IT Accessibility Events & Updates for Summer 2018

Website Accessibility Webinar with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights 

Tuesday, June 5, 2018, at 1:00 p.m. - Pruyne Lecture Hall, Fayerweather

Please join us in viewing this webinar, which is part of the Office for Civil Rights' new technical assistance initiative to assist educational institutions in making their websites and online programs accessible to individuals with disabilities.

Coffee & Snacks provided! Please RSVP here. 

Accessible Information Workshops

Please join us for hands-on trainings in creating accessible web pages and documents. It is essential that the information created and shared by the college be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Come learn how to make your content accessible, and learn how accessible content makes life better for everybody!

Accessible Documents and Instructional Materials

Friday June 1st, 10 - 11:30 a.m. - OR - Wednesday, June 13th, 10 - 11:30 a.m.

Come learn the basics of what makes a document, reading, or handout accessible to someone who uses text-to-speech or other assistive technology. We will practice creating accessible Word documents, PDF’s, and Powerpoint presentations.

Accessible Web Pages & Media

Friday, June 8th, 10 - 11:30 a.m. - OR - Tuesday, June 12, 10 - 11:30 a.m.

Learn the basic elements of web accessibility and how users of assistive technology access the web. We’ll show you some easy Drupal tips for creating more accessible pages on the Amherst website. We’ll also take a quick look at considerations for social media posts, as well as video or audio content. 

New Accessibility Checker for CMS

CMS web editors may have noticed a new icon in the text editor toolbar. It looks like this: 

accessibility checker icon
. This is a new built-in accessibility checker for text content being added to the website, and we are running a year-long pilot of this tool. While it won’t catch all accessibility issues, it’s a quick and easy way to check your pages for potential problems. Try it, and let us know what you think!

More About the CMS Accessibility Checker 

Make Files Accessible with SensusAccess

SensusAccess (also known as “Robobraille”) is an online file converter tool available to the entire Amherst community. It can turn a PDF into a Word document, a Word document into an audio file, basically any type of file into any other type of file! It does a very good job at recognizing text in old or messy PDFs of scanned documents. In their new version, you can now upload multiple files (up to 64MB worth) and it will convert them all at once for you.

Try SensusAccess

More about Accessible Information Technology

Questions or Feedback? Contact AskIT!