51AV

Design your course with accessibility in mind, so it is usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. When you consider accessibility from the start, you avoid time-consuming content remediation and instead create materials that are flexible, engaging, and welcoming from day one. Starting fresh means you’re setting yourself and your students up for success.

Start by exploring the page with the six essential steps to guide you toward digital accessibility.

Next, review your Blackboard to identify areas of strength and areas for improvement.

Next, review the Digital Accessibility Checklist to focus on specific areas identified in your course accessibility report.

Prior to uploading files to Blackboard or sharing by email, ensure your documents are accessible to all users from the start.

Microsoft

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As a final step, run the Microsoft to ensure your document is ready for all learners.

Microsoft documents that have good accessibility will seamlessly convert to an accessible PDF. Ensure you utilize the "Save As" option during the conversion process.

Adobe

Panopto

Panopto, Towson's preferred video hosting platform, offers captioning and transcript features available to all 51AVfaculty and staff.

Stream

Stream is a video hosting platform that is part of Towson's Microsoft 365 platform, available to all Towson faculty, staff, and students. Users can enable autogenerated captions for uploaded video content.

• Review (.docx)

VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a media-based presentation and discussion tool. Towson's VoiceThread licensing includes closed captioning. Every audio or video recording will be captioned automatically. Just like Panopto and OneDrive, captions should be reviewed for accuracy.

Transcripts

Microsoft Word (available through Microsoft 365) includes a Transcribe feature that automatically converts spoken audio into text. This is a simple way to create accurate written versions of recordings for accessibility, note-taking, or caption preparation.