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!). 
  • Move through a certain number of self-paced modules on the Online Accessibility at DVC website

Now that spring semester has begun, our goal this week is to do two things:

  1. 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.  

  2. 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.  

 

Back to the Accessibility Goal of the Week archive