Make Accessibility a Priority with Clemson Online

August 23, 2021

Welcome to Accessibility Week with Clemson Online

All week on our social media channels, we’ll be highlighting accessibility tips, resources, and other information for incorporating best practices into teaching and learning.

Clemson Online Accessibility Coordinator Michelle Tuten describes accessibility as “incorporating solutions to problems experienced by people with disabilities to improve the user experience for everyone.” Integrating accessible design also “reduce[s] the need for people with disabilities to spend extra time and energy seeking additional accommodations.” Read on for how Clemson Online can help you reduce barriers to teaching and learning!

The Clemson Tiger mascot, using a wheelchair, is on a basketball court holding up his arms and pointing upwards.

Clemson Online assists with accessibility needs and accommodations for teaching in all modalities. Here are some of the services we offer:

Accessibility/Captioning Consults via Bookings – If you have a video that needs captions, sign up for a 30 minute consultation with our Accessibility Coordinator, who will walk you through the steps of generating and then revising captions so they are are clear and effective. You can also sign up for a general accessibility consult. This is great for any questions about accessible multimedia, creating accessible documents, or other proactive steps you can take.
COFFEE: Accessibility – If you’d like to learn more about how to integrate accessibility into your online or face to face classes, enroll in this version of our popular self-paced online series. You will learn how to create accessible course artifacts such as PDFs and Canvas pages, along with how to use YouTube to generate captions for classroom videos. To enroll, email your request to: onlineplus@clemson.edu
We also host several self-enroll Canvas sites that you can take advantage of to learn more about accessibility; they provide tutorials and instructions for various topics related to online/blended teaching and learning:
- Canvas Accessibility and Canvas Accessibility Lite: these two sites provide help for making your Canvas sites and learning materials accessible to all learners. The “Lite” version covers the same general information as the full version, but less in-depth.
- Implementing UDL in Canvas: this course covers the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and how to incorporate it into your Canvas course sites.
- PDF Accessibility in Adobe Acrobat: this course provides step-by-step instructions for making all of your PDF documents accessible using Acrobat, which is free to Clemson faculty and staff.
- Print Document Accessibility: if you create and distribute print materials to learners or colleagues, you can find details for making them accessible in this course.
- UDOIT for Canvas User Guide: this course walks you through the process of using the UDOIT accessibility auditing tool available in Canvas.
- Video and Audio Accessibility: this course will help you add accessibility features to your course multimedia content.