I have something really important to share.

It affects your health. Your safety. Your ability to access education and justice. It might save your life.

Read it below:

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What’s that? You can’t read it?

If you, your school, your municipality or other community servants are sharing pictures of text, it is not accessible to many of the people who may need it most. Pictures of text cannot be read by a screen reader and readers don’t have the ability to make it large print or high contrast. For people with dyslexia, blindness or low vision, or a poor internet connection that won’t load a picture, they don’t get the same information as everyone else. I lose out on the ability to auto-translate it to my language.

If that information was in a video and not captioned, it’s not accessible for people who are deaf or hard of hearing or cannot have the volume on right at that moment (shout out to all the parents juggling baby naptime and work simultaneously!) Interpreting and translating might be necessary.

If your job is to share information with your community, share it with the whole community.

Reach out to the creator if you see it. Point it out and offer suggestions for what to do differently. They will appreciate the information!

Lives may depend on it.

There are many other things we can all do to make our digital content accessible to everyone. If you need support and ideas for distance learning now, PATINS has curated many excellent resources for continuous learning due to COVID-19. Our specialists are here to support Indiana public PreK-12 schools providing equitable access to all.

We have been the best kind of busy helping Indiana educators find solutions to providing instruction for all students. To the teachers learning to be YouTubers and taking on video conferencing, the porch drop offs of AAC devices and assistive technology, the extra training, professional development, and so many creative solutions for kids: you make us very proud to be working with you. We hope to see you at one of our office hours or at the Tech Expo next week so we can (re)connect and share your struggles and successes!