Accessibility icon against a rainbow gradient; text reads

October 2021: Accessibility Newsletter

Welcome to the inaugural edition of our campus Accessibility Newsletter. Once a month, we'll use this newsletter to update you on accessibility tools and news in order to keep you informed and better able to meet the needs of all members of our campus. It is crucial that we all do our part to stay in compliance with federal accessibility laws and SUNY Electronic and Information Technology (EIT) Accessibility policies, in addition to fostering an environment of inclusivity for all our campus members, and we hope these messages will help to keep accessibility front of mind!

Sign-up for a

Deque Account

Deque University is an online, asynchronous training platform that covers a variety of subjects related to accessibility, as well as providing excellent resources on accessibility topics. SUNY has purchased a full campus license for the next year (until August 19, 2022), so it is important that we make good use of this tool while faculty and staff have access at no cost to our campus.

To learn more about Deque and to request an account, visit the Deque Accounts: Requests and Support page.

Get to know the
Webex Assistant

The Webex Assistant is a tool within the Webex web-conferencing system that provides real-time closed captioning. If the Webex Assistant is enabled by the host, participants can opt to have it visible or not on their own personal view. This means, those who need it due to hearing disability or who simply find it helpful for any reason (background noise, a need to keep volume low, etc) can view it, while those who do not wish to keep visible can disable it.

If you record your session, the closed captions are also saved with the recording. If you choose to make the recording available to meeting participants or others, it is always a best practice to review the closed captions and edit any errors - especially if the error mistakenly communicates any inaccurate information!

icon of Blackboard Ally accessibility rating meter showing full accessibility

Run an Ally Course Report

Blackboard Ally is an accessibility checking tool that is integrated within the Blackboard LMS. If you're new to Ally, it's a great idea to start looking at the rating meters next to any documents that you upload to Blackboard or next to any images that you add to "Items" through the Blackboard text editor. Simply click on the rating meter icon to learn more about the accessibility of that item and, if there are issues, to also view suggestions on how to fix the problem.

In addition to looking at each item separately, it's also a great idea to run an Ally course report on each of your classes. This simple process will give you a summary of all rateable content in the course (note: Ally doesn't currently score video or multimedia content or text created in the text box), as well as breakdowns of the easiest content to correct and the most serious issues that should be addressed. To learn more about how to create an Ally course report, please review the article "Creating an Ally Course Report in Blackboard."

Questions about Accessibility?