At its meeting of May 5, 2008, the Academic Senate approved the following Policy Recommendation presented by Senator Kaufman for the Curriculum and Research Committee.
Action by University President: Approved by President Don Kassing on 5/7/08
Policy Recommendation
INCORPORATING ACCESSIBILITY INTO THE CURRICULUM REVIEW PROCESS
WHEREAS, equitable education requires equal accessibility to all instructional materials, and
WHEREAS, assuring accessibility is a shared responsibility of faculty and departments as well as the Disability Resource Center, the Center for Faculty Development and the SJSU and CSU administrations, and,
WHEREAS, CSU policies now require all CSU campuses to create plans to support faculty and administrative practices that will assure timely access to instructional materials for all students, and
WHEREAS, the SJSU Instructional Materials Accessibility Plan (IMAP) calls for all new courses offered in Fall Semester 2008 to incorporate accessibility, to the extent possible, into their design, and for all courses to incorporate accessibility by Fall 2012, and
WHEREAS, such incorporation of accessibility is an ongoing process that will require faculty time, resources and training and faculty will need support in adapting course materials to meet accessibility standards, now therefore be it
RESOLVED that beginning Fall 2008, faculty teaching new courses shall , to the extent possible, create accessible versions of green sheets, handouts, electronic presentations, course web sites, and other (non-textbook) print-based instructional materials, which shall be made available to students with disabilities at the same time they are made available to other students in the course; and that during Fall 2008, department/program curriculum committees, in consultation with department chairs/program directors, shall develop a schedule for the period Fall 2008 to Fall 2012 identifying by when each of a department’s existing courses will need to have instructional materials converted to accessible form; and
RESOLVED that at the end of the first semester during which materials were converted, faculty teaching the course (or an appointed course coordinator for multisection courses) shall report to the department curriculum committee and department chair on their efforts to make course materials accessible (the report may include a list of those types of materials which were made accessible, the time spent converting materials or participating in training activities, as well as instances when time, resources or existing technology did not allow for the creation of accessible versions of particular content); and
RESOLVED that faculty shall be informed of the resources available from the Center for Faculty Development and the Disabilities Resource Center, including accessible document templates, in-person and on-line training sessions, document conversion services, student assistants, and consultations with Faculty-in-Residence trained in accessibility; and
RESOLVED that the University recognize that the success of the efforts covered by this resolution can only be assured if substantial financial resources are provided by the University. Chairs, Deans and University administration shall support faculty during the semester in which a course is being made accessible by providing resources in the form of student assistants, assigned time, and/or realignment of the faculty member’s service responsibilities; and
RESOLVED that the forms for new course proposals be modified so that the signatories acknowledge the importance of incorporating accessibility in the course design; and that program planning reviews include a report from the department/program under review on progress towards compliance with accessibility requirements throughout the curriculum; and
RESOLVED that the need for accessibility should not infringe on the faculty's responsibility to provide the best instruction possible, including modification of instructional materials during a semester.
Rationale: EO 926, the CSU Board of Trustees Policy on Disability Support and Accommodations states: “it is the policy of the CSU to make information technology resources and services accessible to all CSU students, faculty, staff and the general public regardless of disability.”
Coded Memoranda AA-2006-41 and AA-2007-04 establish a process for ensuring compliance with federal and state laws, and CSU policy regarding access to information technology and resources. One of the three priorities addressed in that plan includes instructional materials accessibility.
The materials covered by this policy do not include textbooks, course readers and library reserves. A policy governing the timely adoption of these instructional materials was passed previously by the Academic Senate (F07-3).
Each CSU campus is required to develop "a method to incorporate accessibility as a required component in the curriculum review and approval process.” The print-based instructional materials covered in this policy (green sheets, handouts, web sites, electronic presentations), to the extent possible, must be accessible to students with disabilities at the same time they are available to the students enrolled in the course.
The conversion of instructional materials to accessible format is an important aspect of the SJSU mission to provide quality education for all students. The conversion of print-based instructional materials to accessible format represents a large and important step towards that goal.
Relevant documents are available online:
EO 926: http://www.calstate.edu/EO/EO-926.html
AA-2007-04 http://www.calstate.edu/AcadAff/codedmemos/AA-2007-04.pdf
SJSU IMAP: http://www.sjsu.edu/accessibility/docs/sjsu_imap_final_070613.pdf
Approved: 4/8/08
Vote: 9-0-0
Present: Buzanski, Cooper, Kaufman, Nance, Roldan, Romo, Schultz-Krohn, Stacks, Yu
Absent: Cushing, Maldonado-Colon, Van Hooff
Financial Impact: Depending on the way in which Departments/Colleges allot faculty time for course conversion, the costs may be quite high. If each faculty member on campus were to receive 10 hours of student assistant time to covert materials, the costs would be $10/hour x 10 hours x 1800 faculty = $180,000. If some 1800 faculty members were to receive 0.2 release time for conversion efforts, the cost would be 1800 x $4750 ~ $8.5 million over the five years of implementation. The costs could be even higher if such release time were allotted to each of the approximately 4000 individual courses listed in the SJSU catalog.
Workload Impact: Increased workload for faculty involved in conversion of course materials to accessible format unless assignments are reconfigured to account for this important work.