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Speaker 1: OTAN, Outreach and Technical Assistance Network.

Melinda Holt: And here's Penny Pearson our presenter for today's webinar.

Penny Pearson: Thank you Melinda and welcome everyone to the session today. I'm going to go ahead and get started here, and hopefully, that will have everything shared and everyone can see everything and you don't need to see the sign in there for that page. There we go. You should see our OTAN logo page. Now, just a little bit about me before we begin as Melinda said, my name is Penny Pearson, and I am a coordinator for distance learning projects here at OTAN, and have been a lifelong advocate for distance and blended learning. I am a product of distance and blended learning. So I believe in it and I believe in accessibility in order to make that happen. So that's what this is going to be all about.

So we're going to have a little conversation here about disability in the world. Why is accessible? Documents and accessible documentation, accessible files, videos, why is that so important? And so these are some stats that come up from the World Health Organization. And when you think about this in a global sense, it's like-- Oh, well, that's not very many people. Until you start bringing it down closer to home, you can see that in the United States, we have over 61 million people living with a disability. And in the entirety of the United States, that's one in four.

In California, it's a little bit less. 23% of adults have some type of a disability in California. And OK, just think about that for a minute, some of it may be very simple and things that you don't regard as a disability, but how many times have you used something like a magnification tool on your computer in order to see very small text? How many times have you used a pinch in zoom on a mobile device in order to see something a little better?

Any number of things can cause us to have an issue of not being able to access things as easily as maybe we could have when we were younger or maybe before we like broke our leg. We all have had times when something has happened that we need some extra help.

So now, how does that look here within California this 23%? If you look at this stat again, this is coming out of resources from CDC on the types of disabilities that happen here within California and what does that actually look like. And when you look at it in terms of mobility, you see the United States is at 12.9% and California is a little less, it's a 10.7% and then it goes on down the line.

So you can see there's some items there that you may go-- Well, that's really not a disability, but it is. When you can't do all of your daily normal functions, you have issues with being able to live independently. You may have some issues of being able to take care of yourself. Maybe or you have a vision issue, but you're correcting it with glasses. So these are the things that is looking at how we stack up against the entire planet in some ways. And it's just for you to be aware of accessibility is very important.

Additionally, accessibility is also the law, OK? There's a long story about how this all came about, and you've heard about 508 in the Rehabilitation Act in Americans with Disabilities Act. And some new ones that you may not be quite as prominent is WCAG. That's what I'll call it, WCAG. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. But you need to understand that this all came about, actually, way back in the 90s where there were really looking to try to find ways to make sure that people had access to, especially with information way back in the early 70s. So that really targeted the federal government to make sure that their electronic and other information was accessible to people with all disabilities. So that was at the federal level.

Well, then Congress changed the law. And they said-- OK, we need to make sure that this is inclusive for anyone who receives public funding. You think about that schools receive public funding and it didn't matter if it was federal or state. So I wanted to be able to show you that this goes back a ways, but it's becoming more and more prominent in our culture because we're seeing more and more people losing cases, law legal cases due to not having their information fully accessible. And I think we're going to see even more and more of these as we move forward with more and more digital work. Working from home, using technologies. And we need to make these resources available to everyone.

So when we look at WCAG, this bottom, Web Content Accessibility guidelines, this is relatively recent in terms of-- it's been started for-- it's been around for a while, but they keep revising it and they keep increasing some of the requirements. But it is considered the web accessibility standard basically worldwide, definitely, within the United States.

So when you hear people saying-- Oh, well, we're 508 compliant and WCAG 2.1 or 2.0. It's just citing those pieces of law that are telling us we need to be fully aware of making all of our content accessible.

So I'm going to ask a little question here and I'd watch your answers in the chat. First and foremost, are you a content creator? Do you create documents, PowerPoint presentations? Do you work on websites? Are you a content creator? I'm seeing a yes and a yes. Susan is a yes, OK? We've got a few folks who haven't answered yet, so just post in there if you're a creator, a content creator.

Second question I'll ask, have any of your colleagues, whether it's a fellow teacher, administration, or anybody else ever questioned you or asked you whether or not you have created that material to be accessible? Has anybody asked? Gloria says no. Shelly, Josh, never. Sherry, yes, OK? Anna, no. Lisa, no, OK?

Now, I haven't asked you where you're from? Devon, yes, you have, OK? I haven't asked you where you're from or anything like that. That's not an issue. But I just want you to understand that for those of you that answered yes to being asked about it, it is because this awareness is becoming more and more prevalent. And this awareness is basically coming from people getting sued about your stuff is not accessible. And there's some very, very famous cases, there's some famous situations that have happened even here within Sacramento. There's been famous cases with food-- fast food restaurants like Dominos, they had a huge case about their mobile app for ordering pizza and they lost basically.

So the business world is going Oh, and education is more and more going Oh, because there has not been really good policies set in place for content creators to understand the implications of not having accessible materials available to their learners. A lot of times the old school way. This is my experience, so I'm only speaking from my experience here.

I was in a University taking classes. One of my students was legally blind. I was there as a student, I wasn't there as a teacher. But she needed accommodation, and it took her six weeks out of an eight week semester before the college was able to accommodate her with providing her with accessible documentation and materials for the course she was taking.

And when you think about that, what message does that send to that student that's trying to finish their school work? So it's becoming more and more prevalent that it is not a reactionary situation. You do not react to a request for accommodation, you need to be proactive and at least show good intent that you are trying to make your materials accessible, OK?

So we talked a little bit about the what in terms of what's happening with disability and how we we're talking a little bit about the why. So at this point, we clear about there's lots of people that have disabilities that need accommodation, which we may or may not be aware of. And secondarily, the why is because it's the law and it's also really good form that we should be doing this, we should be modeling this for everyone.

So at this point, can I get a yes or no that we're ready to go forward. If you have a question, you can pop it in. Got some good guesses here, OK.

So my intent here as to what we're going to be doing today is I want to teach you how to fish, right? Now, I'm not going to take you through step by step remediation for documents. That you can learn within an hour literally.

I want you to understand what tools you'll need so you can fish, so you can create the content you need in order to land the big one with your learners of providing them with all that they need to be completely able to participate in an educational situation, whether you're a teacher, or your administrator, or you're someone who trying to work with teachers to create materials. So I really want to help you talk about and find the tools that you need for your accessibility toolbox, OK?

It's going to be really straightforward. You really need to start with this whole concept of planning. And I've got I get the question a lot of times like-- Oh, my gosh. I've been creating handouts for years. I can't go back and read to all of these. It's going to take me forever. No, don't. OK, from this day forward, once you have the tools and you gain the knowledge, you revise what you need while you're teaching the course. So next week, you're going to be doing a lesson on A, B, and C. Then next week, you're going to use these tools to help you remediate those documents and ensure that they're fully accessible, OK?

So planning is a key part of this. Looking at what you're doing into the future, seeing whether or not those materials are already accessible. If they're not, then you need to make a plan to make them accessible and that's the second piece is the checklist. What am I going to look at? How am I going to look at it? what do I need to do? Where do I need to do it? Can I get some help? Can I do this as a team with a bunch of like-minded teachers? Can I work with all of my ESL teachers to work on documentation that's accessible if I'm now teaching remotely? And I need to provide my learners with documents that they can fill in, fill out, and provide and send them back to me.

So first is the planning piece, the second is the checklist. Making sure that you cover all the basis for what we're going to talk about here in just a few minutes. You're going to have resources. Find those resources. You'll find the ones that speak to you the most. You might be readers. You want to read all about it. You might be visual learners. You want to watch somebody else do it. You might be a listener, where you want to listen to a podcast or a recording and you don't really worry about watching somebody do something step by step, you're going to absorb it in a different way. However you do it, you're going to have to have a bounty of resources at your fingertips that you can go to learn more about it or get additional training. So I will show you those resources as we move along, OK?

So remember, these are all tools for the tackle box. We're going to work on the planning piece, how some things that can help you in doing that, looking at checklists for what you should be looking for, and then finding the resources and training to help you to do that.

Now, I'm going to pause for just a minute on this next slide, and I want you to look at it carefully. Now, I've got my screen expanded to the largest size I can. So if you have resized your window and it's very small, you might want to go full screen to look at this because I really want you to look at this graphic. This is created by the National Center on accessible educational materials. What do you conclude from this image? You can type it in the chat pod. I'll just pause here for a minute so you can really look at it.

So we have a pause here. Melinda, make note of that. We might need to cut that out. Accommodation. So Gloria is typing in accommodations. And when you say that, can you kind of tell me what you're seeing here in terms of accommodations? Braille in large text, captions, reading and hearing. Absolutely, you got it. It's all on the same subject area, it's all about water, right? But they're providing multiple ways to learn, or read, or hear about water, OK?

Now, the reason why I ask you to look at this and I don't know if you looked at the title, because this is an acronym, we're going to be learning about, it's called POUR. I'm not going to tell you what it is right now, but it is a way that those WCAG rules, OK? that remember, I told you before about those guidelines, they could be distilled into this acronym of POUR.

And so we're going to look at a video here on the next slide. So make sure your volume is up or down. If it's too loud or too soft as Melinda said, you control your own audio. So we're going to show this little video here, and just shout out in the chat box if something is going to miss.

Speaker 4: Welcome to designing for accessibility from the National Center on accessible educational materials. Many of the authoring tools available to educators now include options for adding accessibility into the content creation workflow. And standards, such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, provide guidance for how to do so. However, these guidelines often include technical language that can be confusing to even veteran developers. Fortunately, a set of simple principles as captured by the acronym POUR, provide a better starting point.

POUR stands perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. For qualities that define an accessible user experience, perceivable content is presented in a way that it can be accessed with more than one sense. This accounts for both the needs of people with disabilities and those who are accessing the content in less than optimal environmental conditions.

One example is the inclusion of closed captions and transcripts for video content. This will make the video more accessible to people who are deaf and hard of hearing. It will also make it possible for anyone to enjoy the content in loud environments where it would otherwise be inaccessible, such as while commuting on a train or a bus.

Operable content in digital materials can be operated with a variety of input methods ranging from the mouse, to the keyboard, and even speech commands. It also means options for navigation are provided.

If the content of a digital material is marked up correctly, screen reader users can use a keyboard shortcut to bring up a list of headings. Using these headings, they can skip to the desired section without the need to listen to an entire page. Understandable content in digital materials is presented in a logical and predictable way, as the user navigates through its various sections and supports for language, such as explanations of unfamiliar terms are included or easily accessible.

Robust digital materials are compatible across platforms and work well with a range each of assistive technologies. Designing digital materials according to the widely supported standards will make it more likely that these materials will continue to work as intended as new delivery technologies are adopted.

The four POUR principles apply to both teacher created and procured educational materials, whether they are commercially acquired or open educational resources. When selecting or purchasing digital materials and technologies, use the power of the market. Call developers and publishers to add accessibility at the source. This will ensure accessibility is built in, rather than bolted on after the materials have shipped and the process of retrofitting becomes more costly and difficult.

The palm initiative can help you with language you can include in your contracts. By addressing the need for accessibility at the source. With developers and publishers, you add your voice to a national movement that seeks greater equity in education.

The National Center on accessible education materials at aem.cast.org is your go to resource for Technical Assistance. Together, we can develop and use learning materials that address learner variability and provide better opportunities for learning to all. Welcome to designing--

Penny Pearson: Hey, guys. I think I might have jumped us ahead there. Did we get through O and R? Because I had to go in and I turned on the captions, and I think I might have jumped up ahead.

Sherry, thank you for saying that. Because I was thinking, I might have missed one of these things and I didn't mean to.

Melinda Holt: Penny, I think we got them all.

Penny Pearson: We did?

Melinda Holt: Oh, Stacy's saying, no, you.

Penny Pearson: No? OK. OK, that's what I was afraid of. So let me just play that again. So we had understandable, right? Let me just note we didn't hear. Let's try this again from here.

Speaker 4: Well, content and digital materials is presented in a logical and predictable way as the user navigates through its various sections and supports for language, such as explanations of unfamiliar terms are included or easily accessible. Robust digital materials are compatible across platforms and work well with a range of assistive technologies. Designing digital materials according to the widely supported standards will make it more likely that these materials will continue to work as intended as new delivery technologies are adopted.

The four POUR principles apply to both teacher created and procured educational materials, whether they are commercially acquired or open educational resources. When selecting or purchasing digital materials and technologies, use the power of the market. Call on developers and publishers to add accessibility at the source. This will ensure accessibility is built in, rather than bolted on after the materials have shipped and the process of retrofitting becomes more costly and difficult.

The palm initiative can help you with language you can include in your contracts. By addressing the need for accessibility at the source with developers and publishers, you will add your voice to a national movement a greater equity in education.

The National Center an accessible education materials at aem.cast.org is your go to resource for Technical Assistance. Together, we can develop and use learning materials that address learner variability and provide better opportunities for learning to all. Welcome to designing--

Penny Pearson: Sorry for that little hiccup there guys, I thought I'd always had the text-- the captions on. So we may need to fix that here in the recording. But so I just wanted to go over these items here for the acronym for POUR, because this is how I want you to start thinking about working on your contact-- content when you build it.

So these are all pieces that we may not always think about, especially, if we do not deal with a vision or hearing disability. And most of the time, we know about some of these things that we know we should do them, but we don't always know how to do them. And so that's the end of the session today, I'll be showing you those resources to help you understand how to do them.

So here, I love that they put in here for perceivable, especially, the fact that even as someone who does not suffer from a hearing disability, I love the fact that I can use captions to be able to keep on top of a webinar that I'm watching or a video that I'm watching that has closed captions. Just as Sherry was saying in the chat of having that text available, I don't have to be able to hear it in order to understand what's happening within that visual presentation of some kind.

Being able to provide either that closed captioning or provide transcripts. And many people will only provide one and not necessarily the other, or they might have something that auto generates these captions that are really inaccurate or worse yet, they're there translating a word into something you really don't want appearing on your closed captioning on your videos.

And the color contrast is something we very rarely think about, and it's something that is important for anybody who's visually impaired to be able to discern text on a background. There has to be enough of that contrast to make sure that they can read it. And I have seen a lot of times where teachers will definitely rely on color to convey meaning. And someone who's colorblind will not get that meaning. So there has to be we have to make sure that we're thinking about these things of how do we see this information or how do we perceive this information using whatever particular senses we're using to perceive it. So I'm hoping this helps expand it even more than the video.

So the next one was O for operable. So this one is really important nowadays because I don't know how many of you are teaching remotely, but you more than likely have your learner's interacting with you remotely on a multitude of different devices. They could be tablets, they could be mobile phones, they could be tiny mobile phones, they could be tablet mobile phones, the huge ones. They could be a computer at home, they could be in all different places, and you need to make sure that content that you're providing is clearly navigable. I hope that's a word because I just made it up.

Because you saw in the video where he was talking about screen readers do not look at how pretty your content is, they look at the structure of your information. And that's what I mean by properly marked up headings. Because even in PowerPoint, there is a structure. I have a title at the top and I have content in the middle. The screen readers know to read the title first, and then they can read the content in the text box underneath it.

If it's not done correctly, the screenwriters have no way of knowing what comes first what comes second. And so they'll be spitting out all this stuff that has very little meaning to the person who's using a screen reader trying to figure out what the content is on the page. So by properly marking up your documents, whether it's a PowerPoint presentation, or a Word document, or other type of text document, have those headings properly marked so that screen reader knows-- Oh, I can just tell the person. These are the main headings. That could be heading one versus heading two. And the screen reader and the user can then pop to where they need to go.

The create descriptive links. Now, I hope some of you have a way to picture this. Have you ever had a document where somebody paste a URL or a web page address that's probably a line and a half long. You see in those? That's what I've describing as a naked URL, OK? It's this big long http, www dot de de de de de de de de de de slash de de de de slash de de de slash de de de slash. That's how a screen reader will read that type of URL put into a document.

And that's why a descriptive links makes so much more sense because that content can be made in context with what you're talking about. So instead of saying that whole big long you URL, you're actually saying you find more resources on the OTAN COVID page, and the OTAN COVID page is now hyperlinked using that URL. But to the screen reader, it's saying hyperlink OTAN COVID page and not the https, www.OTAN dot di-di-duh dot di-di-duh slash dot di-di-duh dot slash, whatever. So it takes that you URL and makes it much easier for someone who's using a screen reader to understand that description is telling them where they're going.

The second one, the second to the last one here provide sufficient time for interaction and response. This is one I really didn't pay much attention to until I started down this path of working with accessibility, and that is not everyone is clicking on things. And I'm guilty of telling people click on this, click on that. Oh, find this and click on that. Well, if you're on a smartphone, you're not clicking, you're tapping. If you're on a tablet, you're not necessarily clicking at all, you're tapping.

So we have to make sure that we not only understand that those are different ways that people operate these different devices and navigate through our content, we also need to give them enough time to respond. Because on a website, if you have on a computer a website, it can be on this nice big 27-inch screen, but you have your students that are on a 3-inch by 5-inch smartphone and that content doesn't look the same. And you may be going-- Well, here at the top of the page, we have a di-di-di-di-duh, and they have to scroll on their device in order to find that. So you have to give enough time for them to interact and respond on their devices.

This last one, avoid content that can trigger seizures. This is an old hold over. Then does anybody have any idea what that's really talking about? Some of you that may deal with special education students. It's actually the strobe effect.

So in the ancient days, we used to have these flashing items. Shelley, you're right. We used to do these animated things that go blinky, blinky and flash, flash. And for some people that could trigger some type of brain activity or epilepsy that could be very bad. So they really want you to watch that in terms of-- a lot of folks don't even use it anymore, but it's still in the lineup.

So we went through perceivable and operable, right? The P and the O. So now, we go to U, which is the understandable. And this is-- you'd think this would be very straightforward, but sometimes we can get caught up into, especially for specialization in some areas or whatever that our content may not be very understandable, because we're not explaining things very well, we don't have very clear directions on what we're supposed to be doing. So we need to make sure that in how we present our information is very understandable to the end user.

To me, this is more related to websites, but this could also be related to your online course, if you have an online course through a learning management system. It has to have a way that you can explain how do they navigate through it? What do they-- what should they expect? You provide those directions and models, you use plain language free of jargon and cliches as much as possible, and you give them that predictable and consistent experience.

I can give you an example of one class that was online, and there were several different modules for learning. And every single module was different in terms of the interactivity, the type of activities, how it was laid out, what they were supposed to be doing, and it was extremely confusing to students. Whereas the teacher was looking at it like-- Oh, my gosh. If each of my modules are the same, it's going to be so boring. No, it's not boring. It's predictable and we know what the directions are and we know how to get through that material.

So. Those are some ideas in terms of understandable and the last one at the bottom, this one is I found this especially with teachers with that work with English language learners. The ability for them to be able to choose their native language can be very beneficial, but you should always indicate the language that your content is going to be in. And sometimes that's just by virtue of you're teaching English and you're going to say on there we're teaching English, all of our course materials are going to be in English, but you have the option to translate if you need to.

This one I think is usually used more with courses that are a little higher level and they want to make sure that the learners are using the tools and the content is designed by the instructor. So as we get through understandable, then we go to robust.

So now, the robust side of this is, OK. You got to make sure this works with all of these other devices. And I'm sorry, but this is a really hard one to do. How many of you own multiple types of tablets on multiple operating systems? How do you know how to and where to put in metadata to make sure that the content is easier to find in use? This is, again, more for websites, but it could apply to your online course.

How do you perform an accessibility check? Well, we have some tools to help there fortunately. And how can you perform some of these basic assistive technology testing? Do any of you have any learners who have expressed to you that they have a disability, whether it's visual, or hearing, or physical, or mental that they have different tools that they use on a frequent basis? Anybody have students like that right now? You just answered me in the chat if yes or no. Susan says no, OK.

The reason why I even asked that question, is that those individuals who are willing to declare to you that they have a disability are sometimes your best advocate to help you with accessibility and help you perform checks.

I had a student when I was teaching in the classroom, when I was teaching computers and somebody was completely blind, and she came in with an assistant, a note taker. And I thought I had to change my teaching style so I was speaking very slowly to all of my students. Now, you need to go to the menu bar and the note taker finally came up to me and she goes-- Look, you don't have to do that. She can follow along just fine. She was using an assistive technology called JAWS and she was able to navigate that page as fast as I was talking.

And I when I teach, I can talk pretty dang fast. And I was so impressed with her ability. All that we did at the school was to provide her the ability to upload and install her JAWS software on a particular machine. She came to that same machine every time, and we were able to check it with her that it was working correctly. And then all of a sudden, all of what I was teaching was much more accessible to her and she was able to get in and do the work that I asked her to do, yep. So Alisa, so this may be very interesting to see what these resources that I offer me may help you in the areas that you might need help, OK.

So we've gone through that one acronym of POUR, OK? We got that through AEM, and I want to give you some of those resources that we have on that site. So these are links. And again, these will be sent to you via email or they'll be posted. Don't worry, you'll get to it. And basically, this site has got a lot of quickstart, so let me go to their quick start here first. See if we can bring that up. And just tell me in the chat, are you seeing the AEM National Center unaccessible educational materials on the page? OK, great.

So this site is a definite go to site because they provide you with all kinds of information at all different levels. Not only do they have these quick starts about getting answers about what you need in the classroom and things like that, they also on the left hand side here have an online course.

So if I click on that, they have a whole system here of helping you make your curriculum accessible. So they talk about different types of modules that they offer. So you can see here, I'll try to scroll through the slowly so it's not too overwhelming here. So they talk about accessible educational materials, they talk about how to make your documents accessible, how to locate caption videos and make your own.

So this site is a really first stop for most of you. I think it will really help you to understand what they offer and they provide a lot of training. So they have some of the quick starts here on terms of using AEM. If I go to some of their other pages here, they have resources under access and distance education for resources for access and distance education. And they have activities, they have webinars, their AEM Cafe is very good where they have webinars the first Thursday of every month, and they have a link here where you can register.

So they have accessibility practices for teachers here, and they're really working hard to help teachers and everyone understand why the accessibility is so important. And again, they have a whole section under creating accessible documents. So they talk about that with providing you PDFs. They also have other resources. Here's designing for accessibility with poor, here they have their videos.

So you can see, there's lots of places where you can learn the ins and outs. And I just want to make sure that you have this as part of that tool kit that I was talking about. That you have a place that you can go. And these are big overarching big topics. And we're going to get more specific here about some other tools in just a minute.

So we talked about some of these learning tools. We go back here. And we'll go to the next slide, which we'll talk a little bit more about another acronym called SLIDE, OK? We're going to POUR and we're going to SLIDE. And we're going to slide into pour or something like that.

And this is basically, again from accessible educational materials and you talked about-- we talked about POUR in terms of that big picture trying to conform the WCAG standards. But now, we're looking at a little more with slide, which has to do a stylist, links, images, design, and empathy. OK and you go well. OK, how does all of this line up? They do actually line up with POUR, but will open one of these so you can see what it looks like.

This is a PDF. Let me make it a little bigger here for you that might be on smaller screens. Hopefully, that's a little more helpful. So it talks about here we're going to get started with accessibility for documents. Talks about using all of these elements of slide, styles, links. And they talk about using headings, and they tell you about how you can find it in your as best practices and the links and the best practices. Again, instead of using click here or learn more, make it some meaningful text that's descriptive and unique.

As scroll down images should include text alternatives. Many of us we put in pictures because we're visual and that picture just makes perfect sense to us. But if I can't see it, I need to understand what you're trying to convey with that image. So using text alternatives is important.

So here, design is perceivable and predictable. So you want your learners to be concentrating on that material. They give you some best practices, they provide some links to the color contract analyzer-- contrast analyser. And again, this is very nice for working in an online environment, such as a course or maybe you're building a website to make sure that you have high enough contrast for those that are visually impaired.

So you have this empathy drives design, and they give you some nice questions to be thinking about in this process of using slide, OK? And again, there are other links on the PowerPoint that you'll be getting. That is additional information on presentation accessibility, and then that page that I just showed you resources for access and distance education. This is all going back to accessible education materials. So it's the one of the as far as I'm concerned, the best resource areas for educational materials and accessibility, but that's not all they are.

So I'm going to ask another question, you can just put it in the chat. How many of you use Microsoft Office? The either the Office Suite or the Office 365 online? Yes, yes.

OK, so here are some resources to help you with that part of your journey and putting tools in your tackle box. And there are lots of resources and information here on using the Office Suite of materials. And even if you don't use Microsoft Office as a document creation tool, the concepts are very good here.

Now, if you use Google documents, they're working very hard to add more accessibility resources. They have an extension called grackle that they're working on to help you check your documents for accessibility. But honestly, if you understand these concepts we've talked about with poor and with slide, you can use the documentation or those concepts within Google Docs to help you build an accessible document.

So this is regarding Microsoft, OK? And Microsoft has an Accessibility Resource Center for people with disabilities. And they have learning paths, that help you understand how to use Microsoft Office 365. They even have a whole community based on accessibility and what are some additional things that are needed in the future. And they have a great training site and they have training modules on accessibility. I'm going to go ahead and open up the training modules here. I hope I get the right page.

So on this page, I am on a learning site on Microsoft's learning site. And the first one that comes up here is one that I would highly recommend as accessibility fundamentals. It's two hours and 25 minutes, it's meant for a beginner for the Microsoft Office suite and it also covers Microsoft Office 365.

If I open this up, and again, you'll get these links, so don't worry about trying to remember where this is, they'll be in the PowerPoint. But you can at least see what is happening in this course and understand what they're covering. And if anybody is working on any type of Microsoft certification, that's what these little guys over here mean, you're getting a certain number of their points to toward those certifications.

So in here, I'm looking at the questions about what is accessibility, language and etiquette, inclusion, knowledge check, and a summary of resources. That give you the time it takes you to complete this module. And it happens to be a bunch of modules, so they're all stacked together.

That was the first one. The second one is on features and tools. And it's how you can use the key accessibility features that are built right into Microsoft and Windows 10. And I will tell you, this is-- if you use these and you follow the recommendations of the tool, you will create accessible documents the first run out, OK? It's straightforward. And this course will show you all how to do that, and it also shows you how to create accessible content. If you're not using the computer application on your computer for office, you can do this also in Microsoft Office 365 and their online resources there.

And they told-- they have additional information on digital accessibility that's for mobile apps and the web. So this gets more into assistance and help for those of you that are using, especially online courses. And believe me, if you have an online course, you really want to make sure that it's fully accessible for your learners, OK?

So we've talked about POUR, we've talked about SLIDE, we've talked about some of the resources and there's many more on the resource page and the PowerPoint here, I don't have to go through and show you all of them. And so we need to talk about your tackle box.

So this is something-- this is-- the whole concept of having to make a lot of things accessible, it can be very daunting to an individual teacher. It's just like I said earlier, it's like-- Oh, man. I got a year's worth of these handouts. There's no way I can do this, so I get it. Don't worry about everything that you've done in the past, today is a new day. You have new tools and you have new ways to look at this as a process and a project. And that's where you go back into that whole piece of planning. You need to do your research on what do you really need to do. And for those of you that are in a fully digital environment, you're going to have to really look at that course that'll tell you so much more about your accessibility issues.

You need to start small, OK? Just work on perhaps documents that you're going to posterior online classroom, or perhaps you're going to put it in a Google Drive, or perhaps you're going to share it out on SharePoint and work in teams and that means, you don't get your other teachers together and it help to explain to them why accessibility is so important. So you're going to share that workload and then you can share the result with everybody. They all have now accessible documents.

When you make this plan, the thing they really have to show here is that you really don't have to worry about yesterday because for most anybody who is looking at trying to catch somebody not doing something correctly on accessibility, intent means something, OK? Does that make sense? Intent, you're showing that you have a plan that you're working in groups or whatever that is to ensure that your content is accessible. Intent does mean something.

So now, when you try to get that tackle box full. We're looking at, we understand the why. OK, we know that this is important. We know that it's the law. We understand if we follow POUR, that's going to align us well with these WCAG requirements. We get to find the tools for the how.

So whether you're using Microsoft Office or you're using something else, you can use the AEM to help you to find those additional tools, look for other like minded teachers. Especially, within your own peer group wherever you're at, you can then work together to make that plan. You follow the plan, you share that plan, d and you're going to be showing those good intentions that you're really working on making your content accessible, OK?

So the last one here, I think this is my last one is those webinars. And these are longer hour long recordings that coming-- this coming to terms the meaning of accessible goes much, much deeper into the world of accessibility, and then creating accessible documents and slide decks is going to get you closer to the how. And it's done on a level that I think will provide everyone with a good baseline for the how of making documents, PowerPoint presentations, slide decks, et cetera fully accessible.

So the session here today is meant to talk to you about, we know that accessibility is important, we know that it because it's the law and now we need to work on some tools that can help us to identify how we can approach, making all of our future work aligned to way keg standards using POUR that-- Remember that acronym for perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, and then also for SLIDE. Does anybody remember the acronym for SLIDE? I'll let you look that one up.

But for now, I hope this gives you a large oversight an overview of accessibility, why it's important. And some resources and tools to add to your accessibility toolbox to get you started on the path to ensure that all of your materials are fully accessible for an equitable, resource, and learning environment for all of your learners. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and end. Thank you all very much for joining me today.