Online accessibility recognized in higher education and social media

Not having captions on a video may not be an inconvenience to some, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, this affected how Ezra Silkes received their education. 

Silkes is a senior double majoring in technical theater and integrated LGBT religious studies with auditory processing issues and had virtual classes during the pandemic. They were denied these accommodations.

“When classes were on Zoom, I asked for an accommodation for captioning on Zoom, because that would be lovely and that would really help me with my lecture classes,” Silkes said. “And [Student Accessibility Services] decided I did not have sufficient documentation in order to prove that I needed that accommodation. 

There are instances when students who apply for accommodation through SAS are denied for a couple of reasons, said Amanda Feaster, director of SAS. One of the instances could be if they do not have the proper documentation. 

 “Sometimes students might request an accommodation that doesn’t meet that reasonable accommodation threshold,” Feaster said. “That’s where we offer the opportunity to provide additional documentation that might substantiate that request might give us more details about why your disability requires that accommodation for equal access.” 

SAS is known for providing accommodations and support for students who have disabilities and one of the bigger sides of that is the classroom accommodations.

According to Feaster, some of their accommodations include extended time, quiet testing space, flexible attendance and alternative formats.

Alternative formats would include textbook conversion, electronic text, Braille text, ASL interpreters and video captioning.

LEGALITY OF ONLINE CONTENT 

There is no specific legislation that has been passed that states specific guidelines for content to be considered accessible but there are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines that were created by the Web Accessibility Initiative, said Alison Haynes, digital accessibility compliance coordinator for the Division of Information Technology. 

“So there are guidelines that we follow, that are not law, in order to conform to legal responsibilities that we have,” Haynes said. “That’s what’s weird about it because our digital accessibility policy follows the federal government’s mandate, which is that a person with a disability must have equally effective access to any educational materials or anything related.”

Equal Access Academy and Division of Information Technology Impact

 

Haynes’ position was created three and a half years ago when other higher education institutions were having lawsuits against them for not being accessible. She is responsible for coordinating the incremental improvement of accessibility of all parts of Kent State’s digital footprint. 

“I work with instructional designers on coursework. I work with faculty on coursework, I work with webmasters, I work with social media people, I work with social orgs,” Haynes said “There’s just so much when you think about like, what is Kent State digitally.” 

Senior visual communication design major Miranda Sepúlveda started working as an accessibility specialist on the digital accessibility team for the Division of Information Technology this year with Haynes. 

She works for the Equal Access Academy where she creates marketing materials that go out to students, faculty and staff. This consists of training videos about how to make accessible market materials and how to make Canvas courses accessible. 

Along with this, Sepúlveda is currently working on a Canvas module to teach digital accessibility to student media creators, this involves social media accessibility. 

“We are under legal responsibility, that anything that has Kent state’s name on it has to be accessible to people with disabilities,” Haynes said. “Think of the amount of stuff that doesn’t have captions, that doesn’t have alt text, that isn’t created in a way that’s easy to read [or] doesn’t have color contrast.” 

Alt text is a code that tells a person what is on their screen if they can not see it. Without the tag and code, someone who is visually impaired would not know what is on their screen, Haynes said. 

“There is not as much of a legal burden to add alt text and captioning to social media platforms that are almost exclusively video content, which means [on] TikTok, we have an out,” Haynes said. “So we’re basically looking in on Instagram to add that [to] Twitter [and] LinkedIn options for adding alt text and all of that.”

EDUCATION 

There is a lack of education when it comes to online accessibility. Sepúlveda said she noticed this in some of her classes for her major. 

“[Professors] always tell us be so creative, put words wherever but then when it comes to readability, we don’t really think about that,” Sepúlveda said. 

Things such as color contrast and placement of emojis or hashtags can make something unreadable and inaccessible, Sepúlveda said. 

The Equal Access Academy has different opportunities listed for the different workshops that are held throughout the semester. These range from Accessibility Awareness 101 to Writing Accessible Code. Those who want to know more or if there is something not listed that should be discussed or taught can email EqualAccess@kent.edu. 

SAS also does advocacy and education regarding disability, Feaster said. 

“We do workshops for our students that we work with, and then also workshops for the campus community about how to make things more accessible, how to be more inclusive for people with disabilities, those kinds of things,” Feaster said. 

Accommodations can help everyone whether they physically need it or not. 

“Accessibility is not 100%. You’re never going to get something totally accessible,” Sepúlveda said, “But if we give accommodations, such as captioning, it doesn’t just help someone with a disability, it helps all users who may want to use captioning.”

Kent State University makes their online presence accessible from the classroom to social media https://t.co/8Bu0JbvH3u

— Alexandra (@alexgoldenmedia) December 16, 2022