Welcome to the Accessibility edition of the Academic Technology Newsletter! This month we are highlighting practical and conceptual methods on incorporating Universal Design principles into your courses. This includes STEM courses, how to request captioning for the video and audio files, setting the language into your PDF documents, and so much more!

Be sure to join us for the third CSUN Digital Equity Day on Friday, April 19th from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm in the Jack & Florence Ferman Presentation Room in the University Library and live on Zoom. This event features Stephen Than, 2023 - 2024 Doctoral Student AT Equity Fellow, giving the keynote presentation "Part-Time CSUN Faculty’s Experience with Canvas During Their First Semester," as well as faculty presentations, followed by the AI Jam Award Ceremony from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm.

Did you know that Canvas now allows instructors to upload student submissions received outside of Canvas? Learn more about how to utilize this function to simplify your grading.

Don't miss our Faculty Coffee Hour on Wednesday, March 27th in person in Sequoia Hall, room 250A, or via Zoom. Guest speakers from Africana Studies and our captioning provider, Verbit, will lead a conversation about ensuring our accessibility efforts honor our commitment to inclusion and belonging.

Want to connect with us? Join our Zoom Drop-in Hours, make an appointment, or send us an email. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more Academic Technology updates.

The STEM Accessibility Canvas course is available to all faculty and staff and contains accessible design how-to instructions to make your course materials accessible for all students. 

If you're incorporating AI into your teaching, we invite you to submit a proposal to present or participate in a panel discussion at CSUN's third Digital Equity Day.

This new feature allows instructors to upload an assignment on the student's behalf, while keeping the ability to assess, annotate, provide feedback, and keep submission history in Canvas.

When we enhance instructional materials to make them accessible to all students, how do we ensure the changes align with our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging? 

Verbit, the company that captions instructional videos and creates audio descriptions, has multiple checks for accuracy. And the Verbit employees' human touch on every video catches things a computer might miss. 

CSUN presents many opportunities to learn about cultures other than our own and broaden our perspectives. Faculty Development offers a self-paced program around unconscious bias and different series that emphasize equity in teaching. 

PDFs should specify the language of the content, but often don’t. Setting the language helps assistive technology to present the content correctly. However, selecting English sets the primary language but does not convey dialects, creoles, pidgins, or African American Language.

CSUN instituted the first minor in Disability Studies in the CSU, which is one of only a few programs in Disability Studies nationwide. Emerging out of the civil rights and disability rights movement, Disability Studies examines the social, cultural, historical, and political structures that inform disability.

Are you ready to spread your accessibility efforts further and share accessibility knowledge and techniques with your students? An organization called Teach Access will help.

Accessibility is a practice – like yoga, meditation, or martial arts, or gardening. Like other practices, accessibility is something you return to frequently. Where are you in your accessibility journey? 

As we're approaching the end of the semester and getting ready for finals, this workshop provides a step-by-step overview of building and using quizzes in your Canvas course.

Do you use PDFs in your course? This training by the Universal Design Center covers the fundamentals of creating accessible PDF documents using Acrobat Pro DC. 

If there are topics you would like to see covered in a future newsletter, if you'd like to give us feedback on your experience with instructional technology, or if there are training topics you are interested in, let us know with the Academic Technology Feedback Form.