Additional Resources

Optional: Accessibility and Disability Services/Disability Etiquette

Disability Etiquette

The following guidelines were developed by people with disabilities themselves.

Disability Accommodations and Supports for Students at CUNY SPS

The process for student accommodation requests varies somewhat from campus to campus, so we’d like to share with you how it works at CUNY SPS, specifically on the instructor side.

After a student submits an accommodation request and meets with a staff member from the Office of Student Disability Services (OSDS) to determine an appropriate accommodation plan, faculty are notified of the student’s approved accommodations via email. This accommodation letter contains a list of accommodations for which the student is approved and directs faculty to additional implementation instructions and resources where applicable.

Students are asked to follow up with the instructor regarding individual accommodation requests once the letter has been sent. Instructors are encouraged to contact OSDS should they require further assistance. According to CUNY Policy, “Faculty, staff, and student are vital partners in the accommodations process and shall collaborate with the Disability Services Office (DSO) on their campus to facilitate the provision of reasonable accommodation and ensure equal access for all students.”

OSDS will also audit course sites for accessibility upon request, to ensure that documents are accessible to those with print-related disabilities. Reading material sourced from scans of hard-copy materials may require remediation in order to be read using assistive technologies. Staff will also make sure that any posted videos have captions when possible, and to provide transcripts for any audio content if necessary.

If you are meeting with a student who requires accommodation services, you may request American Sign Language interpreting (ASL) or live captioning (CART) using the CUNY SPS Accessibility Services Request Form. 

See below for a list of current assistive technology (AT) available at CUNY SPS for students. They include:

  • Literacy support software (Kurzweil 3000)
  • Screen-reading and magnification software (JAWS and ZoomText, respectively)
  • Desktop and hand-held video magnifiers for use with paper documents
  • Devices to assist with notetaking (Livescribe smartpen, digital voice recorder)
  • Assistive listening devices (FM systems)

Accessibility Resources at CUNY and CUNY SPS

Review the CUNY IT Accessibility Statement. Feel free to also explore the various resources offered to faculty and students on this website, available from the links on the left hand menu.

Review Disability Services available for students at CUNY School of Professional Studies. Click the links to sub-menus on the left for Support Services and Accommodations; Disability Documentation for Students, and Accommodation Information for Faculty.

See this CUNY-wide website for information about HR Policies and Procedures, including links for Reasonable Accommodations and Academic Adjustments policy, an accommodations request form as well as the form for health care provider assessment (scroll down to R for these). These are the accommodations policies covering all faculty and staff employed at CUNY.

Creating Accessible Documents and Media

Accessible MS Office documents

Overview of best practices for creating accessible MS Office documents, including links to more detailed instructions for each type of Office document (e.g. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or OneNote); by Microsoft.

Video tutorials for creating accessible Word documents, Excel sheets, Powerpoint presentations, or Outlook emails; by Microsoft.

Most MS Office applications also include an Accessibility Checker, for review of a list of accessibility issues and warnings, and how-to-fix recommendations for each.

Accessibility Checklists

Checklist for MS Word (PDF)
Checklist for MS Excel (PDF)
Checklist for MS PowerPoint (PDF)
Checklist for Course Sites (PDF)

*All created by the OFDIT team at CUNY SPS

Writing Effective Alt-Text

Writing alt-text for non-decorative images, such as graphs, is a very important part of creating an accessible online course. For guidance on how to write alt-text for screen reader users, please refer to this Microsoft guide to writing effective alt-text. If you work with many non-decorative images in your course, you can refer to WebAIM’s guide for alt-text which provides more thorough information. 

PDFs and Accessibility

Many of the considerations for what constitutes an accessible PDF are similar to those for other types of documents. For example the use of headings to structure your document, including Alt tags for graphs and images, font color and style, accessible hyperlinks, etc. The easiest way to create an accessible PDF is to start with an accessible source document and convert it into a PDF, e.g. saving an accessible Word or PowerPoint document as a PDF.

However, many PDFs we find in course sites are actually pages scanned from books or journals. Most PDFs created using a scanner or copier are considered inaccessible because they are simply images of the page, which means that a screenreader cannot recognize any of the text on that page.

The first step in avoiding inaccessible scans is to use either a book scanner or other OCR (optical character recognition) software that recognizes the text on the page, and creates what is called a “searchable” PDF (you can test if text is searchable by trying to highlight an individual word on the PDF with your mouse). To make the PDF truly accessible, other tags — such as headers, Alt Text, clickable hyperlinks, etc. — have to be added manually as well, using software such as Adobe Acrobat Pro.

As you can see, making an inaccessible PDF accessible is rather laborious, so we recommend starting with an accessible document, or scanning with OCR software, or finding the e-book or electronic version of an article whenever possible.

For a more detailed overview, see Adobe’s page on accessible PDFs, with links to how-to instructions for using Adobe Pro’s accessibility features.

Accessible Multimedia

Video and Audio Content

Any video or audio content included in your teaching should include captions or a transcript, which are essential for hearing impaired users but are also helpful for viewers in quiet environments or for those speaking ESL. This is true for materials you link from external sources as well as instructional content you created yourself.

CUNY SPS uses the captioning service 3PlayMedia to add caption to videos or provide transcripts for audio and video content used in our courses. No matter where the content is hosted or if it is owned by a 3rd party, you can submit audio or videos for captioning and transcripts by filling in this form.

Multimedia Teaching Tools at CUNY SPS

VoiceThread and ePortfolio are multimedia tools available to faculty and students at CUNY SPS, which can also be accessed directly on Brightspace. See below for information on the tools’ accessibility features, as well as considerations for instructors teaching students with varying abilities. Please remember that most multimedia tools aren’t (yet) fully accessible, in one way or another. That said, since these tools are specifically geared toward educators and students, the companies developing them are making continuous improvements for more accessibility. So, it’s a good idea to check back from time to time for any updates or new features.

VoiceThread

  • For an overview of the tool and how to get started, see the VoiceThread Support Page created by our team.
  • See the following link for more information on VoiceThread’s Accessibility Features, such as VoiceThread Universal (for users of screen readers), closed captioning, and multiple means of engagement.
  • CUNY SPS enabled the instant captioning feature for VoiceThread. Check out our support page for more details and how-to instructions.

ePortfolio (Digication)