Universal Design for Inclusive Education

HF:Studio has made a good and informative video about how you can easily ensure that your Word document is universally designed.

Note that in the video the style “Title” is used before “Heading 1”. If you want the title to be read aloud as a heading by screen readers, you can use “Heading 1” instead.

The Norwegian Digitalisation Agency’s accessibility unit (UU-tilsynet) has created a good step-by-step guide that shows how you can easily ensure that the PowerPoints you share with your students are universally designed.

See the resource from the accessibility unit on how to universally design a PowerPoint

Video on how to universally design a PowerPoint [7:49]

Do you prefer an explanation by video? HF:Studio has made a good and informative video about how you can easily ensure that your PowerPoint document is universally designed.

Ally

Ally is a tool that is built into Canvas and helps you make all content in Canvas accessible to everyone by using the principles of universal design.

Ally checks the accessibility of ALL content in the Canvas course:

• content pages (HTML)
• uploaded documents (ppt, pdf or Word)

You therefore only need to use Ally to get an overview of whether your course is universally designed.

Correcting content that is not universally designed

Ally gives you an overview of all content in the Canvas course that is not universally designed. There are two different approaches for correcting digital content that is not universally designed:

1. Content pages (HTML) can be corrected directly in Canvas
2. Uploaded documents (ppt, pdf or Word) must be changed locally on your own computer and then uploaded to Canvas again.
   • Both PowerPoint and Word have built‑in accessibility tools that do the work for you.

Resources for learning Ally

UiO has developed a number of resources to help you universally design all digital learning content.

• Canvas resource: Ally – improving accessibility in Canvas
• Information on UiO’s staff pages: Universal design of content in Canvas

Universal design of digital content is a legal requirement through the regulations on universal design of ICT solutions, authorised in the Equality and Anti‑Discrimination Act.

Subtitles make audio content accessible to people with hearing impairments, while audio description describes visual elements for people with visual impairments. Both measures help ensure that digital media can be used by everyone, regardless of functional ability.

Panopto is UiO’s chosen platform for recording, storing, sharing, and streaming videos. It also makes it easy to add audio description and subtitles.

For example, students may benefit from subtitled video if they watch in noisy environments, if the video has poor audio, or if the speakers in the video are unclear.

There is also a pedagogical advantage to subtitling. Many people learn better when they can see and hear information at the same time, because they use two senses to perceive the message.

Subtitles

Which types of videos must be subtitled?

• Lecture recordings
• Video produced or purchased by UiO that is used in teaching
• Video used in connection with assessment/exams
• Recordings of streamed video
• Information videos for students or the public

Subtitling with Autotekst in Panopto

UiO’s own Autotekst service provides high‑quality subtitling in Norwegian, as well as subtitling in several languages at the same time.

See the guide on how to use Autotekst to subtitle videos in Panopto (Norwegian link).

Audio description

Audio description is about describing the visual content in a video so that it can also be perceived through hearing. This can be done in two ways:

Traditional audio description involves an extra audio track where a narrator describes the action in the parts of the video where there is no dialogue. This might be descriptions of people moving, body language, or important visual elements.

Integrated audio description means that already during recording of the video you make sure to include all necessary information in what is said. This can involve reading aloud text shown on the screen, explaining graphs and images in words, and avoiding expressions such as “here”, “there” or “as you can see”.

How to add audio description in Panopto

• Open the desired video in edit view.
• Click on “Streams” in the menu on the left.
• Click “Add Stream” and then the box on the left to add an extra audio file under “Primary audio file”.
• Upload the audio file with the audio description (it should be synchronised with the original video).
• Give the new file a name such as “audio description” or similar to make it clear.
• Save the changes by clicking “Apply”.
• Another method is to click on “Audio descriptions” in the menu on the left and then “Upload audio descriptions”.
• Select the desired file, click “Upload audio descriptions” again, and save the changes.

How to create good audio descriptions

Panopto cannot analyse and describe visual elements in videos. You must create the audio description yourself and then add it to the video manually. Some tips for creating good audio descriptions for videos are:

• Watch the video without sound – notice what is important to explain visually.
• Write short and precise descriptions of what is happening (action, expressions, text on the screen, surroundings).
• Avoid over‑explaining – focus on what is relevant for understanding.
• Place the descriptions in pauses between dialogue (so they do not overlap).
• Record the descriptions with a calm, clear voice – it is useful if the voice for the audio description is different from the others in the video.

For those who use Vortex for web publishing, we recommend the guides on UiO’s staff pages

Here we show you how the microphone and speakers work. These are adapted for inclusive teaching.