You'd think I'd be better at this

I work in the Office of Learning Services (OLS).
We work with students with accommodations.
So you'd think I'd be better at understanding ADA compliance.
Granted, I've been in the OLS for less than a year, but I was shocked by how many things I had not considered for making courses ADA compliant.

To be honest, I never even realized that a course could be ADA compliant. I knew we could help and offer accommodations and work with students, but I never realized how the structure of the content itself could be ADA compliant - and that such compliance could help all students!

Needless to say, it probably does not come as a surprise that I LOVED the article "5 Tips for ADA-Compliant Inclusive Design" by Salena Rabidoux and Amy Rottmann.  I've actually read it three times now, because I keep thinking about its content and how it can help myself and others.

When I started in the OLS, one of my goals was to help it become more of a resource for faculty as well as for students. I wanted to be more proactive in providing concrete information that would help faculty connect with their students in helpful ways.

I was thrilled when one of my students told me that capital letters on multiple choice tests help students with dyslexia since the lowercase b and d are more similar than the uppercase B and D. So I nervously sent my first tip to faculty and invited them to join me in using uppercase letters. Now every time I receive an exam with uppercase letters, I smile.

This article reminded me of more simple ways that I could help faculty, and I'm considering sending this article to everyone!!! (So thank you, Rick, for curating such an incredible resource.)  I'd like to pay particular attention to the font style.  I try to find easy changes that a) make sense to people b) benefit all students and c) are not as time intensive. While changing fonts are a bit more time intensive than moving from lowercase to capital letters, I still think this is a simple enough change that faculty can rally around it.  Personally, I'm going to start looking at my documents and see what changes I can make with my fonts.

And in time, hopefully we'll all get better at ADA compliance.