{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Why Distance Learning?","title":"#86 You Already Agreed to This: Digital Accessibility as Civil Rights with Ray Rose","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2598,"description":"In this episode of Why Distance Learning, Seth Fleischauer and Allyson Mitchell talk with Raymond Rose - President of Rose & Smith Associates and Public Policy Chair at the Texas Digital Learning Association- about what digital accessibility actually requires of educational institutions, and what it means to be out of compliance with an agreement you've already signed. Rose came to this work through civil rights enforcement, not ed tech, and it shows in how he frames the problem. For most institutions, the legal commitment to full accessibility is already on record. The question is whether anyone knows it.\nTogether, the hosts and Raymond explore the Office of Civil Rights' operational definition of accessibility - same information, same interactions, same time frame - and why the \"same time frame\" clause changes what compliance actually looks like in practice. They work through the most common failures in online courses: PDFs that are images rather than readable text, missing alt text on graphics, videos without adequate captions, and data tables used for layout. Raymond explains why Universal Design for Learning is the right design framework for all learners - not just those with identified disabilities - and points to a simple test: 25% of males have some form of colorblindness, and roughly half your audience is already using closed captioning on their television. The episode also covers how to ask vendors for a VPAT before purchasing third-party tools, where automatic captioning still falls short, and what shifts when the students are K-12. The episode closes with Raymond making the case that most institutions are not deliberately ignoring accessibility - they just haven't been told they were already responsible for it.\nKey topicsDigital accessibility as a civil rights obligation under Section 504 and ADAThe OCR definition: same information, same interactions, same time frameUniversal Design for Learning (UDL) — the three components and why it benefits all...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/2eKPm8ob1eS5Ju0DBuhPXRKuQv7Vx4cWT0c4uWSYbCQ/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82MmFh/MmQyYTc4NzdkNGJh/MzIzZWU5MmI3MzRk/MjQwYy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}