Wednesday
June 1, 2016
Making Accessible and Inclusive Open Education Resources
Affordable Learning Georgia
	
	CART provided by A La CARTe Connection, Inc. 
	CART Disclaimer:  This rough edit transcript, which may contain missing, misspelled or paraphrased words, is only provided for your immediate review and is not certified as verbatim and is not to be cited in any way. 
	 		>> JEFF GALLANT:  Thank you. Today we don't have too many announcements because we are taking a break with web events for the summer.  It's going to be probably mid‑August when we get started again, so that we have every faculty member back at the USG Institutions and ready to go. 
	I just posted the link to our Training and Development page. This has an archive of every single webinar that we've done since we started out back in March of 2015 with this series. So if you would like to kind of self‑instruct yourself on some new stuff regarding Affordable Learning, the archived events on this page would be a great way to do this if you want to do something like that over the summer. 
	And of course, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at jeff.gallant@usg.edu and I'd be happy to work with you on whatever you have a question on. 
	Other than that, have a wonderful summer and we will start recording and move to our presentation.  
	[Recording started]  	>> JEFF GALLANT:  I would like to announce Michelle Breaud and Valerie Morrison from AMAC. They are a wonderful accessibility organization who has worked with the USG for quite a long time. And they will be talking today about how to make accessible and inclusive open educational resources. And I will pass it to them.  Thank you so much.  	>> VALERIE MORRISON:  Thank you, Jeff. Hi, everybody. This is Valerie Morrison and I work at AMAC and I'm here joined today by my colleague on the E‑Text Team, Michelle Breaud.  And we're going to present to you on Making Accessible and Inclusive Open Education Resources today. 
	We're going to try and fly through this information. We usually, when we are asked to deliver trainings on inclusive resources, we try and fit it into about a three hour window and we only have an hour today, so I'm going to give you a broad overview of some of the accessibility tips and tricks that we use in the E‑Text Department for making Microsoft Word files accessible, PDF files, PowerPoint files, and then I want to talk briefly at the end about our captioning and audio description services we have at AMAC.  We're going to try to leave about ten minutes at the end for questions. But, again, like Jeff said, if you have any questions during, please feel free to chat in the chat window and we'll try to address the questions. 
	So just briefly to tell you about AMAC and what we do here for accessibility services, we have an E‑Text Production Team where we create files for students who need to use a screen‑reader to access their material.  	>> JEFF GALLANT:  Oh, don't worry about the dialogue box, that is when a teleconference tries to join and there's some kind of error.  	>> VALERIE MORRISON:  Okay, great. 
	So we have an E‑Text Production Team where we get orders for textbooks that need to be made accessible for a student. And we then render them into accessible texts that a screen‑reader can access.  So that includes PDF files, doc files, PowerPoint presentations, and even MathML files where we need to translate very complicated equations into MathSpeak. 
	We also have Braille Services. They have taken our over downstairs with giant embosser equipment and we provide Braille for students. 
	We have a captioning and described media services team which I'll be talking more about at the end of our presentation today.  And they transcribe or caption classroom lectures or webinars or podcasts. And they also do post‑production on videos and provide audio description of videos. 
	We have an Assistive Technology Team here at AMAC and they do remote and on‑site assessments. So they'll come to your class or your workspace or our home and see what kinds of Assistive Technology devices might make your life a little bit better. 
	And then we also have accessibility compliance consultations that focus on web accessibility and making sure that an institution or a corporation is accessible with their online presence. 
	In our E‑Text Department where Michelle and I work, these are the types of files that we're asked to make accessible all the time. The majority of our orders are for students who need their textbook in an accessible PDF format. Followed by Microsoft Word docs.  And I don't know how familiar you are with different types of screen‑reader, but those are the main two types of file formats that we are asked to provide for students. Sometimes we get orders for DAISY files that are read by Dolphin EasyReader. We're also asked by various publishers to make their lecture PowerPoints accessible, where we go in and describe all of the pictures on a slide. 
	HTML files, MathML files, Audiobooks, these are all different orders that we'll get and this is what we're familiar with generated here at AMAC. 
	So the goal of today's webinar is to talk about designing a course so that it's accessible for multiple audiences, so that you're designing your class and your documents with accessibility in mind. And that's not just for students who have what you would think of as traditional reading disabilities or someone with vision disabilities or hearing disability, but also people who have mobile issues. So someone who can't physically turn the page of a textbook or pick up and hold the weight of a textbook, they might be using a screen‑reader as well. 
	People who have dyslexia or various learning disabilities such as ADHD, they might benefit from using a screen‑reader that highlights text on a page as they're reading, so they don't have as what you would traditionally think of as a disability that would need special files created for them, but they do perform better if they have a text that's electronic and that they can view on their computer screen and maybe change the color contrast or highlight text and have it read aloud as they're reading. 
	Other people who have had any kind of cognitive disabilities, any head trauma, PTSD, they all use screen‑readers, auditory learners. And I try to make this case whenever I go out and train is that we have a growing ageing population and they're getting online.  My mom has a SmartPhone.  It's very scary.  But she is accessing information on the computer more and more and on her SmartPhone more and more. And so we want to make it material accessible so that is a growing ageing population can access material as well. 
	Accessibility is really the best practice, not only ethically and practically so that you reach more people and that information is distributed equally and fairly, but also legally it's important. So WCAG 2.0 guidelines are concerning web content access and following these guidelines will protect you and your institution from litigation for not having accessible materials for all students. 
	The United States Department of Justice has their own guidelines, they are called the ADA Compliance guidelines and I have links to those at the end of our presentation.  And we have Section 508 guidelines, and I have links to those as well.  There is no shortage of lists of guidelines to help you try to make your material accessible. So the links that we have at the end of this presentation will give you more detailed checklists and guidelines, but today I just want to go over some general rules about Microsoft Word accessibility, PDF accessible, PowerPoint accessibility, and then talk briefly at the end about our captioning and audio description services. 
	So I think the first half hour we're going to hope to spend on Microsoft Word accessibility because that's really the key, that's what everyone is generating their documents in primarily. 
	And then you can save accessible file formats from that Microsoft Word doc. 
	So these are a list of ten different accessibility features. We tried to limit what we were going to cover today and these are really the basics. Whenever you're creating a Microsoft Word doc or if you are going back to a doc that you already created or maybe that you have inherited from a former colleague, you want to make sure that the font and the design of that doc are clear and easy‑to‑read. And you want to think about people, not just accessing this doc in a controlled environment where you have a giant screen or monitor and it's silent around you, but what if you want to create a syllabus that your student is looking up on the bus on the way into class that morning?  So choosing, you know, very clear and plain design features is one of the key ingredients to making an accessible Word doc.  
	Creating white space, you don't want to just hit "enter, enter, enter, tab, tab, tab" when creating a doc.  If at all possible, you should create your white space and extra space in the document using the build‑in tab features and line tab features and page layout tools that are built into Microsoft Word. The reason being is if someone is using a screen‑reader to access your doc and you've hit "enter, enter, enter" the screen‑reader might say, blank line, blank line, blank line as many times as you hit "enter." And they might think that they have reached the end of the document or that they are missing information.  
	So creating white space with the page layout tools ensures that your document is more accessible. 
	Also, creating and modifying headers ‑‑ or headings, excuse me, it headings in your Microsoft Word document is very important and we have some slides specifically walking through how to add headings to your document. Adding headings will allow someone using a screen‑reader to navigate very easily through your doc and find the places that you specified as headings 1, 2, or 3 and they can jump and find the important information they need much faster with your headings. 
	Generating an automated Table of Contents is very ‑‑ makes it very accessible to people using screen‑readers as well.  And if you've already created headings in your document that make it accessible, then generating the automated Table of Contents is as easy as just pushing the button saying "go." The automated Table of Contents is created from the headings that you put into your doc. 
	Creating accessible lists just means not using hyphens or strange icons to create a bulleted list, but using the true bullet feature in Microsoft Word.  Microsoft Word also has easy automatic numbering for lists. And using the automated built‑in list maker function in Microsoft Word will make sure it's read correctly and is read as a list by a screen‑reader.  And it also guarantees that when you export your Microsoft Word doc into some other format, say you are trying to save your Microsoft Word doc as an accessible PDF, then it will keep that formatting in the PDF and it won't lose your list. 
	You also want to think about your reading order when you're making a Microsoft Word doc. And you want to think about someone using a screen‑reader. Screen‑readers start at the very top of the page and then read down. And they will interrupt. So if you have a caption for a photo, you might want to think about putting the caption above the picture so that the JAWS screen‑reader will read the caption and then proceed to the picture and read whatever alternate text description you may have added to the picture to make it accessible. And we'll talk about adding alt text to images as well. 
	Another thing you want to think about with logical reading order is if you have any acronyms or symbols or abbreviations in your doc, maybe define that term or define that acronym towards the top of the page and not in a small footnote at the very bottom of the page. If you define your terms early and right at the outset, then someone accessing your material with a screen‑reader will know what's going on from the very beginning and won't have to go back and re‑listen to the document once they get that footnote at the end. 
	Another accessibility feature you want to think about is making sure your tables are accessible, which we'll talk about briefly. Using column breaks, section breaks, and page breaks in order to adjust your formatting throughout your doc instead of maybe hitting "enter, enter, enter, tab, tab, tab." 
	Creating alternate text descriptions for all images in your doc, which we'll talk about. 
	And then using the built‑in accessibility report checker that Microsoft Word has that lists all of your accessibility errors and tells you how to fix them. 
	So the first thing that I want to talk about a little bit more in depth is accessibility in terms of font choice. You want to make sure that your font size is 12 point or larger, if possible. There are a lot of different ‑‑ sorry, I'm getting an error message ‑‑ a lot of different documents that you create might need a smaller font, but this is ‑‑ 12 point is a good guideline. You want to keep your font large. And you probably want to choose a Sans‑serif font, such as Calibri or Arial or Verdana. Sans‑serif means it's without the little font do‑dads on the sides of the letters. It's easier to read. It's a much more clear letter and it's easier to read, especially online. 
	You also want to make sure you avoid too many large sections of bold text, like a whole paragraph that's italicized or underlined or bold or in all caps. You can use these, but try to be infrequent. Try to use them sparingly so you don't cause eyestrain by having a huge block of text in all caps. It becomes very hard to read. 
	Thinking about accessible design features includes trying to use plain language and plain text whenever possible and not trying to add lots of bells and whistles. If you can be without graphics or clip‑art or borders or lines and bars, if you can do without those features, then try to because it will make your document more accessible. 
	Using normal spacing is better than condensed or expanded spacing, just for the screen‑reader experience. 
	Using language that's clear, direct, and easy to understand, although as a former educator in English, I know that there's a lot of jargon that comes with academia and sometimes that's hard to avoid, but trying to use plain language is a key feature of accessibility. 
	And like I mentioned before, trying to explain any acronyms, symbols, or abbreviations from the very beginning will help make your information more accessible to more users. 
	And creating hyperlinks that are meaningful so that you don't just insert a link that just is HTTP colon slash slash, but creating a link that's readable. So if I created a link to the AMAC homepage and then embedded the link behind the words "AMAC homepage" that would be providing context for my link. 
	In order to add headings that are helpful for navigation through your doc, you highlight some text and on the Home Ribbon of Microsoft Word you can, instead of having it appear as normal text, you can click on "heading 1" "heading 2 ""heading 3." The title of your document would be heading 1. And then subheadings, you could also make them heading 1 or if you want them to be less important, heading 2. 
	People using screen‑readers can then pull up a menu of your headings so they can jump to different places in the doc.  They help screen‑readers navigate and they also help you organize your content. 
	The automatic styling of the heading in Microsoft Word, I think automatically the default changes it to blue and it's a larger font, but you can customize the way that the headings look in your doc so they function and then they are also stylistically kept the way you want them. 
	And then another added benefit, aside from adding accessible navigation through your doc, once you export your doc, if you want to export it into an accessible PDF format, those doc headings you have inserted, will then become accessible bookmarks in a PDF file. 
	So in order to create your heading, you'll just highlight some text and choose the heading style from the Home Tab.  And then it will show up.  And if you don't have your navigation tab on, you select the "view" box and you can see the list of headers that you have created in your doc. 
	To create accessible tables in a doc, you want to make sure that, first of all, your table is a true table, that everything in it deserves to be in the table so that everything in each column is related. Sometimes people create tables just for formatting purposes or design purposes, but you want to make sure if you are creating a table in Microsoft Word that you have a header row and every column has a clear subject in that header row.  
	Once you have created your table, you can open the "table design tools" by clicking on the table and you can specify what is your header row and make sure that you have a logical reading order from left to right, top to bottom in your table. 
	You also want to try to avoid merged cells and that just happens when you have, maybe, if you could imagine a table that has four columns, but the last two columns, the header row is one giant column.  You want to avoid that because a screen‑reader is going to read a table straight across, from left to right, top to bottom, and the screen‑reader ‑‑ the person listening to the table might not know that that column header spans two entire columns. And so if necessary, you would repeat information to avoid having a merged cell. 
	And if you have empty cells in your table, you should probably insert "empty cell" inside that table. And you could even turn it to the same color as your background if you don't want it to show up, but that way a student listening with a screen‑reader would know that that cell is, in fact, empty. 
	And I would think most important to table accessibility in Microsoft Word is to definitely have a title for your table and include a caption possibly summing up the contents of the table, that way going into the table, someone listening with a screen‑reader gets the same effect as someone who might be sighted who just glances at the table. 
	So someone listening with a screen‑reader can get an overview of what the tabling contains, what the column headings might be, and they can know what to focus on when they're listening to the table, or if they want to skip it. They could go ahead and advance beyond the table. 
	The next most important thing I would say ‑‑ I would say the most important thing would be headings for your doc and then the second most important accessibility feature for a Microsoft Word doc would be adding alternate text descriptions for any pictures you in your doc. 
	All images should be described so that everyone has equal access to visual information. If it is a fluff image or just a decorative image, you could even insert the words "decorative image" in your alt text description so someone accessing your doc with a screen‑reader would know they are not missing vital, educational, key material. 
	But graphs, pictures, line graphs, pie graphs, all kind of educational content should be ‑‑ you should provide a written description of in the alt text field. 
	In order to access the alt text field, you will right click on the image in Microsoft Word and choice "format picture." And on the very right hand side is the "alt text" tab and you would type that in the field. 
	We recommend that you think about two or three brief sentences for your images, unless it is something far more complex, like a graph with data that your students would need access to and then you could go a little bit more in depth with it. But for a general image, we would recommend typing something very brief. 
	You don't want someone to experience overload of information, so you wouldn't ‑‑ if I were writing an alternate text description to this picture, first I would look at the caption and, unfortunately, my screenshot is so small it's hard for me to read, but I would probably say that this is a work by Michelangelo, I would include the title. I hope to know it is located on a wall in the Sistine chapel. I might include that. I might provide a brief description of God is reaching toward Adam with an outstretched finger and then I'm done.  I wouldn't go into too much detail.  I would try to keep it to two or three sentences. 
	Once you have created your Microsoft Word doc, you have added headings, added alternate text descriptions, you can use the built‑in accessibility checker in Microsoft Word.  You will save your document as a .docx file. Save your doc and it usually sayings "in compatibility mode" when you do that. And once you have saved your doc, you will go to "file" "check for issues" and select "check accessibility." And it will open up to in a separate pane to the right of your document and it list all of your errors and a link to easily fix it. 
	And then below that, it will give you information about how to fix each error. So this is a screenshot of the accessibility checker. It's told me that I haven't written any alt text for my table. And I didn't specify a header row.  So if I want to go in and do that and write a brief description of the table, I can click on that link and it will take me to that table and I can write a brief description of the table. So the accessibility checker is a nice final step after you have created your Microsoft Word doc. 
	Once you've corrected all the errors and you've made your Microsoft Word doc as accessible as possible, you have fully described your images, you have the correct organizational structure in your headings, and you've passed your accessible check, you might want to save your file as an accessible PDF.  PDFs are helpful in that when you distribute them, they can't be edited.  They retain your design features if you want to post them online. They are accessible to people who might not have Microsoft Office, they can read it with the free Adobe Reader.  So if you want to convert your Microsoft Word doc into an accessible PDF file, you would go to "save as type" ‑‑ or sorry, "file" "save as" and then "save as type." And in the dropdown menu, you choice "type" and then click on "options." And in the screenshot, there's a giant "options" button. Once you click on "options" you want to make sure your dialogue box matches the screenshot. And the important features that you want to retain from your Microsoft Word when you're saving it as an accessible PDF is you want to keep your headings. You want to create bookmarks using the headings that you took so much time inserting into your accessible doc.  You also want to save properties if you added metadata to your file, which is a nice accessibility option where you include your title and your author information. And you want to retain document structure tags for accessibility. And that's, again, involving your headings so that when you create your PDF it's going to know where your headings are. 
	So if you choose these options when you save your Microsoft Word as PDF, it will automatically become an accessible PDF. So that's why we really wanted to spend a lot of time on Microsoft Word today. 
	So the next thing I'm briefly going to talk about, PDF accessibility. So if you spent time creating an accessible Microsoft Word doc, most of your work is done. You have alternate descriptions of your images, which will be saved in your accessible PDF. But if you are working with a PDF file that you don't have the original source Microsoft Word doc to play with and you just have a PDF, there are other things you can do to edit it to make it accessible. 
	One thing you can do is you could highlight the text just using your cursor, highlight the text of the PDF to make sure that the text is selectable, to make sure it's not just a scanned image PDF, that someone using a screen‑reader will be able to access this PDF. And highlighting the text also shows you what reading order the text will be read in. So if you highlight a paragraph and suddenly everything on the page is highlighted, you know that there might be a problem with this PDF. You could go back to the original Microsoft Word doc if you have it or create something new, but highlighting the text helps you figure out how exactly and in what order a screen‑reader is going to pronounce the words on the page. 
	You can also add bookmarks after the fact, after you've created the PDF, if you want to go in and add bookmarks, you can just easily highlight some text and right click on it and create a bookmark or press control B and create a bookmark and that will, just like you have created accessible headings in your doc, it will create accessible bookmarks in your PDF file. 
	You want to make sure that your pagination is clear and that your pagination matches what's on your page.  So if you have a large PDF, and maybe it's a textbook that you are giving to your students, textbooks usually start with Roman numerals and then they start 1, 2, 3 much later on. And so you want to make sure that the PDF you're giving them, it matches page numbers with what's in Adobe. So you're trying to match what's on the page so that if a student types in "I want to jump to page 17" and hits "enter" it will go to the correct page. So trying to match your page numbering is key for accessible. 
	Now if you are creating a syllabus or a course reader that's only a few pages, that becomes far less difficult because someone can navigate just by going page to page, tabbing up and down in the PDF. 
	To make an accessible PDF you also have to think about file size, so anything larger than 25 megabytes. When we get orders for students for their materials for their classes, we try to compress or save as a reduced file size to get that file size under 25 megabytes so that it operates more smoothly on their machine. 
	And if necessary, sometimes we'll even split a file into, maybe, one through five chapters, six through ten chapters, in order to get them those smaller files so that they don't get hung up and have different systems crash on their machines. 
	But, again, if these are smaller course materials, that won't be an issue. 
	You want to make sure that file names are clear and contain no symbols.  If you can avoid using a hyphen or an ampersand or a slash or a percent sign or a dollar sign, or even an apostrophe, if you can avoid symbols at all and keep your file names very short and clear, it's much more accessible. And it's much easier for people to open using different software. It's easier also for them to search for the materials online. 
	Just like your Microsoft Word doc, you inserted alt text for your images, you can also insert alt text directly into a PDF if you want to describe any images in that PDF. 
	And then you can also, just like in Microsoft Word, I don't think I mentioned this when we were talking about Microsoft Word, but in your file properties you can add a title and an author that's just called ‑‑ we call it meta data. In your document properties you can insert your title and your author name that can show up in searches if someone is Google searching for your doc or your PDF. 
	You also want to change your language to match the language that your PDF is written in so that the screen‑reader knows how to pronounce certain words. And it makes a huge difference. So if I have a Spanish textbook or a French document or something that's written in English, I'm going to change my language in the document properties so that the screen‑reader has a fighting chance at being able to pronounce all those words correctly. 
	So here is a screenshot of what your bookmarks panel looks like in your accessible PDF. And anything flush with the left margin, so that very first bookmark, my ABAC portal overview, that's a level one heading or level one bookmark.  So if I created this from my doc, that's what the heading then looks like in my accessible PDF. 
	And then, again, tells you you can hit control B to create a bookmark or right click ‑‑ highlight some text, right click on it and then choose "add bookmark." 
	You can also do an accessibility report and generate a report on your PDF. And in order to do that, you will open up your accessible tools. Click on "full check." And this is the dialogue box that pops up when you do that. You can checkoff whatever different accessible features you want to look for in your PDF. And as you can see at AMAC, we are a little bit gung-ho and this is our job so we have all of the boxes checked off and we want to search for all kinds of accessibility errors or warnings or features, making sure we are creating as accessible of document as possible. 
	So moving on to PowerPoint accessibility, a lot of the same things that we talked about with Microsoft Word apply to PowerPoint in terms of you want to have a plain and simple design if possible and format each slide with clarity in mind. 
	When you're using ‑‑ when you're creating a slide in PowerPoint, you want to use the built‑in templates as much as possible. And they have several different layout options for each slide and I'll show you ‑‑ I think I have some screen shots that show you the different layouts and how to select from them. 
	When you use a built‑in template or layout from PowerPoint, it will ensure that the text is then accessible to that screen‑reader. Every once in a while we see PowerPoints come through where someone has inserted a text box on the fly to maybe put like a little label or a heading somewhere or caption and sometimes that material isn't accessible to a screen‑reader. So using the built‑in templates and layouts whenever possible guarantees the screen‑reader can access whatever content you're putting on your slide. 
	Also think about having slide titles for every single slides that are unique.  We get a lot of lecture slides where we just have the same title over and over and over again and it's continued, continued, continued, continued. If you provide a unique title to each slide, it helps you in clarifying the progression of your argument and helps you know where you are in your lecture, and it also helps someone accessing a screen‑reader navigating through your slide presentation. So if this entire PowerPoint that I was delivering for this webinar today was just Accessibility Part I, Accessibility Part II, Accessibility Part III and we have 30 slides, it would be difficult for someone using a screen‑reader to figure out how to jump back to that thing I said about Microsoft Word doc headings.  So slide titles are very key in terms of PowerPoint accessibility. 
	Every object, everything that you put on a slide, whether it be some text or a picture or a graph or a table, every single object on a slide will be accessed in a particular order by someone using a screen‑reader.  If the student is using, say, the JAWS screen‑reader, they will hit "tab" to proceed through each object on the slide.  So if you have a lot of objects on the slide, you want to make sure that your reading order is determined so they read the title first, then the main content, and then whatever pictures or tables you might want them to read last. 
	Making sure that text is accessible in the outline view is an accessibility feature. And, again, if you use those accessibility templates and layouts that are built‑in to PowerPoint, most of the content will be guaranteed accessible in that outline view. 
	Making sure you don't have lots of extra white space, just like with Microsoft Word, you are not hitting "enter, enter, enter, tab, tab, tab" you are created space using the page layout tools, using the line spacing tools built into Microsoft Office products.  
	Making sure you use bulleted and numbered lists and you're creating true lists and not just inserting, maybe, a hyphen or a dash mark and then creating your line item, but that you use the bullet features and the list features in PowerPoint. And, again, this translates into accessibility if you were then to create an accessible PDF, save your PowerPoint file as an accessibility PDF, it would take that list into the PDF and read correctly. 
	And then finally, just like with Microsoft Word, you want to make sure that all images and graphics on your slide have a comprehensive alternate text description so that they're made accessible to all users. 
	So here's a screenshot of choosing a layout template in PowerPoint. You would go to the Home Tab and click "layout" and then the dropdown menu would give you lots of different options and you would choose which ever template would give you the proper number and kind of accessible content boxes for your slide. 
	And we always try to choose one that has a lot of boxes and then we can just delete them.  It's easier to choose a template that has too many and delete than to choose one that has too few and then you have to select a brand new layout in order to get more.  
	So you could go to the Home Ribbon, click on layout and then if you are a right clicker, like me, you could also access the layout templates just by right clicking anywhere there's blank space on the slide. 
	Selecting reading order is the only counter‑intuitive complicated part about PowerPoint accessibility in the regards that everything that shows up on your selection pane is accessed from the bottom to the top by a screen‑reader.  
	So if you go to "home" and then select "arrange" and then select "selection pane" it will open up your selection pane to the right of your slide and it will show you all of the objects on the slide. This screenshot shows you that I have one, two, three, four, five objects on the slide.  And I've put the title at the bottom. I clicked on the title and then I moved it. There are arrows that you can maneuver that title up and down and I've put it last so the screen‑reader would read it first. 
	You can click on the different objects and also hide them, by clicking on the eye icon. You temporarily move it around and see what it looks like without the object and then click on the eye icon to make it appear again. 
	We usually recommend for anyone creating a PowerPoint presentation from scratch that you try to make it as simple as possible so that someone using a screen‑reader has to navigate through fewer objects on the slide. 
	Often when we have someone with a PowerPoint that has lots and lots of pictures, we'll even try to take one giant screen capture of all of the pictures together and turn it into one image that we then create alt text for so the student didn't have to tab through eight pictures, they can just listen to the alternative description of one picture.  
	And then just like in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint gives you in a built‑in accessibility checker that function the same as the Microsoft Word checker.  You'll go to "file" and just like Microsoft Word you'll click on "check for issues." And then the center category, the center option is "check accessibility." And it, again, will generate a report with a list of errors and then links to how to fix those errors ‑‑ sorry, not just links, but suggestions for how to fix those errors.  
	Once you've created your final PowerPoint and it's as accessible as can be, you have unique and descriptive slide title, all of your objects and pictures are described, everything is in the correct reading order, things are simple and clear as possible, if you want to save your PowerPoint as an accessible PDF, you will go to "file" "save as" "save as type" and you will select PDF. And again, not so fast, it's not that easy, you have to click on the "options" button. And under "include non‑printing information" you want to make sure to retain document properties and maintain document structure tags for accessibility. 
	What this will do is it will save any metadata you entered into such as a title or language or author name. It will also save all of your slide titles as bookmarks in the PDF so you will have accessible bookmarks in your PDF file. 
	So that covers what I wanted to talk about in terms of document accessibility. And, again, if you have questions, we'll try to give you some time at the very end. And I just briefly wanted to mention our captioning and audio description services. Some of the participants today had submitted questions in advance of this webinar and you all had great questions about captioning, what kinds of media needs to be captioned?  If I include a video in my class, do I have to have it captioned?  The answer is, yes.  Anything that you provide in your class in terms of educational material, any videos or podcasts or webinars, everything should be captioned, especially if you post that information online. 
	And, again, it's not just that you have to provide captioning if and only if you have someone with a disability in your classroom that day, this is going forward into the future, you want to make all of your material accessible so that you don't have to go back two years later and re‑visit files that you have created and then make them accessible because now you have a student who has some sort of accessible issue. 
	You want to make sure that everything you are creating going forward has accessibility built into it so that you don't have to go back and rework. 
	Also, any material that you put online you want to make sure that it is accessible, not just to students with disabilities, but to the global audience. 
	So we do provide captions services here at AMAC. And we provide full video description. There are two types of captioning services that we do here. We have remote and live captioning of a classroom, so a captionist will be listening in to the class, the student will have a microphone on their desk, and they will be transcribing everything that the teacher says for the student in realtime. 
	Also, we have captioning services for videos or podcasts or any kind of material that you post in your class. Anything posted online. If you post a video, you should provide a transcription of the video. And if you created the video, you are the person who best knows what you're saying, what the vocabulary is, how to spell everything. YouTube captioning is automatic and it does work, however, we would recommend that you very carefully edit what the automatic captioning in YouTube does. We were giving a demonstration of YouTube captioning and we had ‑‑ we had our own captioning on the video, but the YouTube captioning automatically came on and there were curse words in it, which was embarrassing. So you want to make sure to carefully edit what YouTube guesses you're saying in the video for your own sake. And so you can extract a YouTube transcript that is automatically generated, edit it, and then re-upload it for your video. 
	We also have audio description services here at AMAC. And auto description refers to an additional narration track that's for the visually impaired consumer of visual media. So it's describing what's happening on the screen for someone who can't see it. And so there are many options for audio description.  It's still a developing field.  
	One option is to provide a separate audio track that someone can then choose to turn on or off. And that is something that Netflix does. Those are very brief. Those, they try and be ‑‑ they are trying to be as brief as possible because they are trying to squeeze that description of the visuals into the pre‑existing audio track. 
	Another option is to create a separate video that has a more extended description.  And then often you are having to edit the video to pause it to allow for the description to take more time in the video.  And that's something AMAC provides to customers. 
	Another option is to provide a script to students that includes the transcript of all the audio, plus written description of everything that's happening in the video. So you are describing important visuals, you are describing any material that you might be speaking about that's behind you on the screen that a student who is blind or low vision can't access. 
	Another option that we encourage everyone to think about is trying to create content for your course, or content for your students that doesn't need audio description.  So if you are creating a video for your class, if you say aloud what is visually happening, then you don't need to go back and get separate audio description that can be costly or time consuming. So the idea is to build accessibility into your materials by providing that information in an alternative way. So you would describe the visuals verbally and then that would show up in your transcript and it would become accessible to all viewers. 
	And some people had questions about different Learning Management Systems. I think right now we're on Blackboard Collaborate. D2L, CourseDen, Angel, there are all examples of learning management systems.  These are accessible by nature, but they are not automatically accessible. Meaning, if you upload a video to D2L or Blackboard Collaborate, it's not automatically going to have a transcript. You would need to provide that transcript either by uploading it to YouTube and editing their automatic transcript or providing it yourself. 
	So the content provider, in this case mainly the staff or faculty providing the content, would need to make sure that the materials are accessible. 
	Usually at institutions the IT Department or the AV Department can help you put your content into these systems, but you want to make sure that you allow enough time for the integration of materials. And then you allow enough time to then make them accessible. So if you are filming a video for your class and your class starts in August, maybe start working on it now so that you can upload it and then also you have time to go back and get captioning for that video, or audio description for that video. 
	And, again, you want to consider that the future is moving towards multiple devices. Online information is being accessed not just on a computer screen, but on a phone or a watch screen and that people are looking at their online material or their course material in different situations, in transit sometimes, in a noisy environment, while they're multitasking, while they are walking to class and almost getting run over by me in the car on the way to work, so you want to think about simplicity in your document design, flexibility, and accessibility. 
	And then finally, these are the 508 Checklists links to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website for more detailed checklists and guidelines for making all these different file formats accessible. 
	So I hope that gave you a thorough overview of Microsoft Word accessibility, PDF, PowerPoint, and then our captioning and audio description. I'm sorry I didn't have more time to go more in depth with our ‑‑ with those services that we provide, but the people on our Captioning/Audio Description Team has expressed a very eager willingness to provide a separate webinar if there's any interest in the future directly concerning video production, audio description, so anything going forward in the future, if would you like another webinar, they would be happy to help. 
	So I guess now we can open it up to questions if anyone has questions for us about accessibility of documents or materials.  	>> JEFF GALLANT:  Yeah, let's open up the chat for questions.  And it will take a little bit before everyone is able to type in their questions. We'll just give it a couple of seconds.  
	Okay, I'm not seeing too many questions right now, but if you have any questions that you come across later on, feel free to send me an e‑mail at my e‑mail address that I just typed in and I can send them to AMAC or to whoever it is that it needs to get to because I'm sure many of you have questions that go beyond accessibility. 
	I'd like to thank Michelle and Valerie for presenting today.  I know I say that a lot, but I learned a lot about using the different applications of the features and making your documents accessible. And I feel like I can refer people to this archive to get a really good overview on how to. So thank you so much. Let's stop the recording. 
	[Recording stopped]  	>> JEFF GALLANT:  And we'll go to the last slide, which has a survey link. Be sure to click on it. It is clickable in this whiteboard. We will also e‑mail this to you. Your feedback will help us provide more informative, interesting, engaging web events in the future, so please let us know if there's anything you would like to learn, anything you would like to see. 
	Thank you so much to the DI Group, also, and to CART for their captioning.  	>> VALERIE MORRISON:  Thank you, everybody, for setting this up. It ran so smoothly.  	>> JEFF GALLANT:  Oh, yeah. I think that just about wraps it up.  Be sure to click "file" and exit on your way out. And that is about it. Thank you so much for attending and participating. 
	
	CART provided by A La CARTe Connection, Inc. 
	CART Disclaimer:  This rough edit transcript, which may contain missing, misspelled or paraphrased words, is only provided for your immediate review and is not certified as verbatim and is not to be cited in any way.