Library & Information Technology Services Blog – Page 26 – News, Updates, and Information about LITS Resources and Services

Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Challenge: Week 1

What Does it Mean to Check Accessibility?

Welcome to the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility challenge! Throughout our Keep Calm and Check Accessibility challenge, you will learn about the basic elements needed to create an accessible document. We’ll start out by discussing Word documents and then finish by talking about elements specific to creating accessible PowerPoints and PDFs.

Each week, read the LITS blog post explaining the featured accessibility element. Next, log onto the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle page to complete that week’s activity. When you finish the week’s activity, you will receive a clue. Each clue is a line to a poem that will lead you on a treasure hunt. Solve the riddle in the poem and find where your prize for completing the challenge will be hidden on campus.

To get started, you have two important tasks this week.

Log onto Moodle and self-register for the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle page.
1. Click the gear icon
2. Click enroll me in this course
Complete the challenge listed under Week 1 to get the first clue.

Inside Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, there is a tool called the Accessibility Checker. This tool helps you proofread your document or presentation to make sure it is accessible. To access it, go to Review and then click Check Accessibility. A box will pop up on the right side of your screen and list any accessibility issues found.

To learn more about Microsoft’s Check Accessibility read this article.

What’s New in Panopto and Zoom

What’s New in Panopto

Discussion Notifications. By default, you will now receive a daily digest email of comments and replies to video discussions they are participating in. Change your discussion notification preferences by clicking the link in that email or logging into Zoom and updating your user settings.
Audio Descriptions. Panopto has increased accessibility with support for audio description. Creators can now add timestamped audio descriptions to recordings in the Panopto editor. If viewers turn audio description on, playback is paused and descriptions read aloud using text-to-speech at the appropriate points. See How to add Audio Descriptions to Panopto Videos.
Reusing/Copying Videos. Creators now have two choices when copying videos: Create full copy (use if you’re going to EDIT the copy) and Create reference copy (use if just reusing, e.g., to copy from old course into new). More about reference copies. Video: How to Copy and Move Videos.
Opt Out of Zoom Recording Imports. By default, Zoom meetings scheduled in Moodle and recorded to the cloud are also imported to the course’s Panopto folder. Teachers can now turn these Meeting Imports off on the Panopto course folder’s Settings

What’s New in Zoom

Note: Some features are require later versions of the Zoom app/desktop client. If you aren’t seeing a feature below, upgrade your Zoom app to the latest version. Some features may not be supported in iOS and Android apps.

For all participants

Hide Self View. Use this in-meeting feature to hide your own video from yourself after you turn it on to help prevent Zoom fatigue.
Stop Incoming Video. Use this in-meeting feature to block other people’s video if you’re having bandwidth issues or to reduce Zoom fatigue.
Set a custom gallery view. All participants can now reorganize video participants in the Gallery view and save the order for future instances of a recurring meeting. Hosts can create a customized view for participants.
Other tips for avoiding Zoom fatigue.

For hosts/co-hosts

Focus mode. Designed for online learning, hosts/co-hosts can turn focus mode on during a meeting to hide non-host/co-hosts participants videos and/or shared screens from other non-host/cohost participants. Hosts can make this the default by checking Enable focus mode when meeting starts under Advanced Options in the meeting settings when setting up the meeting.
Advanced Polling and Quizzing. Hosts can turn this on in meeting setting to add new question formats (e.g., short answer) and/or turn polls into quizzes by designating a correct answer for questions. (Note: Participants using older Zoom apps may need to exit the meeting, update their Zoom apps, and rejoin to answer advanced polls and quizzes.)
Broadcast message or screen to all breakout rooms. Hosts/cohosts in the main meeting room can now broadcast messages to and share their screen in all breakout rooms. See Managing Breakout Rooms for updated information.
Two-way chat with participants in waiting room. Hosts/co-hosts can now message participants in the waiting room individually and receive replies. See How to Use Waiting Room for updated information.

If you have any questions about or issues with these or other features in Panopto or Zoom, please contact the Help Desk (help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440).

Changes and Improvements to Moodle

The most noticeable changes include:

Mark as done buttons under course activities. These buttons are part of Moodle’s ongoing efforts to make it easier for students to keep track of their coursework and for instructors to provide and manage ungraded course activities. See “Using Activity Completion” for examples and instructions. Teachers can disable activity completion and remove all “Mark as done” messages on the Course Settings page (Go to Edit Settings > Completion tracking > Enable completion tracking > No).
Word document import button on the text editor box, which allows users to import the contents of a Word document (as opposed to copying and pasting the contents, or attaching the document).
Create Merged Course Shell option appearing under the settings for each course.
Fixes and minor improvements to activities such as: Attendance, Checklist, Collapsible Topics, OU Blog, and the H5P Content bank.

We have also made the following accessibility improvements to Moodle:

Accessibility block. Enables users to change font size, color scheme and other display settings to meet their accessibility needs. See the Accessibility Block in Moodle tech doc.
File Scan Summary block. Displays results of an accessibility scan of PDF files in a Moodle course. Click View File Details for file-specific information; see the Accessibility File Scan in Moodle tech doc for help interpreting results and fixing inaccessible files.
Integration with Sensus Access. We’ve also connected Moodle and the Sensus Access Document Converter to make it easier for students to convert course documents to file formats that best meet their accessibility needs. We are asking instructors to please Add the Sensus Access Document Converter to their existing spring 2022 courses to make it available to students. We have added it to the academic course template, so it will be added automatically to course shells created for future semesters.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Help Desk: 610-526-7440 or help@brynmawr.edu

Tips to Avoid E-Borrow Delays

As you may have noticed, the E-ZBorrow interlibrary loan system has switched to new software. While we believe that this software will improve service in the long run, there are some important steps to follow to avoid delays:

When searching for a book, if you get more than one correct hit, please click on the title of the book to see how many libraries within E-ZBorrow own that book, and pick the result that is owned by the most libraries.
- Results which say “Located: Multiple Libraries” are better choices than those that have a single university name next to “Located.”
- Choosing results owned by multiple libraries allows the system to automatically move on to other libraries if the first library queried does not have the book, which reduces response time and the need to resubmit requests.
Once you have chosen a result and clicked the “Request” button, you will be asked to “Select Home Institution” from a drop down list: be sure to choose Bryn Mawr.
Your “barcode” is the number below the actual barcode in the lower-right hand corner of your OneCard. Your barcode begins with 2179600; be sure to enter all 14 digits.
- Do not use the number immediately below your picture; this is your college ID number.

Eventually, we expect that only one hit for each item will appear regardless of how many libraries own it, and that you will be able to use your Bryn Mawr username and password to log into the system. We appreciate your patience while these enhancements are developed, and apologize for the inconvenience.

If you have any questions, please contact us at bmcill@brynmawr.edu.