Speaker 1: Suddenly , I have the opportunity to playlist music to watch the movie with organ. I'm so inspired. So Familiar. Portland Community College Cashmasville Firefox. Portland Community College. Portland Community College. At Zurich Games. Imagine that you're trying to do homework online and this is what you had to deal with.

Speaker 2: I'm sight impaired and I have RP, which is retinitis pigmentosa, and it's as if I'm looking through straws. For a sighted student, they can just see what's there on the page and click on whatever they need and they can go back and forth to the syllabus and back to the page very easily. I have to navigate back and forth and run up and down the page with a JAWS program that takes a lot longer.

Speaker 3: Today, everyone uses computers and PCC students use computers extensively to access online content via the web. But for students with a disability, this can present enormous challenges that we really need to address. Daniel Turnbull is one of our students who faces enormous obstacles due to his visual disability.

Speaker 2: The major that I've chosen is psychology. I want to be a counselor for people with disabilities.

Speaker 3: I'm Kendra Cauley. I'd like to talk with you today about implementing some new standards to ensure that all of our online content is accessible to all of our students.

Speaker 4: I think the frustration that I observe with students with disabilities is that they can't complete the assignments. They've got this time set aside and they're not able to do the work. You see other students participating in the discussion. You want to participate. You have a limited time to participate, but you can't do that because you haven't been able to watch the film that you need to watch in order to participate.

Speaker 5: What are some of the problems that you face? Some of the problems that I have are that there are no captions, that there are no transcripts available. So if it's not captioned, they should at least have a file available so that I can read what's being said and then try to fit that in with the video, read it at the same time that I'm watching the video. Well, I have to work more closely with my instructors and see if either they can give me another assignment or if something that I can learn from another video or sometimes I need to set up time with an interpreter to meet with them and have them interpret the videos, sit down with them and have them interpret the videos. So it's almost pointless because sometimes I have to come here to campus anyway, even though I'm taking a class that's supposed to be online. I don't like having to go and get a counselor or get disability assistance to come and help me because all I need is just the voice that's on video to be captioned. I should be able to email the instructor and they should be able to fix it right away because other students can listen to their assignments, can listen to the information that's on the internet and if the instructor notices that there's something wrong with the audio, they can fix it right away.

Speaker 6: If there's no captioning on the video, then we're not going to be learning anything from what you're saying on the video. So it's very important that you have captioning because we can really be involved with what's happening in the world and in classrooms or whatever.

Speaker 7: It's very important. My goal is to get a Ph.D. in physics or math. Because I'm physically impaired, I can't use my hands. I use the computer exclusively to do my homework and to access content from PCC. It is my connection to the outside world. It connects me to my family, my friends, to the school. Without a computer, I would be pretty much stuck. The most frustrating thing that I've encountered at PCC are the PDFs that you have to download instead of being able to fill out the form online. Because once I download the file, I have to find someone to fill it out for me, which could take days. It's frustrating when a lot of the websites time out on you and I have to re-log in multiple times. People that use the computer use the mouse all the time and don't really recognize the fact that without a mouse, the computer is very hard to use. Dragging and dropping is almost impossible to do with the mouse stick without the use of your hands. So any program that you need to drag and drop is almost inaccessible to someone with a disability. I am picking a time that I want the light to flash and solving for negative K at this point. When I am taking tests at school, they give me three times the amount of time that a regular student has to take the test and it's not because I need more time to think about it. It's all entering the data into the computer.

Speaker 4: The reason we need to be ready for these changes is not just because of the laws, but you as an instructor have to think about when a student comes to your class, are you going to say to them, I'm sorry, you can't watch the video. We have to make sure all of our classes are accessible to everyone, it just makes sense.

Speaker 3: Helping all of our students reach their educational goals is a shared responsibility. The departments of instructional support and distance learning have been working on guidelines and information about how this can be done more easily. It's not so difficult. For example, course materials can be designed so that they're easily accessible. The departments of instructional support and distance learning will be here to provide training, to provide support, provide some of the actual technical pieces of doing things such as putting captioning on videos, anything to make sure that all of the materials that go online are accessible. We'll be starting with new courses, so as courses are developed for an online environment, the materials need to be made accessible.

Speaker 8: I believe that as an instructor, I want my students to be successful. I want to give them the tools necessary for them to achieve, and this is one of the ways. This ensures that all students have the opportunity to be successful, and not just those students that don't have a disability. It does matter, because everybody should be included, and nobody should be excluded for any reason. So, even though it's a small portion of the population of the school, they have every right to be successful as anyone else.

Speaker 4: There are a lot of disabilities out there, some that we're aware of and some that we're not aware of, so I think the changes we make for the students who have real strong barriers will help the students with maybe lesser barriers, or students who have no identified barriers at all. So, I do think that the changes we make will help our courses just be more accessible to all students. I mean, I think you as a teacher need to decide, are you going to open the door, are you going to shut the door, are you going to provide an academic experience for somebody or not?

Speaker 3: A key part of PCC's mission is delivering accessible and quality education. Making sure that all of our online materials are accessible is important, and it's the right thing to do. We need to help our students, all of our students, meet their educational goals.

Speaker 2: If I was able to take online classes without somebody helping me navigate all the time, and I could do it independently, it would mean the world to me. I wouldn't have to, like, call a friend and have them tandem in and view my screen for me so they could help me navigate through the site, wasting their time and mine. If I can't find somebody with eyesight to help me navigate the pages, I either fail or get an incomplete. Yeah, I believe I'd get to do school a lot faster. I mean, at this rate, it's going to take me forever.

Speaker 9: Designing accessible online curriculum means your courses will serve a broader audience. Students with disabilities, ESOL students, and students with different learning styles will all benefit. Accessibility is a very important issue for all community colleges because an average of 12% of the community college students are disabled. This is an initiative we must move ahead on. Not only is it a policy of access at PCC, but it's the law. We are committed to making all course content accessible to everyone. It is the mission of PCC, and there is no success without access.