Accessibility Support and Resources

Commitment

"Ensuring educational accessibility is foundational to achieving the Vision for Success goal of creating an equitable system of higher education and is a critical piece of student success and degree completion. Research shows that utilizing universal design principles, which is fundamental to ensuring accessibility, improves student-centered pedagogical practice and student outcomes (Chancellor Ortiz, 2018)."

Guidance

In 2018, the California Community College (CCC) system established an Information and Communication Technology and Instructional Material Accessibility Standard. This standard affirms the CCC's commitment to equal access to all ICT and instructional materials in a timely manner for all students regardless of disability status.

Resources

The CCC Accessibility Center offers a wide variety of accessibility support for staff, faculty, and students including:

• Guidance on authoring accessible electronic documents and web content
• Tools for evaluating and remediating accessibility issues in electronic documents and web content
• A variety of 'How to' Video Trainings that cover key accessibility topics (e.g. accessible documents, online course materials, web accessibility, and purchasing accessible IT products/services). The Accessible Documents Word To PDF handout associated with the Accessible Documents training is an especially useful resource.
  
• Recommended assistive technology tools for persons with disabilities
  
• Guidance on producing alternate format versions of instructional material
• Guidance on selecting accessible ICT and instructional technology products
• A Help Desk that offers technical assistance and accessibility review of instructional technologies and materials
  

The CCC Online Education Initiative offers several useful resources including:

• An OEI Accessibility page with tutorials and videos
• Creating Accessible Online Courses with Canvas, an open-access Canvas course for CCC faculty that covers techniques for ensuring that a Canvas course is accessible for all students.
  

The CCC Disabled Student Programs and Services (DSPS) division provides links to several important resources including:

• The systemwide Alternate Media Production Guidelines
  
• The recently issued 2018 Addendum to the Alternate Media Production Guidelines that addresses issues of timeliness for requesting and delivering alternate media
• The Alternate Text Production System (ATPC) project
  
• The Distance Education Captioning and Transcription (DECT) project
  

Accessible Course Materials is a helpful website with articles, handouts, and videos that cover how to author, evaluate and remediate accessible instructional materials.

Santiago Canyon College developed a brief ACCESS guidance document that provides a list of key accessibility guidelines and associated checklist for online courses.