At today’s meeting Stella Woodruffe, Director of Access-Ability Services (D205), led our discussion on universal design.  The basic premise of universal design is to engage all learners by presenting materials in multiple formats.  For example, your syllabus can be distributed as a paper copy and an e-format (pdf) version can be posted on Blackboard.

Stella has provided the following video to help get started with universal design.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HHvRzemuHA

Some additional tips:

• during class, if you write something on the board, you should also face the class and state it.
• screen readers cannot read images.  It is helpful to provide text of what the image is.
• check your files for accessibility (file —> info—>check accessibility).  You will get:  warning, error (and how to fix it) and tips
• fonts:  try to use fonts that are letters of straight lines, such as sans serif
• the videos you use should be captioned.  CUNY Assistive Academic Technology Services (CATS) will caption videos for you.
• JAWS (Job Access With Speech) software is a computer  screen reader program  that can read screens for visually  impaired students