CSU-Chico’s Journey Towards Digital Accessibility

Many schools are in the process of making their content more accessible. But what are the steps needed to get there? Check out this infographic mapping out California State University – Chico’s path to digital accessibility.

CSU-Chico’s journey towards digital accessibility

CSU-Chico was founded in 1887. Today, more than 17,000 students are enrolled. In 2004, the CSU Board of Trustees issued an executive order to make explicit the existence and compliance of system wide policies for the disability support and accommodation program. With the
support from executive leadership and the Accessible Technology Initiative provided by the California State System, the Accessibility Technology Initiative (ATI) team was formed to help implement accessible IT resources and services across all CSU campuses. The ATI team faced many challenges, including taking inventory of a vast number of content items, finding tools that would fully address accessibility concerns, and working within funding constraints.
With video being such a popular tool for instruction and assignment submission, CSU-Chico needed a new video management solution that complied with accessibility requirements. Enter Kaltura.
Kaltura checked all the boxes, including integration with Blackboard Learn, streaming, web-cam recording and auto-captioning capabilities, as well as an open framework for API integration. Kaltura offers many accessibility features, including attachments for descriptions or directions, Speed
Selector so that videos can be viewed at various speeds, sign-language or descriptive insets, and multiple audio tracks which can be parallel with audio description.
In addition to video, CSU-Chico needed to find a way to review the millions of other content items living within Blackboard Learn, as manual review would be impossible. CSU-Chico discovered that Blackboard Ally could solve this problem by automatically scanning a wide variety of content items
within the LMS.
Blackboard Ally provides automatic checking for accessibility issues, alternative accessible versions, instructor feedback on how to improve content accessibility, and course-level and institutional reporting to help track and improve accessibility across the institution.
With the combination of Blackboard Learn, Blackboard Ally, and Kaltura, CSU-Chico faculty and staff are now empowered to deliver a more inclusive learning experience with high-quality, accessible content for all students.
Ready to start your accessibility journey? Visit blackboard.com/ally for more info on Blackboard Ally.
Visit corp.kaltura.com/education for more information on Kaltura.

Want to know more about accessibility? Read “Getting into the Accessibility Mindset.”