Workshop 1: Remediate Existing Course Content for Accessibility

Bring one piece of digital content and leave with it more accessible than when you arrived. This hands-on workshop is designed for faculty, staff, and students who want to improve the accessibility of their digital materials. This may include a syllabus, Word document, PowerPoint presentation, PDF, announcement, or other instructional or communication material. You will learn one practical accessibility strategy and apply it directly to your own content with facilitator support.

Following a brief overview of Ally's accessibility report and remediation features, participants will spend time during the session working on their own material and improving accessibility. You will identify one improvement, apply it to your content, and gain practical skills and confidence to create more accessible digital resources in the future.

The Practice Challenge

To make the most of this workshop, attendees should bring one piece of digital content that could benefit from improved accessibility. During the workshop, you will use one practical accessibility strategy to improve the content with support from the facilitators. You will leave with a more accessible resource and a plan and process to apply to future remediation challenges. 

Topics will include the following to guide your own remediation: 

• Clear, impactful writing
• Titles, subtitles, logical headings, tags
• Descriptive alt text, accessible fonts and colors, captions, transcripts
• Tables
• Descriptive web links  
• To PDF or Not to PDF? When to use them and when to avoid them

Prepare in Advance

To make the most of your hands-on time, we recommend reviewing these accessible-first resources before the session:

• MS Office Training Video or presentation

• Google Workspace Training Video or presentation

• Rethinking PDFs - The Accessibility Shortcut You Need recording or presentation. Both are available from the Kirwan Center's Digital Accessibility Training & Professional Development site. 

This session will be facilitated by Ada Crutchfield, Instructional Design Specialist and Dr. Susan Biro, Manager, Online Learning. Open to all faculty and instructional staff.

RSVP

To RSVP for this workshop, click "Sign Up" in the myUMBC event and be sure to add it to your calendar! Registered participants will receive a calendar invitation from the event host at least one week before the event.

At least 5 registrations are needed for this session to proceed as scheduled. The session will be recorded if 5 or more people attend and the link will be distributed to everyone who registered.

JOINING THE SESSION

This workshop will take place in a Google Meet virtual conference room. Enter the workshop up to 15 minutes before the start time. Visit the myUMBC Event post and select the "Join Online Event" button to join the Google Meet session.

Prior to the Event

1. For the best viewing experience, we recommend using Chrome, Brave, or Firefox, preferably the most recent updates to those browsers. Closing any unnecessary browser tabs will help conserve your bandwidth. 
2. If this is your first time joining one of our webinars, please review the requirements to use Google Meet. Learn how to connect your audio & video,change/blur your background, and use reactions. You can also review the accessibility support including live captions.