CSU Moving the Needle Challenge

Accessibility logo with half a pie graph with four sections from red (Need help!), orange (A little better), light green (Almost there), and green (Perfect). A large text says CSU Moving the Needle Challenge.

 

About the Challenge

The CSU Chancellor’s Office Academic Technology Services and the Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) is hosting the first-ever CSU Moving the Needle Challenge, a 5-day system-wide competition dedicated to fostering equitable and inclusive digital learning environments for all students. The goal of this challenge is to motivate CSU faculty and staff to improve the accessibility score of as many digital instructional materials as possible through Ally. 

The challenge will begin on Monday, April 4, 2022, at 8 a.m. and will conclude on Friday, April 8, 2022, at 11:59 p.m. Each morning, the Chancellor’s Office will provide data on the number of remediated course files for all participating campuses and each campus will be able to view their current ranking among the other participants.

A monetary prize will be awarded to the campus who produces the highest number of course files with improved accessibility scores per FTE. 

Challenge Objectives:

  • Produce accessible instructional materials so that all students can access and engage with course materials regardless of their ability.

  • Implement Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles in classrooms to address diverse learners and give all students an equal opportunity to succeed.
  • Generate Ally awareness among CSU faculty and staff.

 View the Leaderboard

What is Ally?

Ally is a tool that benefits all students by improving the accessibility and usability of course materials. Ally seamlessly integrates into your LMS and automatically checks the accessibility of course content, provides feedback and step-by-step instructions for how to remediate specific accessibility barriers, and gives students access to alternative formats of course content. Learn more about Canvas Ally.

Ally provides you feedback on the accessibility of your course files with the colored dials that appear next to your file names (Red, Orange, Light Green, and Dark Green). These indicators are only visible to instructors within a course. 

 

In Fall 2021

Students used Canvas Ally to download 53,775 alternative formats.

Tagged PDFs were the most popular alternative format with 33,139 downloads.

Faculty used Canvas Ally to fix 4,101 files in 669 courses.

657 faculty launched the Course Accessibility Report.

This event is inspired by Blackboard Ally’s Fix Your Content Day Challenge.

CSUN Challenge

Leading Colleges

1. Tseng College

2. College of Humanities

2. College of Social and Behavioral Sciences

Leading Departments

1. Central American Studies

2. Criminology and Justice Studies

2. Nursing

Most Improved Colleges

April 6: David Nazarian College of Business and Economics

April 5: Tseng College

April 4: David Nazarian College of Business and Economics

Most Improved Departments

April 8: Gender and Women's Studies, Political Science, and Special Education

April 7: Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Theatre

April 6: Africana Studies and Philosophy

April 5: Civil Engineering and Construction Management, Political Science, and Theatre

April 4: Environmental and Occupational Health

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Get Ready

Move unused files out of Spring Canvas courses. Box is a great alternative for files you may want in the future but aren’t using this semester.

 

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This may not help your students directly, but it will help you focus on current files and get better use out of your Course Accessibility Report.

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Need help!

Make sure all your images in Canvas have alternative descriptions (alt text). From your Course Accessibility Report, select “Content with the easiest issues to fix.” If you have images without descriptions, they will make up most of the top of this list.

Blind and visually impaired students rely on these descriptions to understand the information conveyed by the image. Other students may use them if, for example, the image fails to load; your description will be displayed instead.

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A little better

Give all of your PDFs titles and specify their language. You’ll need Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (free to CSUN faculty). 

  1. Select File, then Properties, and add a descriptive name in the Title field.
  2. Select the Advanced tab, Under Reading Options, for Language, select English (or the language of the document).

How to add PDF Title and Language Guide (pdf) 

Your title is shown at the top of the PDF (in a tab), and helps all students navigate and access content quickly, especially if they have multiple files open.

Setting the language helps students who use assistive technology like screen readers (NVDA or VoiceOver), so the software can work more efficiently and pronounce words correctly.

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Almost there 

Keep describing images. Scroll down in your Course Accessibility Report to the line “The document contains images without a description;” select it to see a list.

  • For Microsoft Office files, select the Review tab, then the Check Accessibility button for a list of images without descriptions. Visit Microsoft Office Accessibility Checker Guide.
  • For PDFs:
    • Select the Tools tab. Under Protect & Standardize, select Accessibility.
    • From the menu on the right, select Set Alternate Text (then OK). The tool will identify each image and prompt you to enter a description.
    • Use the arrows to navigate, then Save & Close when you are finished.

The document contains images without a description guide (pdf)

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Perfect!  

Look for any remaining issues marked “Severe” (with an exclamation point in a red circle). In nearly all cases, the file will need to be removed and replaced. Your Subject Specialist at the University Library may be able to help you find a more accessible digital copy. 

If Ally says “The document is scanned but not OCRed,” you can try these steps:

  1. Find the file in the course where students access it (page, module, etc.).
  2. Select the down arrow, then Alternative formats.
  3. Make sure OCRed PDF is checked and press the Download button. (The download may take a few minutes.)
  4. Compare the OCRed file to the original. (This is a critical step. The Ally software attempts to fix your file. Sometimes the computer's version changes the content of the file.)
  5. IF the content of the OCRed version matches the original, open the little dial next to the file. Use the “Drop file to upload” or Browse options to replace the original with the OCRed file.

How to Convert Scanned Documents to OCR Guide (pdf)

Many of these files are damaged, so replacing them gives all your students access to the content.

“Scanned but not OCRed” PDFs are basically images. Blind and many visually impaired students do not have access to their content. Other students can’t search the file, zoom in, or easily copy quotes or other text.

Why OCRed PDF is not available in the Alternative Formats? (pdf)

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Universal Design Center Offers

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Want to learn more? Have questions? Need advice? email udc@csun.edu or call us at (818) 677-5898