February 1st, 2024

By video call, we had a presentation in class from ARC BC, where we learned about the technology we could access for students with perceptual disabilities. I had never heard of perceptual disabilities before, but learned through this presentation that perceptual disabilities are learning, visual and physical disabilities. ARC Bc helps students with perceptual disabilities by taking hard copy resources and making them digital files for students, ensure there is descriptions on images and easy to jump to chapters.

I also learned about the ABC Act, which is in place to identify, remove and prevent barriers to accessibility and that every school district needs to address barriers under this act. For educators, ARC-BC can be a help with that, giving the ability to get students access to the resources they need for school through them. As well, I learned that BC government website has resources and guides for Microsoft so it is easier to make documents accessible.

Image is of a poster for ARC-BC, the top has a student using a tablet with earbuds, underneath describes accessible learning materials that ARC-BC offers, as discussed above, and a section called "Is ARC-BC for my students?" the description of which was also discussed above
ARC-BC poster from ARC-BC About Us Page
Image is of a poster for ARC-BC, the top has a student using a tablet with earbuds, underneath describes accessible learning materials that ARC-BC offers, as discussed above, and a section called "Is ARC-BC for my students?" the description of which was also discussed above
ARC-BC poster from ARC-BC About Us Page
Image is of a poster for ARC-BC, the top has a student using a tablet with earbuds, underneath describes accessible learning materials that ARC-BC offers, as discussed above, and a section called "Is ARC-BC for my students?" the description of which was also discussed above
ARC-BC poster from ARC-BC About Us Page

The biggest thing I learned from this presentation, though, was about hyperlinks and alt text. I knew that the best fonts to use to be accessible for everyone were Calibri and Arial, though I did not know Tahoma and Verdana were in the best as well, and I did not font size should always be bigger than 11. But I did not know that simple putting a hyperlink in was not accessible, though it felt a bit obvious when I heard it. I’ve listened to audio versions of textbooks and it is always hard to hear the voice say each individual letter in a citation. Instead, the hyperlink should be put into the name of the website. The first time I tried it out, I was not totally sure how to do it, but it was very easy to do on this site, and now I can continue to do this in the future. As well, I wrote alternative text for my image today. While I knew alt text was important, I did not feel I understood how to do it, but the examples showed in the presentation gave me an idea of how to write them. I feel I try to be too detailed with it, when it can be very simple. Time to edit other images!

I feel more capable about finding resources for students after this presentation, and am glad I got to learn about things I had not heard about before.