Accessibility in the Classroom Part 2

This is part two in a series of posts about accessibility in the classroom.  As I mentioned in the previous post I want you to keep this phrase on your mind when you are developing and teaching your lessons.

Don't Assume! Ensure!

Don't assume that there is no one in your classroom, audience or stakeholders group that needs accessibility options because the majority of disabilities and impairments are invisible.  Instead, ensure that you a providing for those needs ahead of time.

In the previous post I talked about classroom audio systems and the need for them in every classroom.  In this post I want to cover some of the other tools to use in you classroom along with your classroom audio system, or to provide for the needs of your stakeholders while you are waiting to get one.  I have witnessed the benefits of a classroom audio system and would hesitate to ever go back to a situation without one.

Video

Many of you use videos in your classroom to supplement your instruction.  These may be videos of your lessons you share with students as an extra resource, as part of a flipped lesson or to enhance what you are teaching by bringing in an expert with knowledge or expertise you may not have.  Whatever the case and however you are using video in your lessons or presentations, how is it impacting your audience with hearing issues?  Chances are, they are not getting the full benefit from them because they may not be able to clearly hear what is being said or there may be extra noise that is detracting from the presentation.  

How do you get around that issue?  

The first step would be to turn on the closed captioning feature.  Most videos have them already and should become a part of our daily instruction.  Those that don't have an issue might find it distracting at first, but eventually will not even notice them if they don't need them.  But this goes well beyond your students with hearing impairments, it can benefit your early readers as well.  If students are able to hear and see what is being said, they can improve their reading comprehension as well.  It can also help with language acquisition for english learners.  Not convinced?  Here is a link to more information from the CaptionSync website.  

But what do you do if there are no captions available because it is one you created?  You can actually add captions to your video.  Youtube provides a few options for getting that done.  Here is a link to the help article for Adding Closed Captioning and Transcribing your videos.

Slideshows

Adding captions will help out with videos, but how can you improve your slideshows?  Believe it or not, there is a way to caption your presentations.  When you have a presentation open in Google Slides, you can begin the presentation, then hit the closed caption button in the presentation tools.  You will need to enable your computer's microphone and after that once you start speaking it will show your words at the bottom of the screen.  The drawback to this setup is that captions are not stored, but it provides a great tool to help your audience in the moment and can have the same benefit for English Learners and Early Readers that was mentioned before about captioning videos.  

I don't know about you, but this is something that I think can significantly change learning in the classroom.  

Another possibility with your slideshows is sharing your speaking notes.  These can be extremely beneficial to students that are English Learners and have other reading challenges because they are getting the information in multiple formats and have a greater chance of comprehension.

Another possibility for those that don't have classroom audio systems would be to use Google Hangouts Meet and allow students to use their headphones in the meetings.  It is a work around, but not one that I think I would employ in my own classroom.  Not because it isn't a great tool, but because I would like a few more features and some time to test it before I wholeheartedly endorse it as an option in this case.

Another option with your slideshows is to share your speaker notes with your students and have them use the screen reader tools.  This would work during an asynchronous lesson or when a student needs some extra review.

The bottom line in each of these instances is to plan ahead, make them available beforehand so that your students don't have to ask for them.  If a student has to come to you after the lesson to get these resources, you are putting them behind everyone else.  If you have them ready during the lesson, they can stay on track and be as prepared as everyone else in the class.

Flipgrid

Some of you may not be familiar with Flipgrid.  Flipgrid is a video discussion platform that allows you to post videos, and your students or audience can share and post comments.  Flipgrid has built in it the option to add closed captioning as mentioned before with YouTube and Google Slides.  The added benefit here is that you can post your video and instructions ahead of time in your "Grid" for your students.  This would allow those that need or want captioning to have it available to them ahead of time or they could pull it up while you are providing the instructions.  In this case you are meeting the needs of multiple learners and not singling them out or drawing extra attention to them.  To give you an example here is a link to the grid I created for the podcast and blog.  Feel free to leave a comment and test it out.



We all think we are fully prepared for each lesson, but if we are not taking the time to cover the needs of all of our students we truly are not prepared.  I look forward to adding to this topic as we go forward.  If you have ideas to expand this conversation share them in the comments, on social media or using the flipgrid response section mentioned above.

Thank you for reading The Cluttered Desk.  You can find me on Twitter @jasonbengs.  Please feel free to comment on the post and share your ideas with me.  You can also leave a response on The Cluttered Desk Flipgrid page if you would like to leave a comment on this or any other post or podcast episode by going to https://flipgrid.com/03fa4e01 If you found any value in this post, please share it with others.