Learn how UCF is utilizing various technologies to efficiently scale online course accommodations for students with disabilities.
The Center for Distributed Learning (CDL) is the central agent for distance learning at the University of Central Florida (UCF). CDL partners with our Student Accessibility Services (SAS) office to ensure online course accessibility. An important issue at UCF is scaling immediate need accommodations This session will focus on how UCF is combining several innovative technological solutions to address scale.
Data: 7
Tapping Institutional Data: SAS has granted CDL access to securely access student accommodation information. Pairing this information with existing institutional information has provided great insight into past, current, and future enrollment trends. This data has proven very useful in demostration the growth of students with disabilities taking online courses and providing as much time as possible to apply accommodations.
Services:
CDL is utlizing several vendor products to help scale accommodations.
• OCR: Piloting ABBYY Recognition Server to bulk OCR PDFs for screen reader and text to speech users.
• Captioning: Using Vimeo API to bulk submit videos to 3play Media for captioning.
• Investigating the integration of JWplayer into the LMS to provide close caption ability for third party YouTube videos.
Custom Tools:
In addition to contracting with vendors, CDL has made the strategic investment to build faculty and staff facing tools.
• A custom LTI called Quiz Extensions for the Instructure Canvas LMS. This provides faculty an easy bulk process for applying testing accommodations to every quiz.
• UDOIT scans HTML course content for accessibility issues according to WCAG 2.0 standards. This product is open source; however, it is currently limited to the Instructure Canvas LMS.
Applying the aforementioned solutions has increased UCF’s ability to provide immediate need accommodations and improve faculty attitudes toward the accommodation process.