February 1, 2021: Revisit your spring goals and make an action plan
Accessibility Goal of the Week
Welcome to a new semester! In our final Goal of the Week of fall semester, we were
encouraged to focus on the "opportunity" aspect of online accessibility and set new, attainable goals to
continually improve. The following were some suggested goals to help get you thinking:
Identify one aspect of a course that seems tricky to "accessibilize" and reach out for assistance (i.e.a particular assignment, or project that may pose barriers for students with certain
disabilities).
Complete a certain number of Goals of the Week (perhaps all of them!).
Now that spring semester has begun, our goal this week is to do two things:
Map out a sustainable strategy that will move you toward goal completion. Here are
some questions and ideas to consider as you craft an accessibility action plan:
Think about your typical work week. Is there a day and time per week that you can
set aside 20-30 minutes to address accessibility? Can you carve out time two days
per week?
Is there a certain aspect of "accessibilizing" your course that you're avoiding because
it seems too daunting, confusing, or time consuming? Name that aspect and the questions/concerns
you have about it.
Instead of focusing on fixing recycled content, consider committing to making sure
any NEW content is created accessibly. Then, when time permits, you can always go
back and work on what you have created in the past.
As part of your action plan, reach out to an Accessibility Ambassador to help coach you. These cohort members have gone through extensive accessibility training and can help
support you through creating learning materials not just for students with disabilities,
but also students who might need different points of access to material to be successful.
Feel free to reach out to any ambassador that you feel might be able to support you
best, but we have listed their departments just in case you are looking for content-specific
support. You can also sign-up to meet with an ambassador in the Training Lead sign-up emails
that go out each week.
With your Accessibility Ambassador, you can address any specific questions that came up when you mapped your goal-completion
strategies, or simply have them scan a part of your course for any glaring accessibility
issues.
