Desmos

One of the tools available to students, is a free online program called Desmos (Links to an external site.). It allows the user to create graphs, and then listen to them by either reading out the plots or interpreting changes in tone and pitch.

Creating accessible math is hard. As you heard in a previous video, depending on the type of browser, its version, the type of screen reader and its version, the same equation may be read in multiple ways to the student. 

Below is a video tutorial on how we would recommend you create your math, that would allow our office to provide the student with accessible math.

(P.S I intended on combining the two videos, but ran into issues doing so)

SensusAccess (Links to an external site.) is a free online software that allows you to convert files into a PDF format. Users upload files to the system and it is then converted by the software and emailed back to the user. 

SensusAccess works best to create accessible PDFs when:

Preparing to teach a course is a lot of work, and sometimes you might have a book or article in your files that were scanned and saved as PDF's. Unfortunately, if not scanned properly, PDF's are very inaccessible, and create lots of challenges for all students to read and study effectively.

When you come across a scanned PDF, do your best to replace it with a proper accessible digital text document as described below. Scanned PDFs get a low accessibility score indicator in Canvas Ally.

Now that we've created a structure to our document, the next step is to make sure that students can access the content with in that structure.

Resources

Image Description Guidelines (Links to an external site.)

In our introduction to screen readers part 1, we looked at how  a student would navigate your course content. Below is a tutorial on how to set up structure with in your documents to allow a student to easily navigate through them.

To add a heading style

1. Select a text that you want to add a header to.

There are various forms of tactile graphics that our office has produced for students. Below are just a few examples:

Students with Low Vision may also utilize a CCTV, which is a camera mounted device that enlarges a book or other item under the camera onto a screen. This device can then adjust the zoom, color contrast, and colors of the page for the student. There are portable options, which uses a video camera embedded in the device to enlarge the items. 

Another software students might use is called ZoomText. ZoomText is a screen magnifier that enlarges everything on the screen and then smooths out the text and images so they are still identifiable (and not pixelated). ZoomText also allows for the student to adjust the screen colors (or students with contrast impairments, issues with managing bright lights, etc), and have the screen read aloud as they navigate through the screen.

Students who are blind or visually impaired, in almost all cases, will use a specialized software known as a screen reader to access your content from their computer or mobile device. The most common screen readers include JAWS, VoiceOver, and NVDA.

Intro to Screen Readers Part 1:

Intro to Screen Readers Part 2