Course Syllabus
ADA for Online Learning
ADA for Online Learning is a self-paced, competency based course that provides a basic understanding of how the Americans with Disabilities Act applies to course design and online education.
About this Course
This course is designed to give learners a baseline understanding of the laws that govern ADA compliance as they pertain to online course design, particularly Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The majority of the course focuses on the most common potential problem areas for students with various disabilities and how to address them proactively in the course design and content creation processes. The learner who masters the concepts in this course will be well equipped to anticipate and mitigate challenges that learners with various disabilities face when they encounter electronic media.
Note that the purpose of the course is an understanding of the requirements and practices of creating accessible content, not the techniques for doing so. Due to the wide variety of content creation methodologies (different LMS's, different software suites, different browsers) it is impractical to try to cover the techniques for every possible scenario. However, the Additional Resources section of the syllabus provides a good starting point for researching the "how" of accessible content generation.
Course Outcomes
In this course, learners will…
- Identify laws that govern accessibility in online learning;
- Analyze the accessibility of text in an online learning environment
- Analyze the accessibility of images in an online learning environment
- Analyze the accessibility of audio & video in an online learning environment
- Analyze the accessibility of electronic documents
Course Structure
The course consists of 5 modules. Each module contains:
- an introduction;
- lessons;
- self-checks;
- a post-test.
Additional Resources
As this course provides an introduction and high level view of various accessibility concerns, there are times that learners may wish to delve further into a topic to increase their understanding. In order to facilitate this, below are helpful resources, organized by course module.
Module 1: Why ADA Matters
- US Department of Justice & Department of Education Letter to University Presidents
- Higher Ed Accessibility Lawsuits, Complaints, and Settlements
- Access Board: Final Rule (Section 508 Refresh)
- Access Board: Overview of the Final Rule
- WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Quick Reference
- From Accommodation to Accessibility: Creating a Culture of Inclusivity
- The Section 508 Refresh and What it Means for Higher Education
Module 2: Text
Module 3: Images
Module 4: Audio & Video
Module 5: Documents
- Health and Human Services: Making Files Accessible (covers PDF's, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML, and Multimedia files)
- WebAIM: Word Techniques
- Microsoft Office: Word Accessibility
- University of Washington: Creating Accessible Word Documents
- VA Section 508: Creating Accessible PDF's
- WebAIM: PDF Accessibility
- Adobe: PDF Accessibility Overview
- Free PDF Accessibility Checker
- US Dept. of Veterans Affairs: Creating Accessible PDF's
- WebAIM: PowerPoint Accessibility
Course Summary:
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