- XR Access: Virtual, Augmented, & Mixed Reality for People with Disabilities - XR Access is a research consortium dedicated to fostering and leading a community that prioritizes creating, sharing, and learning about XR and accessibility endeavors. Their mission is to adapt current technologies and envision future technologies that put accessibility first while sharing informative resources to bring awareness to the lack of accessibility in the XR field. On their site, you will find a plethora of projects, research, and resources related to their goals, as well as information about upcoming events hosted by the organization. XR Access: Virtual, Augmented, & Mixed Reality for People with Disabilities
- NaturalReader - NaturalReader is a free-to-use text-to-speech reader that can convert PDFs and other formats into spoken audio. The free version of the website allows you to access any of their free voices unlimitedly. There is limited use (by character) of the premium and plus voices with the free version, and those are the voices they will default you to use when you create an account. For more detailed information on what the free plan includes, see their FAQ site linked here. NaturalReader Website
- Educational Game-based Learning – Zotero Resource Library - This collection of game and gamification resources is very extensive. It has been developed and shared by Josh Yavelberg - Chief Executive Officer / Chief Solutions Architect, Flying Cloud Solutions, LLC. Zotero is a free tool that helps to create and share scholarly resources. Educational Game-based Learning - Zotero Resource Library
- Subtitle Horse - This is a free tool for those who want to create subtitles or be able to edit the captions within a video. It is a user-friendly platform that works well on PC, Mac, and mobile operating systems. Subtitle Horse
- Equity Unbound - Equity Unbound is an emergent, collaborative curriculum which aims to create equity-focused, open, connected, intercultural learning experiences across classes, countries and contexts. Equity Unbound is for learners and/or educators at all levels (e.g. undergraduate, postgraduate, professional development) who are interested in exploring digital literacies with an equity and intercultural learning focus, in an open and connected learning environment. Equity Unbound
- Shawn Jordison’s YouTube Playlists of Accessibility Tutorials - These introductory accessibility courses will take you to the next level, even if you are a beginner. Learn the basics of file remediation for PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, and other tools. The YouTube video playlists show how to make files accessible. The playlist that teaches about PowerPoint cover topics such as Slide titles, using a theme, tables, links, alternate text, reading order, and other accessibility elements. The playlists are freely available through YouTube, however, viewers are also encouraged to access to optional practice documents available through an add-on purchase. Info about Shawn Jordison's accessibility courses are available on his website and his YouTube channel linked to below provides direct access to a number of video playlists. Shawn Jordison's YouTube Playlists of Accessibility Tutorials
- Getty Images - Find the perfect royalty-free image for your next project from the world's best photo library of creative stock photos, vector art illustrations, and stock photography. Embed Getty images for free for non-commercial purposes. Here's a collection of Getty images classified under inclusivity. Getty Images
- BCcampus - Search for quality Open Educational Resources (OER), including open textbooks, offered in a variety of digital formats; the first step in adopting open educational resources. Search by subject and download them to your computer. BCcampus
- GorillaPDF - GorillaPDF is a free online converter from different file extensions to PDF and vice versa. It enhances productivity by providing easy-to-use, intuitive and reliable services for converting, compressing, merging, and encrypting PDF documents. It also features a free online OCR service to extract text from images as well as a PDF reader. PDF tools are often useful to make a PDF file more accessible. GorillaPDF Keywords: accessibility
- EasySub - AutoSub is a free online automatic subtitle generator. Simply upload videos and automatically get the most accurate transcription subtitles and support 150+ free language translations. EasySub
- WordTalk - WordTalk is a free text-to-speech plugin for Microsoft Word. It serves as a text reader and creates a spoken version of the document which it reads back to you while highlighting the words. Create an audio file of text (as it appears in a document) to speech (wav or mp3) using a simple WordTalk feature. A "best free text-to-speech software of 2021." Features Speaks entire document, paragraph, or word Highlights the text (word, paragraph, or document) as it is read Talking dictionary Adjust the word highlight colors Change the voice and the speed Convert text to speech (.wav or .mp3) WordTalk is available only in Microsoft Windows. WordTalk Keywords: Microsoft, Word, Text to Audio
- Making Accessible Word Documents – Coaches of Tech - Microsoft Word has evolved into a tool that allows you to make accessible documents. The built-in tools in the latest version will check your accessibility before publishing it. Accessibility is important for everyone. Proper use of headings, lists, image alternative text, reading order, and contrast will make documents that everyone can interact with. Apply "Proactive Accessibility". This document, put together by Coaches of Tech, can help you create new documents and/or update existing documents. Following the tips in this document can help you make accessible documents to share with your students, colleagues, and others. Making Accessible Word Documents - Coaches of Tech https://coachesoftech.com/making-accessible-word-documents/
- 13 free sources for diverse stock photography – Walls.io blog - One way to combat the lack of diversity in the media we create is to use more inclusive stock photography. This collection of free stock photography sites will help you ditch the standard stock photography and locate more diverse visuals for your projects. ”Stock photos don’t just illustrate a subject matter but also shape the perception of communities. They can combat stereotypes and help shape realities. Or they can help preserve the, often discriminating, status quo.” 13 free sources for diverse stock photography Keywords: Creative Commons, Diversity, Inclusion
- World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) - The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops international standards for the Web: HTML, CSS, and many more. The W3C is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards. Led by Web inventor and Director Tim Berners-Lee and CEO Jeffrey Jaffe, W3C's mission is to lead the Web to its full potential. The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops standards and support materials to help understand and implement accessibility to make websites, applications, and other digital creations more accessible and usable to everyone. -- from W3C website World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
- How to Add ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Captions into a Video in Panopto - The Panopto video platform features Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) to vastly ease the process of adding closed captions to video lectures and instructional materials. Captions can be generated for newly created and existing video content in Panopto. While the accuracy of the ASR generated captions is not perfect, the Panopto editor allows for streamlined editing and publishing of captions. Panopto is a lecture-capture program that is freely available and also adopted by many educational institutions. How to Add ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Captions into a Video in Panopto Keywords: captioning, subtitles
- oTranscribe - Have you ever had to transcribe an audio content before? You probably had to be listening for 5 seconds, switch to a notepad to type out what you just listened to, and that over and over again. With oTrascribe, you can do the listening and typing in the same environment. With some customizable key combination, you do the following, pause/play the loaded audio, fast-forward, go back a few seconds, etc. If you have some audio or video transcription to do, you can check out Otranscribe. oTranscribe
- Web Captioner - A free web-based service that uses automated captioning and displays a real-time transcription in your browser. It works best in Google Chrome, on your personal computer and if you have an external microphone, though it also works well with your computer’s internal microphone as long as the environment is quiet and you are within a couple of feet from your computer. Web Captioner seems to solve a lot of the issues that are present with captions for accessibility. Web captioner puts the caption window in the hands of the user. Instead of being locked to a slide presentation, the captions appear in a separate window. The captions are text-based, not open (or burned in) captions if the screen is being recorded. This is helpful for many reasons: Burned-in captions cannot be corrected afterward for spelling or grammar. Burned-in captions conflict with viewing closed caption. ...
- Live Captioning Without A Budget - The tools featured on this page from George Mason University offer options for streaming live captions using automatic speech recognition (ASR). ASR tools use artificial intelligence to convert speech into text. In recent years, educational technologies have started to integrate ASR into their platforms as a way to develop content that is more accessible and inclusive. Tools that are highlighted include Google Slides, PowerPoint 365, and Web Captioner. Live Captioning Without A Budget Keyword: caption
- HelloTalk - HelloTalk is the ultimate for foreign language exchange. Learn a language by chatting with native speakers around the world. HelloTalk is an app that combines social media with education and collaboration. It connects individuals from all over the globe in a single app and helps them learn language from each other. The idea behind the app is, if a Japanese person wants to learn Nepali, and if a Nepali person wants to learn Japanese, they can connect in the app with each other and help each other learn their language. HelloTalk
- Otter.ai - Generate rich notes for meetings, interviews, lectures, transcripts, files to create video captions, and other important voice conversations with this AI-powered assistant. Some of the features available with the free version include transcriptions in real-time, identification of speakers, generate summary keywords & word cloud, and 600 minutes of transcriptions (per month). Otter.ai
- Present with real-time, automatic captions or subtitles in PowerPoint - PowerPoint for Office 365 (PPT365) can transcribe your words as you present and display them as live on-screen as captions in the same language you are speaking, or as subtitles translated to another language. This can help accommodate individuals in the audience who may be deaf or hard of hearing, or more familiar with another language, respectively. Present with real-time, automatic captions or subtitles in PowerPoint
- Directory of Learning & Performance Tools – Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies - This searchable Directory has been compiled by Jane Hart. The directory contains over 1,000 entries categorised into 35 headings. This directory compliments the website that shares the Top Tools for Learning compiled from an annual survey sent out through the Centre. Directory of Learning & Performance Tools – Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies
- 8 Best Free PDF Editors - This list of the top 8 free PDF editors help you to add, edit, and delete text and images, fill out forms, insert signatures, etc. Because not all of these free PDF editors support the same features, and some are restricted in what you can do, remember that you can process the same PDF in more than one tool. Some of the editors listed work right in a web browser, so all you have to do is upload your PDF file to the website, make the changes you want, and then save it back to your computer. Typically, an online editor isn't as fully featured as its desktop counterpart, plus the file is exposed to the internet (which might be of concern if it contains sensitive content). It is important to also note that PDF files are often less accessible than other ...
- Assessing the Accessibility of Web 2.0 Tools - Wendy Torres gave a presentation titled, "Assessing the Accessibility of Web 2.0 Tools," at a recent Online Learning Consortium (OLC) event. The session was very engaging and she shared many ideas about ways to evaluate Web 2.0 tools and apps. Her materials are linked to below. In particular, the scorecards that she developed are very useful to evaluate tools and apps. Assessing the Accessibility of Web 2.0 Tools - slides from Online Learning Consortium (OLC) presentation Resources from Workshop Web 2.0 Tools Score Card App Score Card
- Siteimprove Accessibility Checker - The Siteimprove Accessibility Checker is your tool to evaluate any web page for accessibility issues at any given time. It provides intuitive, visual feedback about your content by highlighting detected issues right on the page and gives you: an immediate overview of your page’s accessibility issues clear explanations of how they affect your users plus specific recommendations on how to fix them All analysis is done entirely within the Chrome browser, allowing secure evaluation of password-protected or non-public pages, multi-step forms, and dynamic content. Siteimprove Accessibility Checker
- Hearing Impaired Students and Online College - Excellent opportunities exist for individuals with hearing impairments to attend college and universities. However, students with hearing impairments often have difficulty gaining the full benefits of learning in a traditional classroom setting. With evolving learning accommodations and assistive technologies like captioning and transcription services, online college offers students with hearing impairments a more accessible, flexible, and personalized educational experience. Check out this website to learn about new and exciting ways that learning accommodations and assistive technologies are creating learning opportunities for students with hearing impairments. Hearing Impaired Students and Online College Keywords: caption, live-caption, accommodation, assistive technology
- CleverPDF – 27-in-1 Free Online PDF Tool - CleverPDF.com Offers 27 PDF tools online for free, which helps you create, convert or edit PDF documents. You can convert PDF to other document formats, such as PDF to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, eBook formats, image formats, and more; create PDF from Office and images. It also allows you to combine or split, compress PDF, add watermark or pages numbers to a PDF file, manage PDF security, OCR, and many more PDF tasks. No software installation is required. With this web tool, you can enhance your productivity when working with PDF documents. This tool will also help to relieve some accessibility issues that arise with PDF format. CleverPDF - 27-in-1 Free Online PDF Tool Keywords: Productivity Tools
- Teleprompt.me - The web's only voice-powered teleprompter. Drop in a script and it automatically scrolls as you speak. This voice-controlled teleprompter uses Chrome's built-in microphone to scroll as you speak. Creating a text-based script for your videos also helps to later generate captions, ensuring your video's content is accessible to the widest possible audience. Teleprompt-me
- Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition - The goal of the book Accessibility Toolkit - 2nd Edition is to provide resources for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open textbook—one that is free and accessible for all students. This resource was created through a collaboration between BCcampus, Camosun College, and CAPER-BC. Authors: Amanda Coolidge, Sue Doner, Tara Robertson, and Josie Gray. Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition Keywords: accessibility
- CUNY Accessibility Toolkit for Open Educational Resources (OER) - This guide was created by the City University of New York (CUNY) to assist Librarians, faculty, staff & OER developers create accessible content and accessible Open Educational Resources (OER). On this guide you will find information on: Creating Accessible Content: Platforms: Evaluating your OER site: VPATs: Voluntary Product Accessibility Template CUNY Accessibility Toolkit for Open Educational Resources (OER)
- A Rising Tide: How Closed Captions Can Benefit All Students - Closed captioning is higher education is generally geared toward students with some kind of disabilities. However, regardless of having any disability, studies suggest that most students in today's colleges and universities use closed captions at least some of the time, among whom about 90 percent find them at least moderately helpful for learning. Specific ways in which closed captions can aid learning include comprehension, accuracy, engagement, and retention. A Rising Tide: How Closed Captions Can Benefit All Students Keywords: accessibility, captions
- Sejda Web – Online PDF editor - Sejda Web is a quick and simple online service with no installation required to create, edit, and manipulate PDF files. Functions available include editing, merging, converting to other formats, OCR, splitting PDF files, and more. Sejda Web - Online PDF editor Keywords: PDF document editing
- Accessible Course Design - This site helps instructors and instructional designers implement strategies for accessible course design. The goal is to provide information that is easily understandable to individuals who are not necessarily technology-oriented and may not know much about working with people with disabilities. The tips on this website have been written to accommodate students who are deaf or hard of hearing, use screen readers for those with vision impairment, have learning or other disabilities, or are color blind. Many of these tips also improve learning for all students, which is called Universal Design. According to the creator of this post, "this site was created to help instructors and instructional designers implement strategies for accessible course design. The goal is to provide information that is easily understandable to individuals who are not necessarily technology-oriented and may not know much about working with people with disabilities." One ...
- Read&Write for Google Chrome™ - Makes documents, web pages and common file types in Google Drive (including: Google Docs, PDF & ePub) more accessible. It’s designed to help everyone engage with digital content in a way that suits his/her abilities and learning styles. A range of support tools to gain confidence with reading, writing, studying and research, including: Text-to-speech to hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud Text and picture dictionaries to see the meaning of words explained With speech-to-text, dictate words to assist with writing, proofreading & studying Word prediction offers suggestions for the current or next word as you type Collect highlights from text in documents or the web for summarizing and research Create and listen to voice notes directly inside of Google Docs Simplify and summarize text on web pages to remove ads and other copy that can be distracting Read&Write for Google ...
- Equity Maps - Equity Maps is an iPad app to trace and assess interaction, performance, and involvement in class or group discussions. Chart & record the interactions to graphically illustrate levels of participation. Use in class discussions to encourage equitable dialogue, promote wider collaboration. Questions this app can help you address include: Is everyone sharing air-time? Is someone with many ideas a little too quiet? Is there someone who can't keep quiet? Is the teacher doing most of the talking? Equity Maps Keywords: diversity, inclusion, gender equity
- Captioning for Google Slides - Google Slides can automatically add real-time captions to live Google Slides presentations. It's really quite easy: Start your presentation Click "CC" in the bar on the bottom to start closed captioning. Captions will appear as you speak. Captions will not include any punctuation. At this time, the captions are not saved. Learn more about Captioning for Google Slides. Keywords: accessibility, real-time captions, caption, captioning, transcript
- Universal Design for Learning (UDL) from the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) - Universal design for learning (UDL) is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. It is described by the National Center for UDL as, "a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs." In designing a course with UDL in mind, an instructor wants to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to learn. Universal design for learning (UDL) - CAST Keywords: UDL, accessibility
- Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) - Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance) provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use the materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants. The program emphasizes social justice and anti-bias. The anti-bias approach encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives. The Social Justice Standards show how anti-bias education works through the four domains of identity, diversity, justice and action. Teaching Tolerance Keywords: diversity, global citizenship,
- Notability - This note-taking app helps to combine handwriting, photos and typing in a single note to bring projects to life. Use a wide range of note-taking and sketching tools to capture every detail. You can even add and annotate PDFs. It’s the perfect place to create and organize work, school, and life's information! Experiment with different tools to create beautiful, hand-crafted notes and sketches. Continue to scale, rotate, and recolor your ideas and sketches until your notes are just how you want them. Once you're done, organize your notes with ease so you always know where to find what matters most. Zoom in on the specifics, or explore the big picture by combining sketches, outlines, and type. Now you are ready to share your notes with colleagues or study partners through Google Drive, AirDrop, Email and Dropbox. Stay organized and up-to-date wherever ...
- Web2Access (Disabilities and Tests) - Web2Access is a resource that aims to help those making decisions about their use of freely available 'Web 2.0' interactive and collaborate e-learning tools. The website provides rankings based on its accessibility. Web2Access Web2Access (Disabilities and Tests) - tests the accessibility of Web 2.0 tools based on different disabilities. Using the results, they then rank the tools from most accessible to least accessible based on that specific disability being tested. Keywords: Accessibility, Websites
- W3C Markup Validation Service - W3C Markup Validation Service can check the markup of Web documents. This website provides information about accessibility and links to other validator tools for checking specific aspects of the HTML code of a website. W3C is the gold standard of accessibility standards. W3C Markup Validation Service Keywords: Accessibility, Websites
- SUNY FACT2 Online Accessibility - This website created by the Online Accessibility SUNY Faculty Advisory Council on Teaching and Technology (FACT2) Task Group to provide recommendations and tips on making software and educational resources more accessible and to ensure they comply with Section 508. SUNY FACT2 Online Accessibility Why Does Accessibility Matter? Keywords: Accessibility, Websites
- YouTube – Automatic transcriber - Converting the audio content of a digital file into text can be done through YouTube. Audio is converted automatically to text using Google speech recognition in YouTube. After uploading a video file, YouTube processes the video (time depends on the length of the video) and subtitles or closed captions are automatically generated. The speech portion of your video will be transformed into closed captions that are displayed in the video player when viewers use the CC button. Below are links to explanations of how to use the transcription function in YouTube. How to transcribe video file into text with YouTube Video explanation of how to transcribe with YouTube Related resources: YouTube – Edit Captions YouTube - Contribute Captions and Translated Content in YouTube Keywords: accessibility, video, transcript, captioning
- YouTube – Edit Captions - When creating videos, it is important to use captioning so that the information is accessible to everyone regardless of disability. You can edit or remove the captions of your YouTube video by using the captions editor tool. Edit Captions in YouTube Videos Related resources: YouTube - Automatic transcriber YouTube - Contribute Captions and Translated Content in YouTube Keywords: video, accessibility, captions, captioning, transcript