Several members of the Distance Learning Team attended TEACHx 2025 on May 21st and 22nd. The conference, presented by Northwestern IT’s Teaching and Learning Technology Team, showcased innovative approaches to higher education instruction and student support. As in previous years, the conference was informative, thought-provoking, and very well run.…
Tag: accessibility
Open Educational Resources (OERs) are often praised for being more accessible than standard textbooks. In this context, accessibility often refers to low or no costs, or to how students can obtain the resource just by clicking a link. But accessibility also has another meaning: can disabled people access the resource?…
This summer, AccessibleNU hosted their second UDL Workshop series. A cohort of faculty and academic staff, including Learning Designer and IDS instructor David Noffs and Senior Content Specialist Christine Scherer, learned about universal design for learning and best practices to design and teach courses that are welcoming and accessible for all students.…
Introduction
The Loyola Digital Accessibility Conference was organized by graduate students in the digital humanities program at Loyola University. The event drew presenters and attendees from all over the country, including a team who called in from University of California-Davis! Content Specialist Christine Scherer and Learning Designer Krissy Wilson represented the School of Professional Studies Distance Learning department on the Tackling Large Scale Accessibility panel.…
Introduction
What if someone told you that there were research-proven techniques you could use to improve your online class for all students, increasing retention, persistence, and satisfaction by more than 4% over the baseline? I’m sure you’d be skeptical. Students differ so significantly from each other and from quarter to quarter; how can any instructor anticipate the individual needs of every student?…
In this month’s webinar, Content Specialist Christine Scherer explained the ins and outs of captions and transcripts. Topics covered included the benefits of captions and transcripts, how captions and transcripts are created, why scripting is so important, and different types of captioning.…
In November, I had the opportunity to attend Accessing Higher Ground, an accessibility and technology conference in Denver, Colorado. The conference presentations focused on how to use technology to support disabled students in their academic careers. It was a great opportunity to speak with other accessibility professionals about the opportunities and challenges they face in their work.…
When talking about web accessibility, many people will reference the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) as the law that requires websites to be made accessible. This isn’t an entirely accurate description, however. In actuality, there is no single web accessibility law or statute.…
Last month, I had the privilege of attending the national conference of the Association of Higher Education And Disability (AHEAD). The three-day conference was a time for staff, faculty, and students who work in disability services and accessibility to meet and share their knowledge, experiences, and stories.…
Recently, Instructional Technologist William Guth has written about Web 2.0 Selection Criteria, which help online learning faculty and staff select the best web tools for their course. One of those criteria is making sure that the tool is accessible. But how can you find out?…