ADA Compliance

All courses should direct students to the institutions Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) services on their campus. The course should include a statement that tells students how to gain access to ADA services at their institution, including the location and contact information of the appropriate office at the institution. Encourage faculty to consult the office on their campus that provides disability services for the wording of an ADA Statement appropriate to their institution.

To meet this standard a course must achieve BOTH of the following criteria:

1. include a statement that tells students how to gain access to an institutions disabilities support services (often known as ADA services)
2. be offered in an ADA-compliant Course Management System (Blackboard, WebCT, WebTycho) or provide documentation by the CMS that it is ADA-compliant.

Alternative means of access to course information are provided for the vision- or hearing-impaired student, such as, equivalent textual representations of images, audio, animations, and video in the course website. Presenting information in text format is generally acceptable because screen reader software (used by the vision-impaired) can read text.

This standard applies to the information and content provided within the course management system. It does not apply to external web sites to which the course links.

Quality Matters Suggestions:

1. Audio lecture has a text transcript available.
2. Video clip, image, or animation is accompanied by a text transcript.

The course provides Internet links that include useful descriptions of what students will find at those sites. These descriptions enable the vision-impaired student to use screen reader software to understand links. In addition, instructors provide directions that clearly direct students to the appropriate sub-pages within an external web site.

Quality Matters Suggestions:

1. All file names and web hyperlinks have meaningful names. For instance, the link to take a quiz should say Take Quiz 1, not click here.
2. Icons used as links should also have HTML tags or an accompanying text link.
3. To facilitate access to Internet sites by screen readers, links are arranged in numeric or alphabetic order, rather than simple bulleted form.

The course employs appropriate font, color, and spacing to facilitate readability and minimize distractions for the student. Your course should examplify readability and minimize distractions.

Quality Matters Suggestions:

1. If using color coding, use additional means to communicate information, such as the additional use of bold or italics in conjunction with color coding.
2. Sufficient contrast is used for the font and background colors
3. Text size is consistent with typical View/Text Size settings.
4. Course pages provide an alternate, non-color-coded format.
5. Formatting and color coding are used to serve specific instructional purposes. For example, format and color are used purposefully to communicate key points, group like items, emphasize relevant relationships, etc.