Whose Responsibility Is It?

With so many resources at available, it can be confusing to know who is responsible for providing accessible content, materials, and assessments for a course. 

What does SAILS do?

• The Student Accessibility and Inclusive Learning Services (SAILS) is the connection between the student and the instructor.
• SAILS acts as an advocate for the student and helps facilitate their accommodations.
• Any additional services from SAILS is decided between the instructor and them.

What should the instructor do?

• The instructor is the lead on all accessibility issues in their course.
• Instructors will collaborate with SAILS and students to apply the requested needs.
• As the subject matter expert, the instructor is responsible for ensuring adequate alt text and long descriptions, whether they do it themselves or receive assistance.
• The instructor is responsible for ensuring that their materials are accurately closed captioned.

How can the Teaching and Learning Center help?

• Provide resources and guides
• Support training for SOLS instructors and their TAs
• Help you apply accessible practices in your class, either online or in person.

Where should I start?

Here some tips for getting started with basic alt text and closed captioning accessibility accommodations: 

Alt Text and Long Descriptions

• Alt text is a written description of an image or graphic that can be accessed by a screen reader
           Should be less than 120 characters.
• Long descriptions are for images that have greater amounts of information or detail, such as graphs and diagrams. 
           Description should be contextual, providing only information that supports the student in understanding the material or doing an assessment.

Closed Captioning

• Displays audio as text.
• Be mindful that automatically generated Closed Captioning will need to be edited for accuracy.