Chemeketa has formulated and proposed a new policy, 1762: Digital Access Policy. 

Representatives of the college presented the proposal to the Board of Education at their regular meeting in April.

“Implementation of [this] college policy will allow students and community members who use assistive technology to access college web pages, documents, course content and exams and media in an equally effective and integrated manner,” said Director of Student Accessibility and Testing Karen Alexander at the public board meeting. 

In short, Chemeketa has chosen to enshrine a guarantee that any instructional, public or employee facing digital materials will be equally accessible to those with disabilities like hearing loss or low vision, amongst others. 

“For those students…having things made accessible to begin with, having them natively accessible, is not only helpful but it’s a lifeline. It’s also really helpful because…even students who don’t have a disability benefit from making materials accessible,” said Digital Accessibility Advocate Heather Mariger in an interview with Tempest. 

When asked for an example of digital accessibility in the public board meeting, Alexander said, “It could be as simple as appropriate captioning, so making sure that all videos in the classroom or that are published through our youtube are appropriately captioned.”

“Putting captions on things…studies have shown that it helps students, all students, to understand that material and retain that material. And [studies have] found that 96% percent of students without hearing difficulties use captioning when watching [instructional] material,” said Mariger.  

Mariger described a host of tools that are already incorporated into student learning at Chemeketa. Specifically, the many features available from a software called YuJa, which integrates with Canvas so students and faculty may utilize the Panorama application. One feature of Panorama is the Website Accessibility Widget. 

“It has a lot of really great tools. Not just for faculty but also for students. You may have noticed if you’ve gone into Canvas lately that there’s a little [purple] button down at the bottom in the right hand corner, it’s got a little [purple] accessibility guy. If you click on that, it has all kinds of tools that you can use to completely customize the look of your Canvas pages. You can change the font, you can change colors. It has built-in automatic ones where you can say, ‘I’m dyslexic’ and it’ll change things for you that way,” said Mariger. 

“It also can do math. It can actually take handwritten math formulas and convert them to a formula that can be read by a screen reader.”

In addition, Panorama makes available alternative formats for all documents and pages within Canvas. 

“If they want to download that document or the Canvas page into a [different] format, they can download as a PDF, they can download as HTML, they have one that’s called a gradient reader that changes the color scheme as it goes through, so it’s really great for people with reading differences like dyslexia, because it…keeps the eye, it makes it much easier for the eye to follow. It actually can download things as audio. You can download it as an Ebook. You can download it in braille,” explained Mariger. 

Instructions on how to generate alternate formats in Canvas can be found here, and information on the Accessibility Widget can be found here.

A University of Connecticut study done in 2015 found that 35% of students who had their disabilities addressed in K-12 education through an Individual Education Program do not seek out accessibility services in post secondary education. And, a 2020 study conducted by EDUCAUSE found that 44% of students with disabilities do not register or request support from their institution’s accessibility services office.

While the policy is still under consideration, the college has spent years ahead of the curve. Chemeketa’s accessibility standards could be considered well above average compared to other community colleges in Oregon. 

“Portland Community College and Chemeketa are the only ones that have dedicated accessibility folks. Lane just got somebody. But a lot of the schools are really really small. Some of them don’t even have an instructional designer. A lot of them are just barely starting to build that,” Mariger explained.   

In the same board meeting, Interim Dean of Academic Innovation Layli Liss said that, “Work on digital accessibility has been taking place for over five years…we have laid the groundwork to provide resources to our faculty, as well as our staff, that will be needing support.” 

On April 24, the Department of Justice issued a rule that updates federal law regarding equal access to government resources for those with disabilities. Specifically, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, or ADA. The ADA is a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, and Title II specifically applies to state and local government agencies. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits the same from agencies that receive federal funding. 

“Unfortunately the rule…when all this came down…there was no internet…and all these rules were written with the built world in mind,” said Mariger, “with electronics there was only the TV, so they started talking about captions and things like that.”

And so, the DoJ is bringing the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 into the digital world. 

“They’ve been working on revising the rules to specifically include digital materials [and] digital access to cover what the world has become. Because the internet has become so critical to everyday life,” Mariger said.

“And the rules for accessibility means the students need to get [digital materials] at the same time as other students. They can’t wait or have to rely on others to be able to work with them.” 

Another tool purchased by the college is a Google add-on called Grackle, which is an accessibility tool within Google Workspace programs like Google Docs or Sheets. 

“…It’s the only way you can make an accessible PDF with Google. It’s a tool we purchased an institutional license for. And it’s a great tool. It does all the checking and it fixes things. It basically walks you through fixing everything,” Mariger described. 

Not only this, but basic features within Google and Microsoft Suites are available for use to ensure accessibility. For example, those with vision impairments may consume digital content by using a screen reader. Using the numbering and list features, as well as the Styles feature that applies consistent formatting throughout the document, make it possible for a screen reader to recognize that the document has moved on to the next section, rather than reading through a list without breaks, and to be able to jump to a specific section heading. Also, there is a feature that allows document creators to include alternate text, or alt-text, to an image so that screen readers will describe the image. 

While Student Accessibility Services is responsible for ensuring students with disabilities are provided accommodations directly, the Center for Academic Innovation, or CAI, has been working to provide Chemeketa employees the resources they need to create instructional materials with accessibility in mind. 

“The Center for Academic Innovation has largely been in an advocacy role and a provider of resources…so that instructors would be on a more universal level. As they build out their online classrooms or their course shells, that they’re doing so mindfully and incorporating the accessibility practices that you need in order to make sure that assistive technology is working,” said Liss in an interview. 

“Heather [Mariger] is our expert. Everyone else, because they’re technology facilitators or media specialists, they have to know this as part of their job. So they have received training as well, and they are also mindful of supporting digital accessibility. It’s built into the work that they do already.”

Positions within the CAI include two technology facilitators, a media specialist and two faculty support staff amongst others. In her role as Digital Accessibility Advocate within the CAI, Mariger supports faculty in a number of ways. 

“I’m an instructional designer, so I help faculty…make their courses more usable for all. My main focus is helping make [the courses] more accessible. So I work with faculty to teach them…basic things that they can do to make their courses more accessible really easily,” she said. 

In addition to making herself available for one-on-one accessibility support, Mariger has created the AIM for Accessibility campaign to bring awareness to digital accessibility and provide simple steps employees can take to ensure equal accessibility to their digital materials with the tools available to them. 

“It’s a dart board and each segment…is one aspect. The goal is to meet in the middle and do it all. But everything you do is a step towards a middle, it gets you on the board,” Mariger said. 

“Each term I do a workshop on basically the Aim for Accessibility. I go through the segments and…I show [employees] how to actually use a lot of the tools…[and] show them how to use the accessibility checkers.” 

Mariger’s passion for digital accessibility surpasses the needs of Chemeketa to reach most, if not all, of the community colleges in Oregon. 

“There is a statewide group called the Oregon Community College Distance Learning Association…[and] there is a subgroup of the distance learning association dedicated to [digital] accessibility. Heather is co-chair of that committee, so as a group that committee has had multiple projects around identifying resources. They too have created a package of self-paced online courses that a staff or faculty member can take,” said Liss

In addition to these training modules, OCCDLA played a major role in the shift to YuJa. 

“YuJa, the new tool that we just took on…that was a result of OCCDLA. We get funding from the state, we write a grant…and last year we pilot tested YuJa. We did research and pilot tested [it] with several schools and decided to make the change over. That was part of our work with OCCDLA the last couple of years,” Mariger said. 

Looking into the future, Chemeketa has three years to become fully compliant with the new federal rule update. This means all digital materials produced by Chemeketa for students, employees and the public must be equally accessible.  

Regarding this, Liss said, “We know that we have three years to comply with those federal regulations. So across those three years there will be a great deal of training, there will be conversations…we ask [faculty] to assess their readiness for this. We ask them to identify their pinch points…and then we come up with a game plan to address what their concerns are.”

“Chemeketa will write its own guidelines. And our guidelines are often digital themselves, so there can be hyperlinks embedded in them to provide further details,” said Liss. 

“The procedures will probably say something to the effect of, ‘instructors must develop an understanding of the accessibility guidelines. Instructors will be accountable to understanding those guidelines and implementing them…when they create digital materials.’ It’ll just sort of be that general, ‘instructors are going to be required to understand and know how to implement…the guidelines. And if you need help, go to the Center of Academic Innovation.’” 

Mariger said,“It’s a collaborative effort. I think CAI, Layli and I, will be focusing in on the education materials, and Student Accessibility Services will be…more overseeing the marketing, the non-educational, like registration, counseling, and that type of thing. It all needs to be the same, we need to be all on the same boat. Hopefully we can all work together, but divide and conquer too so that we are sending the same message.”

“I think mainly…just we need to get people on board, we need to get people trained,” said Mariger. 

This new policy is being considered by the Board of Education and the college is seeking approval in the May 15 regular board meeting.