Campus Accessibility Statement

Creating a Culture of Outreach: Faculty & Staff

Building a Proactive Approach to Course Accessibility

Providing accessibility for students is something that can be done regardless of disability and is best practice when designing a course. It’s possible to begin making all documents, Powerpoints, and more accessible to all students now–then when you import a course to the next semester, all of those changes will remain. Use this page for tips and tools as well as information on the process for receiving accommodations.

Student Accommodations: Enrollment to Graduation

  • Students will meet with the Academic Success Center to document their disability.
  • The Academic Success Center will be the entity to decide any and all accommodations.
  • Frequently used accommodations:
    • extended time for tests
    • quiet area for testing
    • accessible texts (audiobooks/text-to-speech)
    • record lectures
    • note-takers or note-taking apps
    • computer or tablet allowed in class for note-taking
  • Students will be given a letter of accommodation that they will bring to you–at this point, all accommodations legally will need to be provided.
  • Faculty are required to respect students’ privacy and work with students individually.
  • Faculty are not allowed to ask students about their disabilities unless the student discloses it.

Please contact the Academic Success Center with any questions – Michelle Blank: mblank@goshen.edu

Services offered:

  • tutoring
  • student alert meetings
  • accessible texts
  • scanning
  • captioning
  • assistive technology

Ways to Promote Equity

Promoting Equity

  • Use the Guide on Accessibility to ensure all digital materials are accessible
  • Use the “Accessibility Checker” for all Microsoft and Google documents/PowerPoints/excel spreadsheets
  • Make sure all PDFs are accessible (if you can highlight the words in a PDF, likely it’s accessible)
  • Supplemental web-based applications such as conferencing systems and anti-plagiarism software should also be accessible to all students
  • Provide live captioning for conferencing platforms (i.e. Google Meet, Zoom)
  • Courses should include a link to the campus office for disability–typically within the syllabus or could be posted to the course page in your LMS
  • Create an accessible PDF of your syllabus to post to your LMS
  • Create a video going over your syllabus (with captions) to post to your LMS
  • Course sites and outside course websites should be inclusively developed and maintained in conformance with the most recent Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
    • The WCAG guidelines are based on the principles that content and controls should be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust enough to function with a variety of assistive technologies.
  • When links to external Web sites are provided to students within an online course, the portion of those external sites intended for student viewing should be reviewed for conformance with the guidelines listed above.

Contact Us

For more information on campus accessibility, get in touch with the Academic Success Center:

Michelle Blank (Director of ASC):mblank@goshen.edu

Kelsey McLane (Assistive Technology): kmclane@goshen.edu

You can also visit our website for the Academic Success Center.