Creating accessible online classes for students who are deaf/hard-of-hearing

Next fall, I am offering my first fully online course.  It will include, among other things, narrated MSPowerPoint lectures and YouTube videos that students will watch and respond to.  Now, it just so happens that this course of mine is about social work practice with populations with disabilities.  Therefore, you can imagine my somewhat red-faced embarrassment when a potential student wrote to me and asked me how I would accommodate her hearing impairment - and - wait for it - I had no idea how to respond.  Luckily, I had two amazing resources at my fingertips and within 6 hours, I had more information than I needed to know about how to make an online course accessible to students who are deaf/hard-of-hearing.

First, I spoke with the wonderful Mary Gribbins over at Salem State University's Disability Services Office.  You can find them by clicking here.  Mary let me know that although I am the "test case" on accessibility of online course for this population of students with disabilities, that she and her office would be right next to me, helping me to figure it all out.  As it turns out, the office will work with me on using the top rated (click here for more on that) speech-recognition program "Dragon Naturally Speaking" so that I can dictate my lectures for transcription (whilst simultaneously narrating my MSPowerPoint files for posting online) - OR - she will work with her office's work study students in order to get materials transcribed for my student.  As long as I begin the process in July, we should be fine for a September start date.  Mary also shared with me that YouTube videos often have a captioned option, and instructed me to look in the lower right-hand corner of the screen to determine if this was present or not. So helpful to know.

Second, I posted a query on this topic on the national MSW Education Listserv (you can subscribe to that by clicking here). Within minutes (literally), I had many responses.  I learned that while Dragon Naturally Speaking is not always all that it is cracked up to be, it is pretty good.  I heard from professors that have had to fight with their University administration departments to get transcripts - and from professors who just type out all of their transcripts.  I got technical advice, but most of all, I found camaraderie and encouragement.  This is the best that the Internet - or as my nephew calls it perhaps more appropriately the "Interwebs" - has to offer in the way of community-building.

I'll keep you posted on the project as it unfolds - but the bottom line is this...while this will allow for my student who is hard-of-hearing to access the online experience - this may also work well for people for whom reading vs. listening will be better for their learning style.  There you have it, folks, the power of universal design in instruction.