Course Accessibility: Teaching Students who are Blind

Since students cannot use sight to access your course materials, those must be provided in formats accessible to screen reading software and/or electronic refreshable braille technology.  Electronic text which is usable with both screen reading and refreshable braille technology is the standard method of access in post secondary.

CAL advisors will request information about and access to the materials in your course to determine if they are already accessible or are in need of adaptation to alt format.

This may include the following: 

• Course outline
• List of required textbooks/ readings including text/article titles; chapters/sections; page #’s.
• Dates readings are assigned and reading due dates
• Assignments and their due dates
• Handouts that will be used/shown in class
• Lecture slides
• Other required text-based or audio-visual materials
• Image description for complex pictoral content
• Specific names/locations of any online portals that you use to deliver required course materials to your student including D2L.  Permission from you to access to the D2L course space is typically required by a CAL Advisor.

The college works with CAPER BC, the provincial alt text organization for colleges for conversion into an appropriate alternative format. Where there are materials that CAPER cannot source or adapt --or do so quickly enough-- the CAL alt-text team will do that work when it is provided by you (or a contact you assign from your department) provided there is enough time to do so.

This process can take a substantial amount of time, so we kindly ask you to prioritize giving us access to these.