News, Updates, and Information about LITS Resources and Services
LITS will be performing emergency maintenance on Moodle at 7:30 AM on Monday, September 26, 2022. The upgrade will address security vulnerabilities and should last 10 minutes. People who are already logged in should experience minimal disruption during the maintenance window.
Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.
Due to some equipment issues, Brecon and Batten are currently without internet access. LITS is actively working to remedy the situation as swiftly as possible.
Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu or 610.526.7440
Please be aware of a recent attempt to gather login, password, and other secure personal or College data from Bryn Mawr College community members.
Be on the lookout for messages that notify you of scanned images and include attached files. Please see the image below of what the email(s) look like. This is a scam.
Do not open the attachment, click on links, or respond in any way. Delete the message or report it as Phishing in Outlook. If you believe you’ve given your information to a phisher, immediately change your password and contact the Help Desk: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440.
Email scams come in many forms. While we work to keep you informed, attacks are increasingly diverse and sophisticated. It’s not possible for us to warn you of every message before you see it. Be cautious and suspicious. If you ever have a question or suspicion, don’t hesitate to contact the Help Desk.
As of today, community members are again able to access the New York Times online. In order to activate your account through Bryn Mawr, please follow the instructions here: https://guides.tricolib.brynmawr.edu/nytimes-BMC.
Thank you for your patience while we worked to restore this service.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to be in touch: library@brynmawr.edu or circulation@brynmawr.edu
What is assistive technology? Assistive technology is any tool that helps you do what you want to do. There are many different categories of assistive technology, but for this semester we will focus on tools that help in educational and professional settings.
This November we will host a digital escape room where participants will use assistive technology to solve clues. To get ready for this challenge (and shave some minutes off your escape room time), follow these blog posts each week to learn about the assistive technology tools you will have to use in the escape room.
For this first week we will focus on Helperbird, which is an academic support tool available for free to all Bryn Mawr College community members.
Helperbird is a Google Chrome extension that offers support for reading, comprehension, researching, and writing. In particular, Helperbird can help you as you read PDFs and websites for school and work.
To get access to Helperbird and to learn all about the features available, read this Ask Athena article about getting started with Helperbird.
Contact the Help Desk with questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.
Updated 9/15 at 11:30 AM:
Zoom appears to be working again, at least locally. Users across the country are still reporting errors, so you may find that you still have trouble connecting with folks who are not at Bryn Mawr.
Zoom is currently unavailable for many community members at Bryn Mawr, and across the country.
Teams may be a good alternative in the meantime. We will post updates here when we know more.
Contact the Help Desk with questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.
Check out the new Accessibility Best Practices guide. This step-by-step guide helps you vet the materials and practices you use for accessibility.
Have questions about accessibility or assistive technology?
Last but not least, the escape room is back! This semester’s game is called Keep Calm and Use Assistive Technology. Keep an on the LITS blog posts starting next week to learn ways to shave minutes off your team’s time this November. Are you up for the challenge?
Routine system maintenance will occur tomorrow (Thursday) from 6:00 p.m. until midnight. For more information on LITS System Maintenance: http://www.brynmawr.edu/lits/system-maintenance-policy. Please contact the Help Desk with questions, help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440, or lits.brynmawr.edu.
Currently, community members’ access to the New York Times online is unavailable. We are working to resolve the issue and restore access as soon as possible, but don’t have a current estimation for when it might again be available. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Please email circulation@brynmawr.edu if you need help finding alternate ways to access specific materials.
Update, 11:45am: The issues with internet and phone service have been resolved and everything should be working as expected. Please report any lingering issues to the Help Desk.
Due to equipment problems, both internet and telephone service is unavailable in the Graduate School of Social Work. We are actively working to diagnose and resolve the issues. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440.
When using a table in your document, it’s important to create an accessible one. To create an accessible table, you must use the in-built table tool for it to be accessible. Do not draw a table!
Screen reader users do not see the entire table at once, but instead navigate tables cell by cell. For this reason, the table must be programmed correctly so that the headings are read out when someone enters a cell. In the example table “Dogs’ Age and Weight” when a user navigates to the cell that reads “30 lbs.” the screen reader will announce “Fluffy, weight, 30lbs,” so the person will understand the data in context.
Table 1 Dogs’ Age and Weight
| Dog’s Name | Age | Weight |
| Fluffy | 4 | 30 lbs. |
| Spot | 2 | 10 lbs. |
If a table is not programmed correctly, a screen reader user will just hear “30lbs” and will not know what it is in reference to.
Similarly, tables should be simple and logical.
Simple: Don’t use split cells or merged cells or merge two tables together. An accessible table should have one header row across (Dog’s Name, Age, Weight) and one header row vertically (Fluffy, Spot) and a simple grid layout. Anything beyond this will be difficult to make accessible to a screen reader.
Logical: Sometimes people use tables to create a specific look or layout to their document rather than to display data. Here is an example:
Grades
| A + = 100-95 | B = 84-80 |
| A= 95-90 | C+ = 79-75 |
| B + = 89-85 | C= 74-70 |
This table is “illogical” because it is not a true table. This table is used to layout information, but not to display data. A screen reader would read the cell that says “C= 74-70″ as “B =84-80, B+=89-85, C =74-70.” In short, it would not make sense to the user. In a case liike this, it is best to list these grades out using a list.
To learn how to make an accessible table, follow these instructions.
Please go to the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle page and complete the Week 7 activity to get this week’s clue!
Just as people who use screen readers can skim pages by navigating via headings, so too can they navigate through a document just by links. This picture shows someone using the router feature in VoiceOver (a screen reader). On this webpage the user has used the router to isolate all the links, so then they can use their up and down arrows to go through the list of links to see which link they would like to navigate to.
If links have vague titles like “click here” or “link” then the screen reader user does not know what the link means, because they cannot see the link in context. Similarly, if links are non-descriptive, long URLs that can be confusing to listen to also.
To sidestep these issues, create descriptive links. For example, instead of https://www.brynmawr.edu/ create a hyperlink that says Bryn Mawr College Homepage.
To create a hyperlink, write the descriptive name for the hyperlink. Then right click on it, click link, and copy and paste the URL in the appropriate box.
Check out this page for more guidance on creating hyperlinks.
To get this week’s clue, complete the activity listed under Week 6 in the Keep Calm and Check Accessibility Moodle page.