MiddLab Coffee Break: Creating Accessible Documents

Our first MiddLab Coffee Break of the fall will focus on creating accessible documents. We’ll review general guidelines for creating accessible materials, as well as how to ensure that the documents that you create and share with your class are accessible to all students. Some of the topics covered will include:

* Using formatting tools in Microsoft Word for accessibility purposes;
* Using optical character recognition (OCR) to make the text in PDFs accessible;
* Using SensusAccess to convert existing materials into a variety of formats.

All the methods reviewed will use tools that are freely available to Middlebury faculty, staff and students. The discussion will be facilitated by Heather Stafford (Instructional Designer, DLINQ) and Leanne Galletly (User Experience & Digital Scholarship Librarian). Our facilitators have experience in helping faculty, staff, and students create accessible materials, but we want this to be a community discussion, so please bring your projects, questions, and concerns as well! Although we will focus on documents, the discussion will touch on accessibility tips & resources to help you with other formats as well.

This virtual meeting is part of our MiddLab Coffee Break series. These meetings* are hosted by MiddLab, with co-sponsorship from the Library, ITS, DLINQ, and the MiddData initiative. MiddLab is a cross-campus hub for librarians, technologists, and other specialists who support digital projects, digital scholarship, and other technology-based research needs.

The MiddLab Coffee Break series is a monthly meeting of those interested in digital academia to meet for the discussion, sharing, and questioning of a variety of topics important to our community. These meetings will be facilitated by MiddLab members, along with guest experts from across the Middlebury community.

Please register for this free event at http://go.middlebury.edu/coffeebreak

More information about MiddLab is available at http://go.middlebury.edu/middlab

* Note that registration is required for this event, so that participants can receive all pre- and post-discussion communication and materials, including the link to the Zoom videoconference.