Binghamton University strives to ensure all instructional material is made accessible to all enrolled students.
Accessibility in the Classroom
Good instruction starts well before class time. Designing a course with Universal design principles consistently shows better outcomes for students of all abilities and learning preferences. Interested faculty can reach out to the Center for Learning and Teaching office and discuss course design with their instructional designers.
Individual accommodation letters may come to faculty members from the Services for Students with Disabilities office, indicating a particular or specific need for a registered student in the class. Accommodations are required but can occasionally be adjusted in order to better suit the course and the instruction.
Course materials such as handouts and assigned reading material can be appropriately converted to accessible formats as required by noted accommodations.
Video content shown during class may occasionally need captioning tracks added. For professionally produced media (DVD, Bluray, etc), the installed AV systems allow for subtitles and captioning tracks to be shown easily. Captioning web-hosted content on youtube, Panopto, or other sites can and should be coordinated before class. Captioning service for academic material is coordinated by the Educational Communications Center.
Many classrooms offer Lecture capture services for course recording. These recordings can be provided to students for post-lecture review or accommodations.
Classrooms over 50 seats have both an instructional microphone and a connected Assisted Listening System. Students requiring CART, ASL, or other accommodations in class should reach out to the SSD office for consultation.
Accessibility in Online Instruction
Online instruction requires the use of personal devices to view and interact with the content. Accordingly, special attention must be paid to ensuring the delivery medium for the instructional material is accessible by screen reader software (for those with visual impairments) as well as following national standards of web and system design for navigating the material (WCAG). Binghamton University has compliant systems available for use in this realm. Faculty can contact the Center for Learning and Teaching for more details.
- PDFs and other digital files should be saved in appropriate accessibility formats for Optical Character Recognition function
- Video media presented online should be captioned before the showing, or allow for captioning at the end-user level.
- Be mindful of color and font choices. Many individuals have color blindness.
- Images shown during online class should be accompanied by appropriate alternative text.
- Make sure that any collaboration assignments or forums for the online instruction can include people with different abilities.
