Maintaining confidentiality is crucial in creating an environment where students feel respected and protected, in addition to meeting our legal obligations.

Information on a student's IEP or 504 from the K-12 setting is not automatically shared with the institution. Students have the right to decide if they want to disclose their disability and register with the Learning Access Program to receive accommodations. Students are not obligated to share their diagnosis and/or medical documentation with faculty and staff outside of our office, and this information cannot be requested by faculty.  

Students with approved classroom accommodations should provide their faculty with a Letter of Accommodation either in-person or via email. Accommodations are renewed every semester; if you do not receive an accommodation letter for the current semester, please tell the student to contact the Learning Access Program for an updated letter.Accommodations should not be provided unless this formal communication has occurred. 

It is the faculty members responsibility to provide accommodations once the letter is presented to them. Keeping a record of your students’ Letters of Accommodation will assist you in ensuring that accommodations, such as extra time on exams and quizzes, are applied to all exams throughout the semester. It is not the responsibility of the student to remind the faculty member throughout the semester that they have accommodations.

If you believe an accommodation causes a fundamental alteration to your course, please contact the Learning Access Program directly to discuss. 

Students who seek classroom accommodations while attending Stockton University, must register with the Learning Access Program. If a student self-discloses their disability to you, but does not provide you a letter from the Learning Access Program, please direct them to contact LAP to schedule an intake appointment. Faculty should not provide unofficial accommodations to a student that is not registered with LAP.  

Students should be referred to the Learning Access Program if: 

• An accommodation has been requested, but the student has not provided you with a Letter of Accommodation
• A student discloses that they have a disability, but has not registered with the Learning Access Program
• A student discloses that they think they have a disability, but has never been diagnosed
• You believe a student already working with our office may benefit from a follow-up meeting with a Coordinator and/or additional support

Note: The Learning Access Program will not provide specific updates about a student's status after a referral is made. 

If a student has a testing accommodation and will be using the Learning Access Program Testing Center, they should discuss the scheduling of exams with their faculty and together complete the Testing Accommodation Scheduling Form. 

Up to four exams can be scheduled on each form at a time. Once the form is completed, it is requested that the student schedule their exam with the Learning Access Program Test Coordinator 48 hours prior to the start of the exam. 

If a student is approved to receive peer notes as an accommodation, the student should contact the Learning Access Program with their request. The Learning Access Program will facilitate this process; faculty members are not responsible for hiring a note taker. If faculty assistance is needed in acquiring a note taker, you will be contacted by the Learning Access Program. 

If a student is approved to use a note taking software, they will be need to have an electronic device (i.e. laptop, tablet, phone, etc.) on their desk. This will be indicated on the accommodation letter.

When utilizing electronic documents, websites, podcasts, or videos it is important to ensure that the material is accessible.

Electronic documents and other informational materials need to be able to be read by a screen reader. When documents are photocopied and/or converted to PDF they become unreadable to a screen reader. Faculty that would like to use an excerpt from a book should try and locate the electronic copy and provide a link to the accessible text to the students. If an accessible electronic copy is not available, the scanned PDF needs to be converted to either an OCR Acrobat file or a Word Document. This document can be created in the library utilizing the ScannX computers. Please note that document should be reviewed for accuracy after converting them to an accessible document.

Students may be eligible for a variety of assistive technology tools provided by The Learning Access program.  Items that you may see include: FM or personal amplification systems, spellex pocketmed spelling assistant, digital recorders, laptops and tablets that assist with recording and note taking. 

If a student has audiobooks included in their Letter of Accommodation, the Learning Access Program will provide the audiobooks for the course.  The faculty member does not have to obtain the audiobook for the student.

If you have a no electronics policy in class, please do not tell students that the use of electronics is only permitted for students with accommodations.  We request that you use a statement such as The use of electronics is prohibited without permission from the instructor. If you have a request for use of electronics in the class, please discuss this need with the faculty member.  

This statement does not identify the student in your course who utilizes technology as being a student with a disability.

A variety of digital accessibility tools can be found on the Accessibility Tools page at https://stockton.edu/elearning/accessibility-tools.html. Additional information on accessibility and access to the Symphony newsletter/blog can be accessed at www.stockton.edu/accessibility. 

If you have created your own video, you can load it into your account in YouTube and have them auto captioned. The captions should be reviewed by the faculty or staff member to ensure accuracy. Changes can be made to the captions provided by YouTube.

How to post a video:

1. Prepare the file; once the video is complete and does not require additional edits you should save it in one of the supported files (MP4, M4V, MOV, WMV, or AVI)
2. Log into your YouTube account
3. Click the upload button
4. Choose the correct file and click open/choose
5. There will be some required information about the video, which includes the title, description, tags, etc
6. Choose privacy settings; Unlisted videos are only accessible by those who have the exact video link
7. Click Save

How to caption a video: 

The video How to Add Closed Captions and Subtitles to Your YouTube Videos will walk you through the steps on how to caption your personal videos. Please note, this is only for videos that you have created and cannot be done for general online videos. 

There are four basic font groups: those with serifs, those without serifs, scripts and decorative styles. When creating reading material, sans-serif fonts (e.g. Arial, Calibri, Verdana, etc.) are more legible than serif fonts (Times New Roman), scripts and decorative styles. For more information and references on font choices please visit the site below:  

http://webaim.org/techniques/fonts/ 

When adding colored text to a document, picking the right color combination is important for students who or colorblind or have sensitivity. Traditional black/white or blue/white is the recommended color scheme. Color combinations to avoid include: green/red, blue/purple, and green/black to name a few. For more information and resources, please visit the sites below: 

http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/       
https://designshack.net/articles/accessibility/tips-for-designing-for-colorblind-users/

Students who have a written accommodation to record classroom material are students who have difficulties attending to the lecture content and writing clear and logical notes at the same time. The audio recording allows the student to 'fill in the gaps' after the lecture or clarify meaning in their written notes.

Can a faculty member forbid a student from recording in the classroom?

No, if recording has been approved as an accommodation for the student’s disability to provide meaningful access to the educational experience. The recording of lectures is one of the accommodations specifically mentioned in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The issue of copyright as a concern is referenced in 84.44 of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (P.L. 93-112, amended P.L. 93-156).

In order to allow a student with a disability the use of recording and, at the same time, protect the instructor, the institution requires the student to sign an agreement so as not to infringe on a potential copyright or to limit freedom of speech.

Consistent with the Regulation in Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973:

1. Students with disabilities who are unable to take or read notes have the right to record class lectures only for personal study purposes.
2. Lectures recorded for personal study may not be shared with others without the consent of the lecturer, and this includes other students within the same class.
3. Information contained in the audio-recorded lecture is protected under federal copyright laws and may not be published or quoted without the express consent of the lecturer and without giving proper identity and credit to the lecturer.

Classes Involving Self-Disclosure from Students

Occasionally, classroom material may involve a great deal of self-disclosure from students as part of the class, which is not material that should be used towards an assessment in a class. The use of a recording device is to replace the student’s note taking ability. If these open discussions are not appropriate subject matter for any student to take notes, faculty may issue a general announcement to the class to request that any students who are using a recording device turn it off. Students are required to comply with a directive to turn off the recording device.

Student Responsibility

Students must agree to the following the statement, and this information is kept on file with the Learning Access Program.

I understand that these recordings are for my own personal use ONLY. The class lectures as presented are the professor's intellectual property, and my classmates' comments are their own intellectual property. I agree that I will not share or transfer these recordings by any method currently available or any method that may become available in the future. This means I will not give the recordings to others (even those that are in the class), upload them to file-sharing sites, post them on the internet, provide them to journalists, or share them in any other way. Violation of this agreement could harm my grade or bring other sanctions, depending on the violation.

Recorded material may not be used in any way against the faculty member, other lecturers, or students whose classroom comments are recorded as part of the class activity. Information contained in the recording is protected under federal copyright laws and may not be published, placed on social media, shared through other electronic devices or quoted without the express consent of the lecturer and without giving proper identity and credit to the lecturer.

I understand that I am responsible for returning any recordings provided at the semester's conclusion and/or erasing all recorded lectures. I agree to abide by this agreement with regard to any recorded material lent by my faculty and lectures I record while enrolled as a student at Stockton University.

Adapted from: Rutgers University

Rocketbook Beacons turn traditional whiteboards into smartboards by integrating with popular cloud services inside the Rocketbook app. Beacons have been placed on whiteboards throughout campus to help with notetaking and retention of information written on the whiteboards.

The role of the interpreter in the classroom is to effectively facilitate communication between deaf individuals and those who are hearing.  Below are two documents from the National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes to help explain what interpreting entails and the role of an interpreter in the classroom. 

Sign Language Interpreters: An Introduction

Sign Language Interpreters in the Classroom

Zoom offers the ability to provide live automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcripts in real time for meetings and webinars. Please note, this service creates machine-generated transcriptions, their accuracy will not be perfect. For information on how to turn on this feature, please visit ITS Training Tips. 

https://library.osu.edu/site/copyright/2015/08/28/copyright-and-accessibility/

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The Autism Spectrum Disorder Fact Sheet provides a brief overview of autism spectrum disorder and some strategies to assist faculty in the classroom.
For a screen reader accessible version please use this Autism Spectrum Disorder Document.

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/facts.html