Why is Accessibility Important?
Bowdoin strives to be inclusive to all members of our community. Considering accessibility enhances the experience of all participants. Increasing all students’ comfort level and ability to participate—regardless of established disability—results in a more inclusive and more productive learning environment for everyone. These suggestions were developed with common disability accommodations in mind however, the fundamental rationale is that Universal Design strategies benefit all learners. (Many instructors are already implementing these recommendations, see one tip below.)
Suggestion 4: Enable captions for all presentations and videos.
Examples:
- PowerPoint, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google slides have built in closed captioning.
- Panopto provides captioning which can even be edited.
Benefits for students:
- Ensures inclusivity and enhances the viewing experience for everyone.
- Enhanced comprehension and retention through visual reinforcement, improved focus and concentration (especially in noisy environments), clarifying pronunciation or unfamiliar vocabulary.
- Captioning is especially beneficial for English language learners and students with hearing impairments, or neurodivergent learners (e.g., ADHD, dyslexia).
- Accommodation addressed: Captioning required.
Positive side effects for instructors:
- Save transcripts for future reference (e.g. in Teams and Zoom).
Instructor tip: As a non-native speaker myself, I used to hesitate to enable captions during presentations. I worried they wouldn’t understand my accent. But guess what? Speech recognition technology has become fantastic! Now, I use PowerPoint’s automatic captions all the time, and participants have actually thanked me for it! They say it helps them follow along much better. (Dr. Tina Chong)
Previous Accessibility Tips:
- Suggestion 1: Help Student Prepare for Class
- Suggestion 2: Help Students Stay Engaged and Focuses During Class
- Suggestion 3: Collaborative Notetaking
Lesley Levy, Keona Ervin, and Tina Chong from the Accessibility Task Force are excited to share a series of accessibility suggestions for your teaching. Each Teaching Times newsletter for Fall 2024, they’ll present a new tip. Try it out in your class and share your experiences and insights with us. Email [email protected] with your accessibility practices. Let’s work together to create a more inclusive learning environment for all students.