Newsletter Archive

Many of you might be familiar with the IT Help Center. It's often the first place you contact when you need assistance with technology here at CSUN. Did you know that you can follow us on Twitter? We use Twitter to introduce new products and many of these products are available to CSUN students, faculty and staff at no additional cost!

Products such as:

• The Adobe Creative Cloud (Students, Faculty & Staff)
• The Microsoft Office Suite
• Matlab
• myCSUNbox
• LinkedIn Learning
• and much, much more!

Don't miss out on these great resources! Follow us on Twitter @csunhelpcenter! 

Technology News

Alternative testing accommodations, such as extended time for testing, are provided to ensure that a student's performance is representative of their mastery of the subject and not their disability. 
DRES and/or NCOD student(s) must request their accommodations each semester in SAAS and faculty are able to review the student eligible accommodations.
Read More About Alternative Testing Accommodations for Final Exams

Introduction

Accessibility is a practice – like yoga, meditation, or martial arts, or like gardening. You wouldn’t attend one yoga class and expect to be done. You wouldn’t plant seeds once and expect a garden. Like other practices, accessibility is something you return to frequently. You build on previous efforts. Where are you in your accessibility journey?

Preparing the Soil

Attend accessibility training. The Universal Design Center offers not only live training, but on-demand resources through our website, including past recordings and all handouts on our Training Videos and Resources page. Archive materials you aren’t actively using. Move them to Box, or to a “sandbox” Canvas course. 

Planting the Seeds

Looks for images in your course content, then look at the alternative descriptions (alt text) for them. Alt text should be between two words and two sentences and describe important visual information from the image. If the image contains words, include them in the alt text.

Watering and Pruning

Is a more accessible version of a file available? The library can assist you to find (or make) a more accessible digital copy of course materials. If you can’t find the source, reach out to your University Library Subject Specialist. They may have ideas about where to find the original, or maybe even a more accessible version? 

Enjoying the Harvest

Sooner or later, you will have a student with accommodations. Accessibility steps usually expedite the work to provide individualized accommodations. 

Technology News

Content created using LaTeX CAN be fully accessible. Put your LaTeX content into Canvas or export it to other formats for accessible results. The Academic Technology team is developing resources to support you. 

The STEM Accessibility Canvas course contains accessible design how-to instructions to make your course materials accessible for all students, including an explanation for Canvas Pages, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat PDF, LaTeX for STEM, and examples of describing simple and complex images. 

This accessibility course is available to all faculty members and department support staff who assist with making the course materials accessible. 

To self-enroll in the course: https://canvas.csun.edu/enroll/3PETAH 

Technology News

When we enhance instructional materials to make them accessible to all students, how do we ensure the changes align with our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging? 

Cultural competence is “the ability to understand, appreciate and interact with people from cultures or belief systems different from one's own” (DeAngelis, 2015). Understanding that everyone’s need may vary and by having cultural competence and ensuring accessibility, we reduce the barriers and marginalization for all individuals.  

We know we need to put the A for accessibility in our JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, inclusion). But how do we put the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) in our accessibility efforts? And how does CSUN support this work in ways that are equitable to our faculty too?

Be sure to join us at noon on Wednesday, March 27th in person in Sequoia Hall, room 250A, or via Zoom for our Faculty Coffee Hour. Guest speakers from Africana Studies and our captioning provider, Verbit, will lead a conversation about ensuring our accessibility efforts honor our commitment to inclusion and belonging. Refreshments will be provided.

Technology News

Are you ready to spread your accessibility efforts further and share accessibility knowledge and techniques with your students? An organization called Teach Access will help.

The organization Teach Access is a partnership between the technology industry, higher education, and other stakeholders. Their goal is to graduate more students into the workforce with accessibility knowledge and skills, especially in technology-related disciplines.

For faculty, Teach Access offers training, an annual fellowship, grants, and a curriculum repository of open educational resources to help you incorporate accessibility into your courses. 

For your students, Teach Access offers monthly webinars, and have held Study Away events with Silicon Valley partners. The hiring toolkit and skills information are intended for their industry partners, but students may find them informative as they prepare and apply for jobs after graduation. 

Professor Dave Moon (Art and Design) and Dr. Li Liu (Computer Science) are liaisons to Teach Access. 

Technology News