Project+-+Accessible+Virtual+School

Accessible "Virtual School"
"The best way to predict the future is to invent it" Alan Kay

This is a real problem to work on, and there are no answers in the back of the book. Virtual schools, blended learning, flipped classrooms - they are becoming part of our professional lives as educators. Spokane Schools has a virtual high school, and there are many more like it in the US and around the world. As special educators, we have a problem - many of these courses and programs are not accessible for many of our students. We have students with executive function delays, who can't handle the level of self-direction, planning, and problem-solving that the courses require. Some students have difficulty with the sensory and/or motor demands of a curriculum that happens mostly on a computer screen. Your project assignment: Take an element (or several related elements) of an online course or online resource for a blended course. Design it (or redesign existing elements, or add some AT) to make it universally accessible. Write a description of your plan, your course content, and tools that you will use. Include some use cases, showing how students with different abilities can use the course. Your finished document should be about 4-6 pages, with in-line references and links. It doesn't have to be APA style, but it __ does __ have to be professional. Just like the first assignments, write as if you are already a professional teacher. Write for other teachers and administrators. Your style can be friendly and informal, but not sloppy. You can turn this in as an email attachment, using .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .pdf file formats.

Getting Started Resources:
[] @http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/150000-settlement-reached-in-blind-florida-state-students-e-learning-suit/35659

Examples of some accessibility issues from the Sloan-C Workshops:
Objectives:
 * **Be More Accommodating: How Students with Disabilities Can Thrive in Online Learning** || 8/15 – 8/24 || Jane Jarrow, Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning (DCCOL) || Traditional institutions of higher education that have made significant commitments to online learning need to understand how to better serve students with disabilities. This course will delve into the legal mandates that obligate these institutions to provide online support to students with disabilities and detail how to fulfill the obligation to serve this often ignored population.
 * Develop an understanding of accommodations for ensuring complete access and full participation in the educational process
 * Become sensitive to non-visible or hidden disabilities
 * Follow effective teaching practices that will benefit all students
 * Develop alternative activities that achieve the same learning outcomes for all
 * Leverage technological alternatives to help disabled students ||

Objectives:
 * **Enhancing Your Course's Accessibility The Easy Way** || 5/16 – 5/25 || Valerie Haven || You want to make your course accessible to as many learners as possible? No sweat! In this workshop we’ll discuss how to create documents in accessible formats, explore productivity tools to promote learner engagement, and discuss how learners with disabilities use assistive technology to navigate online learning environments. We’ll look at Universal Course Design best practices and evaluating the accessibility of online classes with a new assessment tool developed by Macquarie University. You will also be provided with a resource list of open source and freeware applications you can use to build greater access into on-line environments.
 * Learn how to create accessible Power Point and PDF files
 * Discuss best practices techniques for formatting web pages
 * Explore open source and freeware productivity tools that you can use to build greater course access, and promote learner engagement and retention
 * Evaluate a new web-based application developed to assess online course accessibility and usability ||

Objectives:
 * **Disability Access and Online Learning: From Precedents to Practice** || 6/6 – 6/15 || Jane Jarrow, Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning (DCCOL) || Federal mandates requiring access for students with disabilities pre-date the existence of online learning. How it all plays out in the virtual world is becoming clearer, as a spate of lawsuits and federal directives begin to shape our practice and, hopefully, drive our decision-making in a proactive manner. With this workshop you’ll understand the issues faced in assuring online accessibility, as well as the dangers in ignoring those obligations when building an online learning presence. Participants learn how to assess their school’s current accessibility status and uncover steps to enhance that access.
 * Understand how laws designed to assure access in the physical world are being translated to the virtual environment of online learning
 * Review recent case law and federal directives regarding online access for persons with disabilities as relates to their impact on practice
 * Learn how to assess the accessibility of online learning within the institution (including both blended and online-only classes)
 * Explore how new technology and applications can be evaluated for accessibility before adoption
 * Develop a Plan of Action, unique to your institution, to assess current accessibility and assign responsibility for making changes ||

Objectives:
 * **Dismantling the Barriers to Digital Literacy for Students with Disabilities** || 7/25 – 8/3 || Jane Jarrow, Disability Compliance in Career and Online Learning (DCCOL) || Students with disabilities face many barriers to digital literacy. Some are a function of disability, but many barriers are created by lack of foresight or effort on the part of institutional personnel. Digital literacy demands the ability to use the appropriate tools, facility in reaching and processing materials, and appropriate access and response to digital curriculum. This workshop will review case studies and strategies for dismantling barriers to digital literacy, whatever their inception.
 * Understand how the three elements of digital literacy interact and why digital competence is critical for today’s learners
 * Learn to differentiate between issues of digital tools/materials/curriculum in order to determine how best to resolve issues of access
 * Explore how new technology and technology application can create barriers for various populations of students with disabilities and learn about alternative technologies to provide access
 * Learn practical strategies for assuring full access to digital materials for students with disabilities
 * Develop a working model to assess the educational goal of academic exercises so that alternative, accessible activities can be created to achieve such objectives without sacrificing academic integrity ||