Affiliated Institution/Organization(s): University of Illinois Springfield
Session Format: Virtual Roundtables
Session Tracks: AEA – Accessibility, Equity & Access
Session Description
Faced with the impending Title II deadline, two teams at UIS worked together to develop a course accessibility process that would more evenly distribute the work and provide faculty with the tools and skills they needed in order to independently remediate their courses. The process we developed included department presentations, one-on-one instructional design consultations with faculty volunteers, targeted file remediation completed by student accessibility staff, and quality assurance checks. To ensure clear communication across and within units, submission and tracking forms were implemented. By coaching faculty through the digital accessibility work, two instructional designers were able to help move roughly 120 courses through the process in three months while also ensuring that faculty developed feelings of self-efficacy in regards to course accessibility. To help accessibility staff with file remediation, faculty considered what file types were best for certain kinds of content and were able to move away from defaulting to PDFs. During the remediation process, accessibility staff and faculty collaborated to ensure that student learning needs were prioritized. Faculty who met the accessibility standards were publicly recognized for their achievements. At our roundtable, we will briefly summarize this process and answer questions from participants.
Learning Objectives
- Discuss major considerations for a collaborative course accessibility process between faculty and staff.
- Identify tools used in the course accessibility process and compare those tools with ones available at their own institutions.
- Identify methods used to limit and reduce burnout, including using a sprint format and distributing team tasks appropriately.
Session Facilitator(s)
- Carey Applegate
- Emily Boles
- Taylor Lester
Bio(s)
Carey Applegate is the Director of Digital Accessibility at the University of Illinois Springfield. With nearly two decades of expertise in instructional design, educational program management, and university-level teaching, she is dedicated to promoting inclusive digital environments and advancing equity in education. Her research explores disability in higher education, crip activism rhetorics, and personal narrative as a site of knowledge production. Carey holds a doctorate in English Education from Illinois State University and is a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) through the International Association of Accessibility Professionals.
Emily Boles (she/her) is the Chief Online Learning Officer at the University of Illinois Springfield, as well as an experienced instructional designer and educational technologist. She is passionate about equitable access to higher education, a commitment reflected in her professional work in research-based course design, digital accessibility, and the development and adoption of open educational resources. Emily earned her master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Taylor Lester (she/her) is an eLearning Specialist at the University of Illinois Springfield with particular expertise in instructional design. Prior to her work at UIS, she served as a high school English teacher in a public school in Illinois; this firsthand experience has informed her desire to ensure that students and educators alike are supported in their classrooms, especially in an ever-changing educational landscape. She is a first-year graduate student in the Communication and Leadership program at Eastern Illinois University.