CIT 2006 - WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

TUESDAY, MAY 30, 2006

Universal Design of Instruction, Part A: Creating course content with familiar Office tools

Instructors:
Norm Coombs, CEO
Equal Access to Software & Information (EASI)

Sharon Trerise
Coordinator of Accessible IT
Northeast ADA & IT Center
Cornell University

Time: 9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Location: Fenton 2162
Rating: Introductory
Platform: PC
Cost: $35

This workshop is for instructors, instructional design staff and anyone else creating course content who has limited technical know-how and who want to make their course materials universally accessible to all students, including students with disabilities. You do not have to learn specialized software or become a technology guru to create accessible course content. This hands-on session will concentrate on creating course content with familiar tools like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. Participants will also learn how to use a low-cost software add-in tool developed at University of Illinois, the Office Accessibility Wizard, to simplify the process of creating accessible course content. Participants will discover that, in the process of designing universally accessible content, their material will be clearer and better for everyone.

About the Instructors:

NORMAN COOMBS, Ph.D. is professor emeritus from the Rochester Institute of Technology where, in the mid 1980s, he played the key role in initiating their distance learning program moving online. In the past 2 decades, he estimates that he has taught some 5,000 students in at least 40 countries teaching online for RIT, New York School for Social Research, San Diego State University, the University of Washington and for EASI (Equal Access to Software and Information). Coombs has received several awards for this work including the 1990 New York State CASE Teacher of the Year Award. Coombs has lectured on distance learning across the US as well as in Canada, England, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and Turkey. Besides his interest in the unique potentials for developing new learning paradigms, he has had a special concern in making online fully accessible for students with disabilities. He says that "Distance learning provides the potential to create the most level learning space in history for users with disabilities."

SHARON TRERISE is the Coordinator of Accessible Information Technology at the Northeast ADA & IT Center which is a grant funded project within the Employment and Disability Institute at Cornell University. In this role, she provides information, training and technical assistance to educational entities regarding best practices and techniques for ensuring that information technology used in education is accessible to people with disabilities. After earning her bachelor and masters degrees from Cornell University, Sharon worked in the technology field for 20 years, providing a range of services from technical support and training to software development and network administration. She has also completed additional course work in assistive technology and universal design. Sharon’s varied work experiences include K12 and higher education institutions as well as Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations.

Brought to you by The Northeast ADA & IT Center, Cornell University