sharing that.
Okay. So there are many different document formats. And when we're thinking about OER, there are many different types of documents that might be included from PDF, to Epub, audiobooks, Pressbooks, many more. And they do all have different accessibility considerations even though the accessibility best practices for creating the original document are the same. So for example, enlarging text and options for reflowing the content or multiple columns, things like that are different depending on the final output.
So for example, Epub, or online, an HTML web versions of a document are reflowable, meaning, that if you change the font size, for example, it will reflow into the width of the screen that you are looking at it on. They also support vector images that resize, again, based on the screen that you are looking at, versus a PDF, which means portable document format. And the good thing is that PDFs are independent of software, hardware, operating systems. So they can be viewed on almost any device, but it maintains the original visual layout. So if you zoom in, rather than the text reflowing to be within the width that you are viewing it, it will just zoom into a small piece and then you'll have to scroll side to side to view the whole width of the document. They do have some benefits though, they are great to be available offline and they're also good for printing.
So the takeaway here is that almost always, wherever you are publishing or creating the original document, or if you are helping someone else publish an OER, wherever they originally created the document, you can usually save or output into multiple formats. And so it's best to just provide as many options as possible. I'm going to click on this link, and I believe I shared my screen in a way that it should be showing you the link to an open textbook here in the Open Textbook Library. And this page, if you can see, it shows an open textbook for understanding document accessibility, and there are multiple formats from an online HTML version. It's available as an ebook, it's available as ODF, open document format, it's also available as PDF, or XML. So this allows users to choose different options based on their needs. So this is a good example.
And now, I am going to wait until my controls go away and click back to my slides. I do want to share some different accessibility checkers. So it is great to be aware of all of these best practices, and trying to implement them throughout the process, if you are authoring it yourself, if you're thinking about these things upfront, it can help save time. But if you are helping other authors who have created OER and you're helping publish them, then there are some accessibility checkers that you can use at the end, after the fact, and have authors use them as well to check their own content. So for example, Word, and for that matter, PowerPoint, all Microsoft Office documents now have an accessibility checker. And in Word, you can open your document, click on file, check for issues, check accessibility. Some versions have a check accessibility button in a different location, but all should have it in this location as well. And then a sidebar pops up and you can click on any error to get instructions on how to fix the issue.
There is also a PDF accessibility checker in Adobe Pro. Adobe Pro is the upgraded option. And here at MSU, for example, they have a campus-wide subscription, so check if your institution has Adobe Pro. So in Adobe Pro, open your document, and if needed, click the Action Wizard on the toolbar by clicking more tools. And then under the Action Wizard, there is an option to make accessible, and it brings up a pop-up box and you click through all of the different options. It will automatically highlight any images, for example, and prompt you to put in alt text, if there is an alt text already, and it will take you through headings. And in Adobe, it will also do an important step called OCR, optical character recognition, which takes the PDF from an image and it recognizes the text so that the text can be searchable as well.
And for online resources and HTML, for example, there are online accessibility checkers. The WAVE accessibility checker is the one that I usually use. You can go to wave.webaim.org, and you can either paste in the URL directly to that site and it will check the page for you. Or alternatively, you can use a plugin which is often a browser extension, and then it gives you any page that you are viewing online. You can click the plugin button and it will pull up a sidebar with accessibility errors and suggestions for you. Another one is the tota11y browser extension. And that one, again, whatever page you are on, it would bring up a button for the tota11y extension, and you click on that, and it pulls up a sidebar for you and highlights different errors or suggestions for you. And there are many more, so if you have another one that you like or use a lot, please share that in the chat as well.
I see a question here, "Where did you say the accessibility checker in Adobe is? The one I'm familiar with, on the tools, has an accessibility check but it doesn't have Make it Accessible for me." Good question. There are two options within Adobe Pro. The one that I like to use, you may have to click under More Tools and then add the Action Wizard, and that brings up a different option and walks you through each step. There is a separate option for accessibility check and that just takes you to the end screen, if you will. And so it's the same results, it's checking the same things, but if you use the Action Wizard specifically, it helps walk you through the steps to fix things in a little bit easier way. I hope that makes sense and didn't confuse folks more. And I also saw the question about the homework and it looks like Karen helped answer that one, so thank you.
A note about the accessibility checkers. They are great hopeful tools and they are very useful. I use them quite often myself, but they don't check everything. Color contrast, for example, I believe it's now included in the Microsoft accessibility checker, but it wasn't initially included, for example. And it also doesn't check if headings are used in the first place. If you do use headings, it will check the order of headings, but if there are just no headings used, it doesn't check that. And in reading order, so for example, if you have multiple columns, and maybe on a textbook, for example, you have a highlighted section or a call-out section that has a brief blurb about something extra, the reading order is the order in which the content will be read out if using a screen reader. And so it will automatically apply a reading order, but it can't know if it actually makes sense.
So if there are multiple columns, and at the end there is a paragraph that continues on the next page, it might do a call-out and read the information in that call-out in an awkward place. So that's maybe in the middle of another paragraph. So this is just one example of how accessibility checkers are great, but they only go so far. And they can be used as a great tool to look at the accessibility of a document, but ultimately, it doesn't replace a human knowing and understanding what these best practices are and then trying to implement them.
Okay, I'm going to come back to this one for just a second. So again, because accessibility checkers don't check everything, that is why having a good understanding of these best practices, or at least an awareness of the best practices, can really help. So looking at a document and realizing if headers are used or not can be really helpful as well.
Okay. There is also a comment in here about two other accessibility checkers. The X-Browser extension, that is a good one, I have used that one. And there is a color contrast analyzer, thank you for sharing this one as well. So I mentioned here in the list that the built-in accessibility checkers might not check color contrast, but there are specific tools that will look at color contrast. And so you can download that color contrast analyzer, for example. And while you are viewing your document, you can pull up the analyzer, click on two different colors, and it will give you a result or if it passes the standards.
And so yeah, it's really cool, it has a dropper tool where you click one color and then you click the background color and it will tell you what levels it passes. And the one that I have used, the one included in the chat, it is available as a download application. So I have not used it on a mobile device, I don't know if that is possible actually. Please tell me in the chat if you know. But on a desktop computer, you download it, and it's a specific application. And so you can view whatever document you were looking at, and then open the color contrast analyzer. And it brings up a screen that then you can choose the different colors in the background. So thank you for sharing notes.
Okay. So we've covered a lot of different best practices and we barely scratch the surface. So as you can probably tell, there are many more details behind each one of these best practices, including specifically how to implement them, how to use them. And if you do have any questions in the future about how do I apply a heading, for example, or how do I hyperlink text, how do I use the color contrast analyzer, I would be happy to provide more step-by-step instructions for anyone who would like that. But ultimately, today, it was about awareness about these different accessibility best practices, and there are a lot. So I really want to highlight the self-care portion and just try to be kind to yourself. Perfection is not the goal, and ultimately, it can't be the goal because we know that 100% accessible doesn't exist. So trying to do the best that we can, trying to learn about one additional thing each time can be helpful to slowly build up your knowledge and experience.
And ultimately, we all, in life in general, should help ourselves practice self-compassion and try to just be kind to yourself, and therefore, extend that out to others. So if we're helping publish, we can help try to facilitate this for other authors, but realizing that there is a lot to understand and we are all coming at it with different levels of experience.
Lastly, there are more resources and training options. There are tons. There is another comment in the chat with a very long list of tools, which is great. And there are specific resources linked from Pub101 Unit 1. I mentioned there are more guidelines for creating alt text and image descriptions. There is a whole accessibility toolkit and checklist for accessibility. And we also have instructions for creating accessible documents and that gets into more of the step-by-step instructions for applying these best practices. But now, I want to make sure to give at least a few minutes of time for questions, and if you would be willing to provide feedback as well.
Amanda: Thank you, Jacqueline, for all of your knowledge and for sharing your experience with us today. Like you mentioned, we are able to take questions for the next few minutes. So you can feel free to use the chat like we have been doing or you can raise your hand and I can call on you. I do appreciate folks sharing comments and best practices in the chat as well. That's really helpful.
Jacqueline: Yes, there are many different resources out there. There might even be resources that were created or disseminated from your specific institution or university, but there are lots of resources out there in general from many different sources. Webaim.org is one of the leaders for accessibility, and they have lots of good information as well.
Amanda: Can you talk to us a little bit about your feedback form?
Jacqueline: Yes. Feedback form here is a generic feedback form that we use, but we try to offer this at the end of each of our sessions, or workshops, so that we can determine if you learn something, if it was useful, and also a comment option if you want to provide any specific feedback for us as well or suggestions. But we try to use this in a way that will help us improve our instruction. "Is there a way to translate a publication between multiple formats, or do you just have to recreate it in each?" Good question. Yes, I will share this feedback link in the chat, sorry about that.
Amanda: I got it.
Jacqueline: Thank you. So translating a publication between multiple formats. Generally, yes, there is an option to do this. The hardest time is when you only have a PDF. If you only have a PDF, there are ways to convert it, but it can be a lot harder. But if you're starting with most other formats, then you can often save in multiple formats. So Pressbooks is a common platform for publishing OER and you can output the end document into multiple formats as well. And so the short answer is it depends on your starting document. It's hardest with a PDF, but there should be other options to translate or output the publication into different formats. I hope that answers your question.
Amanda: While folks are thinking of any final questions they might have, I just shared in the meeting chat a link to the class notes document. And this is where you can add additional comments that you have from today's session or just comments that you'd like to share. And those notes will be reviewed before the next session and we'll answer any outstanding questions. And I also included a link to the feedback form in the chat as well.
Jacqueline: Great. And I did want to mention, again, the alt tag homework. Since we didn't have a whole lot of time to go back and review that together, I will be looking at your comments and trying to provide some feedback in that document. So if you want to try your hand at the alt text homework, that is linked from the orientation document I know, and probably elsewhere.
Amanda: Well, I'll go ahead and close this out. I wanted to take a moment to thank Jacqueline for her presentation today and her expertise. We definitely appreciate you coming to the meeting today and telling us about all of those great tools. And for everyone else who also contributed in the chat and otherwise, it's really wonderful that we're able to share together and learn from each other. And again, with that key takeaway that we are not alone in figuring out how to do this, we're all working together to figure out how to support authoring open textbooks with authors or creating open textbooks. So again, feel free to use the class notes and we will see you next week. Thanks again.
Jacqueline: Thank you. And don't hesitate to reach out for more questions or details about any of this. Thank you.
END OF VIDEO
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Pub101 is a free, informal, online orientation to open textbook publishing. This April 13, 2023, session is the second in our series this year. Host Amanda Hurford of the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) is joined by guest speaker Jacqueline Frank of Montana State University for a discussion of accessibility and inclusion in OER.
Watch the video recording of this session or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Watch the video recording of this session or keep reading for a full transcript. For those interested in reading the conversation that took place among participants and the resources shared, the chat transcript is also available below.
Note: If your comments appear in the transcripts and you would like your name or other identifying information removed, please contact Tonia.
Audio Transcript
Speakers:
- Amanda Hurford (Scholarly Communications Director, Private Academic Library Network)
- Jacqueline Frank (Instruction & Accessibility Librarian, Montana State University)
Amanda: Hi, everyone, and welcome to our Open Education Network's Pub101 session for today. I see that some people are still streaming in from the waiting room, so I'll just take a moment to say hello and introduce myself. My name is Amanda Hurford, and I'm the Scholarly Communications Director at PALNI, and I'm also serving on the Pub101 committee, and I'll be your host and facilitator today. And I don't know about you all, but I'm enjoying some spectacular, amazing spring weather out there. We have the redbuds blooming and it's absolutely gorgeous. And I'm so happy that spring is finally here, and apparently here to stay hopefully. So as I mentioned, I'll be the host today and I'll be handing it over to our speaker here in a moment. But just a few housekeeping items, I wanted to share a link to our orientation document.
And this document is, as I'm sure you're aware, our roadmap for our activities in these sessions. And it includes things like our schedule, and the links to the session slides, and video recordings. So I definitely invite you to check that out. So as I mentioned, again, I'll be handing it off to Jacqueline Frank here pretty soon. She is the Instruction and Accessibility Librarian at Montana State University, and she's going to be talking with us today about accessibility. And I hope that we're able to have a really good conversation and hear some great tips and tricks from Jacqueline. So we'll have lots of times for our questions and conversation. And I hope that if some of you have things to share as well, that you'll feel comfortable adding to the topic, in addition to our guest, and that you'll share your experience and resources with us. So just a couple more housekeeping things, this webinar is being recorded and it's going to be added to the YouTube playlist for Pub101. And I'll share that document or I'll share that link here in a sec.
There you go. So that is the link to the playlist where all of the other recordings will be found as well. And another thing I wanted to mention is our community norms. We're definitely committed to providing a safe and friendly environment for you all for these sessions. So I wanted to make sure that you're aware of the community norms and you'll review those and help us in creating this safe and constructive space to share information. So the community norms, they are in the chat as well. So now, I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Jacqueline to talk to us about accessibility.
Jacqueline: Great. Thank you very much. And I am also going to post a link in the chat to today's slides. Those will be linked from the orientation document but are not yet. So if you want the slides, there's the direct link. And I am going to share my screen and get my slides up and start presenting. So I'm happy to be here today to talk about accessibility and inclusion in open educational resources. I am Jacqueline Frank, the Instruction and Accessibility Librarian, Montana State University. And today, we're going to briefly talk about some challenges, what it means to have an accessibility mindset, and why accessibility matters in general. And then we're going to dig into some best practices, including some accessibility checkers that will help check those best practices, some different document formats to be aware of for OER when you are publishing OER, and then some more resource and training options as well. First, before we get into the challenges, if you did, for those that had a chance to review Unit 1 already, a lot of this is covered, but we're highlighting some of those areas to pay attention to for accessibility.
I do want to start out by acknowledging that there are quite a few different challenges. And first, accessibility often can be seen as an add-on or something to do at the end. And so we're going to talk about trying to think about accessibility from the beginning and how that can ultimately help you through the process. It does take time to both learn about accessibility and then to create accessible materials. Ultimately, it never ends, 100% accessible doesn't exist, unfortunately. And so we will look at the best practices and try to do the best that we can. And it never ends because what works for one person doesn't necessarily work for someone else. So we have to shift our thinking and just be aware of the accessibility best practices, and hopefully, that will help us in the end.
And then one of the biggest challenges is the misconception that it doesn't have a big impact. So hopefully, when we see the Why Accessibility Matters section, that ultimately, accessibility does help all users in the end and it does have a pretty big impact. So acknowledging some challenges. And we do have three different polls throughout the presentation. And so I am... oh, but now my toolbar went away. Of course, I tried to practice this before. Let's see... Amanda, are you able to start the poll by chance?
Amanda: Let me look.
Jacqueline: I didn't... Ah, I found it. Here we go. Yes, looks like the poll is open. And there are three different polls. You can, of course, answer all three of them if you would like. But we're just going to focus on the results for question one, what type of institution are you from? And we'll give you one more minute. Actually, it looks like almost everyone has participated. I'll give you a couple more seconds, and I will end the poll and share the results. Looks like most people are in a university or college setting, we have about 25% from community colleges, and 4% other. Interesting.
It's cool. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing. And moving on, we're going to talk a little bit about accessibility, universal design, and inclusive design. Ultimately, they mean somewhat different things. The definitions that are actually included in the Pub101 Unit 1 are, that universal design is the process of creating products that are usable by people with the widest range of abilities, and operating within the widest possible range of situations. Inclusive design means that you're creating a lot of different ways for people to participate so that as many people as possible can feel as though they belong, and it doesn't necessarily mean designing one thing for all people.
Accessibility, in contrast, often refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. Ultimately, they all have a shared goal. They are all trying to help design content in a way that more users can access with more needs. So that's the main point that we want to take away from this. And thinking about an accessibility mindset and why accessibility matters. Oh, and here's my poll number two, I thought this was before. Anyway, poll number two, are you mostly supporting other textbook authors or are you authoring content yourself? And I will share those results. And it looks like most are supporting other textbook authors, and 2% are authoring content yourself. Great. I'll stop sharing. Thank you.
So jumping into the accessibility mindset. One of the goals of creating open textbooks is that so they can be accessed by more people with fewer barriers, and therefore, we also want to follow accessibility best practices so that they can be accessible. And overall, about 19% of undergraduates report having a disability, 26% of people worldwide live with a disability, and if you really think about it, 100% will experience a disability at some point in your life if you are lucky enough to live long enough. And that's because accessibility can be permanent, temporary, or situational. So for example, we have an image here on the screen that shows the example of a permanent disability, being, if you only have one arm or one arm is physically disabled. But a temporary disability could be an arm injury or your arm is in a sling.
And situational is if you are a new parent or you are carrying a child, or maybe you are carrying a big box, and therefore you only have one other arm available to help. So there are lots of different ways that disability can present itself in day-to-day life. And accessibility is a spectrum. There are many assistive technologies, from wearing glasses or contacts, all the way up to screen readers, mobility aids, hearing aids. And ultimately, which I mentioned before, what works for one person does not necessarily work for another person.
So thinking about OER, one option is to provide as many options and formats that allows users to choose what works best for them. So we will see some different formats for publishing OER and you can publish in multiple formats as well. And like I said, accessibility ultimately benefits everyone. So for example, some things that were created originally, specifically for users with disabilities, help everyone. For example, automatic door openers or curb cuts. Curb cuts were created, that's like in a sidewalk, where the raised sidewalk then slopes down to the street level, for example, and that can be helpful if you are pushing a stroller or a shopping cart. Automatic door openers can be helpful if you are carrying something, for example. And then headers in documents, which we will see, they allow users to navigate by section and see different areas of the document. Closed captioning allows users to view the content without sound. Maybe you're in a noisy environment without headphones or you're in a super quiet environment without headphones. The transcripts also allow users to read the content. And like I said, 100% of people will experience a disability at some point in life, so this ultimately benefits us all.
Now, we are going to dig into those accessibility best practices. And a lot of these were covered in the Unit 1 as well. And so if you want more information, you can go back to Unit 1, but we will highlight them here as well. And these polls... I thought they were before each section, but they're showing up after each section, so I apologize for that. But we have our last poll here. How much accessibility knowledge, and or experience do you have? Zero, low, moderate, or advanced? And I am going to share those results. It looks like about 50% of folks have a moderate level, 25% have low level, 7% have zero, and then 15% have advanced knowledge, which is great. So please share your own knowledge or comments in the chat as well.
Amanda: Jacqueline, while we're at a pause point, I thought I would go ahead and ask you a question from the chat. Michael asked, "When you mentioned disability, are you referring to physical disabilities, or could they also include things that are hidden?"
Jacqueline: Good question. They are also hidden. So both, we are talking about physical disabilities, but also, the majority of disabilities are actually invisible, and those can include cognitive disabilities, for example, with dyslexia, or ADHD and PTSD can also be categorized as disabilities. And so it is really across the spectrum. But yes, good points to make, lots of them are invisible as well. Let me know at any point if there are more questions.
Okay. So digging into accessibility best practices. First, a note about who is ultimately responsible for making sure the content is accessible. It comes down to, the creator or the author of the content is generally responsible for accessibility. However, when we are helping to publish, publishers also want to help publish accessible content, which means knowing what to look for, and then being able to provide resources or guidance to authors if needed.
And so ultimately, this is a challenge as well, figuring out who is going to fix something if something needs to be fixed. But knowing the best practices will help us know what to look for, and then we will also provide resources so that we can support authors along the way. These best practices come from WCAG 2.1, now, I thought I had updated that, and this is the web content accessibility guidelines. And we are going to look at the best practices for structuring headings, including meaningful hyperlinks, considering color, adding captions and transcripts, and alt text for images, which I know, at least, quite a few of you have already looked at because there was a homework assignment that people have already submitted ahead of time for alt texts.
Headings is one of the most important things to know about for OER. And headings are ultimately a formatting tool, but they are used to help separate sections of a document. They help users navigate, and either visual users to see the visual formatting of the headings, or they can also be used by people with a screen reader. And you can jump to different headings within the document. You apply headings in an outline format and they act as a map for the textbook or the document.
So if we're thinking about a book with multiple chapters, for example, the book title would be heading one, and then all of the chapter titles would be heading twos. And then if there are subsections within a chapter, those would be heading threes. So each under a heading two, the next heading level for a subsection would be heading three, but they can go back up, for example, and then the next chapter would again be a heading two.
Meaningful hyperlinks. Meaningful hyperlinks means that you tell the user where the link is going rather than just pasting in the full URL, and also avoiding using "click here" as a link, and let the link be the title of the content itself. So for example, if I was saying in a document, "More information can be found at the MSU library website," I would put the link behind MSU library website. And so the text is actually the link itself.
Amanda: Jacqueline, can we go back to headings real quick for a question?
Jacqueline: Yes, please.
Amanda: A question here about headings, "So when you say heading two, do you mean in terms of the coding? So is this something that's under the hood or not?"
Jacqueline: Good question. Yes, this is under the hood. For example, in Word, two... and whoops, go back again. Many times, you will select the text that would be heading two, for example,... sorry, I keep clicking with my mouse. So you would select the chapter title in your document, and in Word, for example, at the top, in the ribbon on the home tab, there would be a button to click to make it formatted as a heading two. It does come with some formatting options, but you can update how that formatting appears. And that is similar in lots of different authoring tools and technologies. So yes, it is behind the scenes, but when you select it, it also can make it change the formatting so it's also visible on the front end. Does that answer your question?
Yes, thank you. Okay. I did pull up the chat as well, so I'll try to pay attention if I see other ones. But yes, please stop me along the way. And also, if you do know specific coding, you can do it in a backend with code as well. But lots of times, it is on the front end user interface and they make it fairly easy.
Okay. We talked about hyperlinks. And also considering color, this is mainly about color contrast, and so we want to use high color contrast for both text, and diagrams, and charts. And then we also don't want to rely on color alone to convey meaning. And what that means is, for someone who is colorblind, for example, we wouldn't want to just change the color of text to highlight an important note, for example. So if you wanted to highlight something that was really important, don't just change it to be the color red, for example, you would want to bold it and change the color if you would like, but the bold would help highlight it as well.
And then similar with diagrams and charts, using color can be fine, but it is also good to just make sure that the colors are different enough so that if they were viewed in gray scale, or if someone was colorblind, they could still denote the difference between either the line color, or the bar chart color, and things like that. So there is an option usually to include gray scale diagrams, and that is one way to check and make sure that they can be distinguished without the color alone.
Captions. I see a question, "In a math course, if you are creating a quiz that had a pie chart or bar chart, how would you describe the chart without giving away the question's answer?" Oh good, good question. Ultimately, I'm trying to think about that one. The short answer is, I'm not 100% sure. It would depend on the question, but if you could see it, if you could see the bar chart, and if that is telling you the answer, then it is basically trying to describe what you can see. So the short answer... and I see another comment, perhaps create a table with the data and add a table, header, and row, and that's less interpretation and more data presentation. Yes, that is a great recommendation as well, but ultimately, they can be tricky, which we will see.
So coming back to captions, captions benefit people with hearing impairment without access to audio. They benefit folks who speak English as a second language. They can help others if they are viewing the video in a noisy or quiet environment. And you can generate automatic captions for videos using YouTube. And then there are lots of other captioning software. YouTube includes it for free, but there are other captioning softwares available. I know here at the Montana State University Library, MSU has a captioning software that is available for everyone in the university including students. So for those of you at... Actually, on any institution, you can check to see if they have another option as well. For some recording tips for captions, if you speak clearly, slowly, and close to the microphone, those automatic captions will be much cleaner.
You should go back and edit the captions and look quickly at them, and that can take a variable amount of time honestly. But if you are aware of using a microphone and getting good, clear audio from the beginning, that will make the automatic captions much better from almost every software available. Transcripts also benefit people with vision impairments, and they are a separate written document of the audio. They don't have to be verbatim accounts of the spoken word, so they can be written beforehand, and one of the biggest benefits is that they can be searchable by all users. So if you remembered someone talking about headings, for example, in a recorded video, you could go to the transcript, search for headings, and then find that section.
Alt text for images. This is a written description of an image. It is read by screen readers in place of the image, and it is also displayed if an image file doesn't load properly. So it can also be displayed when the user has chosen not to view images. And so alt text shows up in many different ways. And alt text guidelines. This is just a brief snapshot, there is a whole book of guidelines for alt text. I am not personally an alt text expert, I know some of the general guidelines, but I will say there are lots of different nuances to it, and it can be challenging to figure out exactly the best way to represent the alt text.
So one of the biggest things is to consider the context. Is it purely decorative? Sometimes there are horizontal lines in between different content, but it shows up actually as an image. And so you can mark things as decorative, and that means if you are using a screen reader, or the image didn't load, it would just skip it completely.
But if it provides context or information, then you need to include alt text. You want to be as concise as possible. Generally, for a photo, for example, this is one or two sentences. You don't want to repeat information that's provided elsewhere. So if in the text you mentioned a yellow zebra and then you had an image of a yellow zebra, then you wouldn't necessarily need to repeat that. But you want to focus on the added information that it is presenting and then be as objective as possible. Don't try to interpret or analyze and use the same writing style and terminology as the surrounding text. So if we're thinking about writing an open textbook, for example, if it is very formal, you would want to also include alt text in a formal writing style. If it was more informal, then your alt text could be more informal in tone. Charts and graphs are much more difficult, I will admit.
And ultimately, the alt text for charts and graphs can be longer. You don't have to stick to one to two sentences for something like a chart that is super complicated. It is best to link to the full data table from the text, because the full data tables can also be made accessible. And then if the chart is compiling a table of data and showing percentages, for example, then the alt text might include those percentages. And if we have time, we can look at the alt text homework assignment and view a few of the alt text entries that you guys created. And if not, if we don't get there, I will be going into that document and providing feedback as a reply to your different comments as well. So I mentioned the prior homework assignment. If you haven't done this, it is an interesting exercise to go and try your hand at writing some alt text for one of the images in this example. And there are more alt text guidelines under the accessibility section in the Pub101 Unit 1.
Okay. Now, we are going to jump into some different open textbook formats. And I see it. Sorry, I'm just checking chat again. One of you shared this resource for a guide for writing alt text and image descriptions and that is super helpful. Thank you for sharing that.
Okay. So there are many different document formats. And when we're thinking about OER, there are many different types of documents that might be included from PDF, to Epub, audiobooks, Pressbooks, many more. And they do all have different accessibility considerations even though the accessibility best practices for creating the original document are the same. So for example, enlarging text and options for reflowing the content or multiple columns, things like that are different depending on the final output.
So for example, Epub, or online, an HTML web versions of a document are reflowable, meaning, that if you change the font size, for example, it will reflow into the width of the screen that you are looking at it on. They also support vector images that resize, again, based on the screen that you are looking at, versus a PDF, which means portable document format. And the good thing is that PDFs are independent of software, hardware, operating systems. So they can be viewed on almost any device, but it maintains the original visual layout. So if you zoom in, rather than the text reflowing to be within the width that you are viewing it, it will just zoom into a small piece and then you'll have to scroll side to side to view the whole width of the document. They do have some benefits though, they are great to be available offline and they're also good for printing.
So the takeaway here is that almost always, wherever you are publishing or creating the original document, or if you are helping someone else publish an OER, wherever they originally created the document, you can usually save or output into multiple formats. And so it's best to just provide as many options as possible. I'm going to click on this link, and I believe I shared my screen in a way that it should be showing you the link to an open textbook here in the Open Textbook Library. And this page, if you can see, it shows an open textbook for understanding document accessibility, and there are multiple formats from an online HTML version. It's available as an ebook, it's available as ODF, open document format, it's also available as PDF, or XML. So this allows users to choose different options based on their needs. So this is a good example.
And now, I am going to wait until my controls go away and click back to my slides. I do want to share some different accessibility checkers. So it is great to be aware of all of these best practices, and trying to implement them throughout the process, if you are authoring it yourself, if you're thinking about these things upfront, it can help save time. But if you are helping other authors who have created OER and you're helping publish them, then there are some accessibility checkers that you can use at the end, after the fact, and have authors use them as well to check their own content. So for example, Word, and for that matter, PowerPoint, all Microsoft Office documents now have an accessibility checker. And in Word, you can open your document, click on file, check for issues, check accessibility. Some versions have a check accessibility button in a different location, but all should have it in this location as well. And then a sidebar pops up and you can click on any error to get instructions on how to fix the issue.
There is also a PDF accessibility checker in Adobe Pro. Adobe Pro is the upgraded option. And here at MSU, for example, they have a campus-wide subscription, so check if your institution has Adobe Pro. So in Adobe Pro, open your document, and if needed, click the Action Wizard on the toolbar by clicking more tools. And then under the Action Wizard, there is an option to make accessible, and it brings up a pop-up box and you click through all of the different options. It will automatically highlight any images, for example, and prompt you to put in alt text, if there is an alt text already, and it will take you through headings. And in Adobe, it will also do an important step called OCR, optical character recognition, which takes the PDF from an image and it recognizes the text so that the text can be searchable as well.
And for online resources and HTML, for example, there are online accessibility checkers. The WAVE accessibility checker is the one that I usually use. You can go to wave.webaim.org, and you can either paste in the URL directly to that site and it will check the page for you. Or alternatively, you can use a plugin which is often a browser extension, and then it gives you any page that you are viewing online. You can click the plugin button and it will pull up a sidebar with accessibility errors and suggestions for you. Another one is the tota11y browser extension. And that one, again, whatever page you are on, it would bring up a button for the tota11y extension, and you click on that, and it pulls up a sidebar for you and highlights different errors or suggestions for you. And there are many more, so if you have another one that you like or use a lot, please share that in the chat as well.
I see a question here, "Where did you say the accessibility checker in Adobe is? The one I'm familiar with, on the tools, has an accessibility check but it doesn't have Make it Accessible for me." Good question. There are two options within Adobe Pro. The one that I like to use, you may have to click under More Tools and then add the Action Wizard, and that brings up a different option and walks you through each step. There is a separate option for accessibility check and that just takes you to the end screen, if you will. And so it's the same results, it's checking the same things, but if you use the Action Wizard specifically, it helps walk you through the steps to fix things in a little bit easier way. I hope that makes sense and didn't confuse folks more. And I also saw the question about the homework and it looks like Karen helped answer that one, so thank you.
A note about the accessibility checkers. They are great hopeful tools and they are very useful. I use them quite often myself, but they don't check everything. Color contrast, for example, I believe it's now included in the Microsoft accessibility checker, but it wasn't initially included, for example. And it also doesn't check if headings are used in the first place. If you do use headings, it will check the order of headings, but if there are just no headings used, it doesn't check that. And in reading order, so for example, if you have multiple columns, and maybe on a textbook, for example, you have a highlighted section or a call-out section that has a brief blurb about something extra, the reading order is the order in which the content will be read out if using a screen reader. And so it will automatically apply a reading order, but it can't know if it actually makes sense.
So if there are multiple columns, and at the end there is a paragraph that continues on the next page, it might do a call-out and read the information in that call-out in an awkward place. So that's maybe in the middle of another paragraph. So this is just one example of how accessibility checkers are great, but they only go so far. And they can be used as a great tool to look at the accessibility of a document, but ultimately, it doesn't replace a human knowing and understanding what these best practices are and then trying to implement them.
Okay, I'm going to come back to this one for just a second. So again, because accessibility checkers don't check everything, that is why having a good understanding of these best practices, or at least an awareness of the best practices, can really help. So looking at a document and realizing if headers are used or not can be really helpful as well.
Okay. There is also a comment in here about two other accessibility checkers. The X-Browser extension, that is a good one, I have used that one. And there is a color contrast analyzer, thank you for sharing this one as well. So I mentioned here in the list that the built-in accessibility checkers might not check color contrast, but there are specific tools that will look at color contrast. And so you can download that color contrast analyzer, for example. And while you are viewing your document, you can pull up the analyzer, click on two different colors, and it will give you a result or if it passes the standards.
And so yeah, it's really cool, it has a dropper tool where you click one color and then you click the background color and it will tell you what levels it passes. And the one that I have used, the one included in the chat, it is available as a download application. So I have not used it on a mobile device, I don't know if that is possible actually. Please tell me in the chat if you know. But on a desktop computer, you download it, and it's a specific application. And so you can view whatever document you were looking at, and then open the color contrast analyzer. And it brings up a screen that then you can choose the different colors in the background. So thank you for sharing notes.
Okay. So we've covered a lot of different best practices and we barely scratch the surface. So as you can probably tell, there are many more details behind each one of these best practices, including specifically how to implement them, how to use them. And if you do have any questions in the future about how do I apply a heading, for example, or how do I hyperlink text, how do I use the color contrast analyzer, I would be happy to provide more step-by-step instructions for anyone who would like that. But ultimately, today, it was about awareness about these different accessibility best practices, and there are a lot. So I really want to highlight the self-care portion and just try to be kind to yourself. Perfection is not the goal, and ultimately, it can't be the goal because we know that 100% accessible doesn't exist. So trying to do the best that we can, trying to learn about one additional thing each time can be helpful to slowly build up your knowledge and experience.
And ultimately, we all, in life in general, should help ourselves practice self-compassion and try to just be kind to yourself, and therefore, extend that out to others. So if we're helping publish, we can help try to facilitate this for other authors, but realizing that there is a lot to understand and we are all coming at it with different levels of experience.
Lastly, there are more resources and training options. There are tons. There is another comment in the chat with a very long list of tools, which is great. And there are specific resources linked from Pub101 Unit 1. I mentioned there are more guidelines for creating alt text and image descriptions. There is a whole accessibility toolkit and checklist for accessibility. And we also have instructions for creating accessible documents and that gets into more of the step-by-step instructions for applying these best practices. But now, I want to make sure to give at least a few minutes of time for questions, and if you would be willing to provide feedback as well.
Amanda: Thank you, Jacqueline, for all of your knowledge and for sharing your experience with us today. Like you mentioned, we are able to take questions for the next few minutes. So you can feel free to use the chat like we have been doing or you can raise your hand and I can call on you. I do appreciate folks sharing comments and best practices in the chat as well. That's really helpful.
Jacqueline: Yes, there are many different resources out there. There might even be resources that were created or disseminated from your specific institution or university, but there are lots of resources out there in general from many different sources. Webaim.org is one of the leaders for accessibility, and they have lots of good information as well.
Amanda: Can you talk to us a little bit about your feedback form?
Jacqueline: Yes. Feedback form here is a generic feedback form that we use, but we try to offer this at the end of each of our sessions, or workshops, so that we can determine if you learn something, if it was useful, and also a comment option if you want to provide any specific feedback for us as well or suggestions. But we try to use this in a way that will help us improve our instruction. "Is there a way to translate a publication between multiple formats, or do you just have to recreate it in each?" Good question. Yes, I will share this feedback link in the chat, sorry about that.
Amanda: I got it.
Jacqueline: Thank you. So translating a publication between multiple formats. Generally, yes, there is an option to do this. The hardest time is when you only have a PDF. If you only have a PDF, there are ways to convert it, but it can be a lot harder. But if you're starting with most other formats, then you can often save in multiple formats. So Pressbooks is a common platform for publishing OER and you can output the end document into multiple formats as well. And so the short answer is it depends on your starting document. It's hardest with a PDF, but there should be other options to translate or output the publication into different formats. I hope that answers your question.
Amanda: While folks are thinking of any final questions they might have, I just shared in the meeting chat a link to the class notes document. And this is where you can add additional comments that you have from today's session or just comments that you'd like to share. And those notes will be reviewed before the next session and we'll answer any outstanding questions. And I also included a link to the feedback form in the chat as well.
Jacqueline: Great. And I did want to mention, again, the alt tag homework. Since we didn't have a whole lot of time to go back and review that together, I will be looking at your comments and trying to provide some feedback in that document. So if you want to try your hand at the alt text homework, that is linked from the orientation document I know, and probably elsewhere.
Amanda: Well, I'll go ahead and close this out. I wanted to take a moment to thank Jacqueline for her presentation today and her expertise. We definitely appreciate you coming to the meeting today and telling us about all of those great tools. And for everyone else who also contributed in the chat and otherwise, it's really wonderful that we're able to share together and learn from each other. And again, with that key takeaway that we are not alone in figuring out how to do this, we're all working together to figure out how to support authoring open textbooks with authors or creating open textbooks. So again, feel free to use the class notes and we will see you next week. Thanks again.
Jacqueline: Thank you. And don't hesitate to reach out for more questions or details about any of this. Thank you.
END OF VIDEO
Chat Transcript
11:01:51 From Amanda Larson : It's going to be 80 here in Columbus, Ohio today!
11:02:01 From Amanda Hurford : Orientation document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RVYw2ace_L42x8vxo0nGlJC6rHVvLDzYKeBR4RMdbi4/edit#heading=h.d89ulxay3q4x
11:03:17 From Amanda Hurford : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdYaAD97KKJiu-XZ08NpN6oq
11:03:43 From Amanda Hurford : https://z.umn.edu/pub101norms
11:04:00 From Jacqueline Frank : Here's a link to the slides for today: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10josp-8JmR1-Df838VOZA7oGOXYh2FsW3Pr8oZp8ESA/edit?usp=sharing
11:07:46 From Heather Caprette : I saw it when I first joined
11:08:07 From Alexander Rodriguez : There was a poll when I walked in with three questions.
11:08:13 From Evangeline Reid : Reacted to "There was a poll whe..." with π
11:10:50 From Amanda Hurford : Pub 101 Canvas Curriculum: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
11:11:17 From Amanda Hurford : (forgot to share this earlier!)
11:15:11 From Michael Porterfield : When you mention disability, are you referring to physical? Or, can these also include hidden?
11:17:13 From Michael Porterfield : Replying to "When you mention dis..." Thanks
11:19:47 From Sarah Hare : I'm sorry I came in late. Will these slides be shared? I'd love to iterate on them for an upcoming session for our faculty
11:19:58 From Evangeline Reid : Here's a link to the slides for today: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10josp-8JmR1-Df838VOZA7oGOXYh2FsW3Pr8oZp8ESA/edit?usp=sharing
11:20:17 From Evangeline Reid : When you say Heading 2, do you mean in terms of the coding?
11:21:47 From Amanda Hurford : Reacted to "Here's a link to the..." with π
11:22:50 From Evangeline Reid : yes thank you!
11:25:19 From Ryan Wilcox : In a math course, if you were creating a quiz that had a pie chart or bar chart, how would you describe the chart without giving away the question's answer.
11:26:11 From Heather Caprette : Perhaps create a table with the data and add table header row
11:26:20 From Susan Hoover : Reacted to "Perhaps create a tab..." with π
11:26:25 From Heather Caprette : This is less interpretation and more data presentation
11:27:53 From Evangeline Reid : Replying to "In a math course, if..."
Depending on what youare trying to say. You might be able to refer to data using directional things or creating a chart that used some sort of texture, like lines, dots, etc. to describe.
11:29:27 From Ryan Wilcox : Replying to "In a math course, if..."
That's a great idea, but in this case it's an online quiz.
11:29:52 From Ryan Wilcox : Reacted to "Depending on what yo..." with π
11:31:04 From Michael Porterfield : Replying to "In a math course, if..."
Here is a great resource from W3C on complex images,
11:31:20 From Phoebe Daurio : Open Oregon Educational Resources has developed this guide for writing alt text and image descriptions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_ckoyvIkL9m7BMy0A9v4KT-M1PQ1jV6q-JkxrX6KBnk/edit?usp=sharing
11:34:08 From Amanda Hurford : Replying to "Open Oregon Educatio..."
Super, thank you for sharing!
11:34:13 From Ryan Wilcox : Reacted to "Open Oregon Educatio..." with π
11:35:11 From Amanda Hurford : Here's the link to Pub 101 Canvas Curriculum again: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
11:40:46 From Michael Porterfield : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
I am confused, please excuse me...where is the homework for writing alt text in Canvas or another place?
11:41:24 From Karen Lauritsen : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17LPN35ppatZBj4Q-ML5sXpZAlJGX95ovlFdXrB1Ee9g/edit
11:42:12 From Amanda Hurford : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
Thanks Karen! The homework for each session is listed in the orientation doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RVYw2ace_L42x8vxo0nGlJC6rHVvLDzYKeBR4RMdbi4/edit#
11:42:40 From Karen Lauritsen : The homework related to todayβs session, as well as the slides for todayβs and all upcoming sessions, are linked from our orientation document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RVYw2ace_L42x8vxo0nGlJC6rHVvLDzYKeBR4RMdbi4/edit
11:43:16 From Karen Lauritsen : If youβre looking for something related to Pub101, itβs probably linked from there! π
11:43:39 From Ryan Wilcox : where did you say the accessibility checker in adobe is? The one I'm familiar with is on the tools and has accessibility check, but doesn't have make it accessible for me.
11:43:47 From Lisa Stepanovic : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
The homework is pre-work for the next session, I believe, but it appears in the previous session agenda.
11:43:58 From Heather Caprette : axe browser extension, and Colour Contrast Analyser
11:44:45 From Ryan Wilcox : got it thank you
11:45:11 From Karen Lauritsen : Reacted to "The homework is pre-..." with π
11:45:24 From Ryan Wilcox : it did, thank you!
11:49:27 From Ryan Wilcox : the colour contrast analyzer is awesome, has a dropper you can pick colors on the document
11:49:33 From Susan Hoover : https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/ is a very long list of tools that you can filter by various criteria
11:50:12 From Heather Caprette : Reacted to "https://www.w3.org/W..." with π
11:52:46 From Evangeline Reid : I like this contrast checker for a quick check when I'm choosing colors for a design: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ It's related to the WAVE accessibility feature already mentioned.
11:53:06 From Susan Hoover : Reacted to "I like this contrast..." with π
11:54:01 From Ryan Wilcox : Replying to "I like this contrast..."
Yes, that works good if you know the colors. When you aren't sure the exact color I find the checker with the dropper works easiest.
11:56:09 From Evangeline Reid : Maybe this will be addressed later, but is there a way to "translate" a publication between multiple formats? Or do you just have to just re-create it in each?
11:56:20 From Evangeline Reid : Can you share the feedback link in the chat?
11:56:52 From Amanda Hurford : Feedback: https://montana.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_diBIqo756IyIE0C
11:57:27 From Amanda Hurford : Class notes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q_mvThSTMJfxSatX4XjwcDrjZf44_udVWtShkIhaF2g/edit#heading=h.esmv09kvuc5k
11:57:51 From Evangeline Reid : Yes thank you
11:59:13 From Julie Feighery : Thank you--very helpful!
11:59:19 From Heather Caprette : Thank you
11:59:21 From Kathy Essmiller : Thank you!
11:59:22 From Natalia Bowdoin : Thank you!!!
11:59:25 From Allison Kaefring : Thank you!
11:59:30 From Andrew Kearns : Thanks!
11:59:34 From Emily Little : Thank you!
11:59:56 From Jamie Witman : Thank you!
11:59:57 From Tammy Palmier : thanks!
11:59:59 From Sharon Moore : Thanks!
11:02:01 From Amanda Hurford : Orientation document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RVYw2ace_L42x8vxo0nGlJC6rHVvLDzYKeBR4RMdbi4/edit#heading=h.d89ulxay3q4x
11:03:17 From Amanda Hurford : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWRE6ioG4vdYaAD97KKJiu-XZ08NpN6oq
11:03:43 From Amanda Hurford : https://z.umn.edu/pub101norms
11:04:00 From Jacqueline Frank : Here's a link to the slides for today: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10josp-8JmR1-Df838VOZA7oGOXYh2FsW3Pr8oZp8ESA/edit?usp=sharing
11:07:46 From Heather Caprette : I saw it when I first joined
11:08:07 From Alexander Rodriguez : There was a poll when I walked in with three questions.
11:08:13 From Evangeline Reid : Reacted to "There was a poll whe..." with π
11:10:50 From Amanda Hurford : Pub 101 Canvas Curriculum: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
11:11:17 From Amanda Hurford : (forgot to share this earlier!)
11:15:11 From Michael Porterfield : When you mention disability, are you referring to physical? Or, can these also include hidden?
11:17:13 From Michael Porterfield : Replying to "When you mention dis..." Thanks
11:19:47 From Sarah Hare : I'm sorry I came in late. Will these slides be shared? I'd love to iterate on them for an upcoming session for our faculty
11:19:58 From Evangeline Reid : Here's a link to the slides for today: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10josp-8JmR1-Df838VOZA7oGOXYh2FsW3Pr8oZp8ESA/edit?usp=sharing
11:20:17 From Evangeline Reid : When you say Heading 2, do you mean in terms of the coding?
11:21:47 From Amanda Hurford : Reacted to "Here's a link to the..." with π
11:22:50 From Evangeline Reid : yes thank you!
11:25:19 From Ryan Wilcox : In a math course, if you were creating a quiz that had a pie chart or bar chart, how would you describe the chart without giving away the question's answer.
11:26:11 From Heather Caprette : Perhaps create a table with the data and add table header row
11:26:20 From Susan Hoover : Reacted to "Perhaps create a tab..." with π
11:26:25 From Heather Caprette : This is less interpretation and more data presentation
11:27:53 From Evangeline Reid : Replying to "In a math course, if..."
Depending on what youare trying to say. You might be able to refer to data using directional things or creating a chart that used some sort of texture, like lines, dots, etc. to describe.
11:29:27 From Ryan Wilcox : Replying to "In a math course, if..."
That's a great idea, but in this case it's an online quiz.
11:29:52 From Ryan Wilcox : Reacted to "Depending on what yo..." with π
11:31:04 From Michael Porterfield : Replying to "In a math course, if..."
Here is a great resource from W3C on complex images,
11:31:20 From Phoebe Daurio : Open Oregon Educational Resources has developed this guide for writing alt text and image descriptions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_ckoyvIkL9m7BMy0A9v4KT-M1PQ1jV6q-JkxrX6KBnk/edit?usp=sharing
11:34:08 From Amanda Hurford : Replying to "Open Oregon Educatio..."
Super, thank you for sharing!
11:34:13 From Ryan Wilcox : Reacted to "Open Oregon Educatio..." with π
11:35:11 From Amanda Hurford : Here's the link to Pub 101 Canvas Curriculum again: https://canvas.umn.edu/courses/377173
11:40:46 From Michael Porterfield : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
I am confused, please excuse me...where is the homework for writing alt text in Canvas or another place?
11:41:24 From Karen Lauritsen : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17LPN35ppatZBj4Q-ML5sXpZAlJGX95ovlFdXrB1Ee9g/edit
11:42:12 From Amanda Hurford : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
Thanks Karen! The homework for each session is listed in the orientation doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RVYw2ace_L42x8vxo0nGlJC6rHVvLDzYKeBR4RMdbi4/edit#
11:42:40 From Karen Lauritsen : The homework related to todayβs session, as well as the slides for todayβs and all upcoming sessions, are linked from our orientation document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RVYw2ace_L42x8vxo0nGlJC6rHVvLDzYKeBR4RMdbi4/edit
11:43:16 From Karen Lauritsen : If youβre looking for something related to Pub101, itβs probably linked from there! π
11:43:39 From Ryan Wilcox : where did you say the accessibility checker in adobe is? The one I'm familiar with is on the tools and has accessibility check, but doesn't have make it accessible for me.
11:43:47 From Lisa Stepanovic : Replying to "Here's the link to P..."
The homework is pre-work for the next session, I believe, but it appears in the previous session agenda.
11:43:58 From Heather Caprette : axe browser extension, and Colour Contrast Analyser
11:44:45 From Ryan Wilcox : got it thank you
11:45:11 From Karen Lauritsen : Reacted to "The homework is pre-..." with π
11:45:24 From Ryan Wilcox : it did, thank you!
11:49:27 From Ryan Wilcox : the colour contrast analyzer is awesome, has a dropper you can pick colors on the document
11:49:33 From Susan Hoover : https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tools/ is a very long list of tools that you can filter by various criteria
11:50:12 From Heather Caprette : Reacted to "https://www.w3.org/W..." with π
11:52:46 From Evangeline Reid : I like this contrast checker for a quick check when I'm choosing colors for a design: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ It's related to the WAVE accessibility feature already mentioned.
11:53:06 From Susan Hoover : Reacted to "I like this contrast..." with π
11:54:01 From Ryan Wilcox : Replying to "I like this contrast..."
Yes, that works good if you know the colors. When you aren't sure the exact color I find the checker with the dropper works easiest.
11:56:09 From Evangeline Reid : Maybe this will be addressed later, but is there a way to "translate" a publication between multiple formats? Or do you just have to just re-create it in each?
11:56:20 From Evangeline Reid : Can you share the feedback link in the chat?
11:56:52 From Amanda Hurford : Feedback: https://montana.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_diBIqo756IyIE0C
11:57:27 From Amanda Hurford : Class notes here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q_mvThSTMJfxSatX4XjwcDrjZf44_udVWtShkIhaF2g/edit#heading=h.esmv09kvuc5k
11:57:51 From Evangeline Reid : Yes thank you
11:59:13 From Julie Feighery : Thank you--very helpful!
11:59:19 From Heather Caprette : Thank you
11:59:21 From Kathy Essmiller : Thank you!
11:59:22 From Natalia Bowdoin : Thank you!!!
11:59:25 From Allison Kaefring : Thank you!
11:59:30 From Andrew Kearns : Thanks!
11:59:34 From Emily Little : Thank you!
11:59:56 From Jamie Witman : Thank you!
11:59:57 From Tammy Palmier : thanks!
11:59:59 From Sharon Moore : Thanks!
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