Over the past year, SUNY Oswego has moved forward on a number of initiatives to improve the college’s stance on digital accessibility and inclusion.
The first project was to revamp the oswego.edu website to ensure all webpages comply with current accessibility legislation, as well as improve the experience for individuals with disabilities. Overall, the goals of the projects are to recognize that digital accessibility is essential to ensuring equity and inclusion, both on the web and in the classroom.
The campus recognizes that infrastructure and faculty support is needed to truly engrain accessibility within the fabric of the college. Today, accessibility touches nearly every aspect of campus life, including course materials, the college website, software and the numerous tools in curricular and co-curricular programs, services and activities.
Faculty Accessibility Fellow Program
To address this need, the campus is implementing a Faculty Accessibility Fellow Program. The program was recommended by the Workgroup on Accessible Teaching to promote a culture on campus that values inclusivity, equity, and accessibility. The proposal is modeled on both the Assessment Fellows and the Writing Fellows programs. Recently, Provost Scott Furlong announced the 2019 Fellows. The group includes:
- Sandra Bargainnier, Health Promotion and Wellness
- Marcia Burrell, Curriculum and Instruction
- Fiona Coll, English and Creative Writing
- Casey Raymond, Chemistry
- Allison Rank, Political Science
- Serenity Sutherland, Communication Studies
- Michele Thornton, Business
Rebecca Mushtare of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching and the graphic design program will lead the fellows, who will start their fellowship in January.
Google YouTube activation
Another important aspect to improving the campus accessibility culture is a need to ensure students, faculty and staff have tools that make accessibility easy to implement. To address this, the campus activated Google YouTube on Nov. 5. YouTube is available through campus Google accounts. Access to YouTube forwards accessibility initiatives by making it possible for individuals to create accessible videos due to features such as:
- Closed captioning of videos
- Automatic transcription of videos
- Keyboard navigation on mobile versions
Workshops for using the captioning features of YouTube will be offered during CELT’s Winter breakout sessions.
For more information on the faculty fellowship and using Google YouTube, visit the SUNY Oswego Accessibility website. Anyone with questions on the faculty fellowship can contact either CELT’s Rebecca Mushtare (rebecca.mushtare@oswego.edu) or Campus Technology Services’ Sean Moriarty (sean.moriarty@oswego.edu). Those with questions on Google YouTube can contact the CTS Help Desk at help@oswego.edu.