[Trainer-Talk] Need help with addressing a teacher's concerns with facilitating online language courses for a blind student

[mevers421 at gmail.com]

Good afternoon,

 

              I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe in the new
year.  I work for a University as an Assistive Technology Specialist and
trainer, mostly working with blind and visually impaired students.  This
afternoon I received an email from a Spanish instructor who brought up some
concerns they had with how to facilitate teaching an online Spanish course
to their blind student remotely.  The blind student is a Spanish major and
they will have to participate in Zoom meetings, read, write and submit their
written assignments and online quizzes through the Canvas Learning
Management System.  The student will also be receiving written handouts in
PDF form that they will have to read over and respond to.

              I think that this student may be a Mac user, using Voiceover
and my experience with the Mac is very limited.  Last semester I also had a
blind student using a Mac with a similar experience and I was not able to
properly advise this person on how to troubleshoot their accessibility
concerns with using Voiceover on the Mac for the same reasons.  They were
using Safari with Voiceover and they were having problems with getting
Voiceover to recognize the required form fields and controls in Canvas along
with getting Voiceover to toggle from English to Spanish.  They were also
having some problems with writing the Spanish accents and symbols and
applying them to their written assignments.  Since I do not have a Mac, I
cannot advise them.  I use a Windows computer with JAWS and NVDA.

              Last semester I advised the student to consider using Google
Chrome on the Mac with Canvas and running Voiceover, because the Canvas
Management Team here at our college said that Safari is not supported in
Canvas.  The student said they could get Google Chrome to work better with
Canvas, but that they could not get Voiceover to automatically switch
between English and Spanish the way we can with JAWS.  The student still has
trouble with writing the proper Spanish symbols and accents on the Mac and
of course, I still cannot properly advise this student on how to
troubleshoot this because I do not have access to a Mac.  

              I told the Student that I could only offer assistance with
trouble-shooting Windows accessibility concerns and that they would be much
better off investing in a cheep Windows Computer, running NVDA just so they
could interact with Canvas and more easily read and write in Spanish.  The
student refused and said they would stick with the Mac.  So, the only option
that I had left was to provide the student with the telephone number to the
Apple Accessibility Hotline for additional assistance.  That's all I could
do for them and now I may possibly end up having to do the same thing again.
I am also willing to bet that this student may be the same student who had
this problem last semester.  

              Is there anyone out here on this list who may be able to
better advise me on how to help this Spanish instructor and their blind
student?  I want to help them, but I am running out of ideas.  It is my job
to trouble-shoot accessibility concerns and to also provide students with
additional training and resources in order for them to be successful.  So
far, I have been successful with helping my students with everything else
they have encountered and I want to find a solution to help my student solve
this problem as well.  

              I know what it is like to be a blind student who is taking a
foreign language course.  I took several Spanish courses both in high school
and as an undergraduate in college and did very well.  I read and wrote
Spanish in Braille and I also read and wrote some Spanish on my Windows PC
and my iOS Devices, but the Mac is an entirely different animal.  Thank you
in advance for any help you can offer.  

 

Best,

Michael Evers

 <mailto:Mevers421 at gmail.com> Mevers421 at gmail.com