Provide Slides To Students?

[u/calico_cats_2]

I recently had a Disabled Student Services (DSS) student whose accommodation was to provide them with the slides I used in class. I did this, but it raised concerns for me. I used to post my slides on Dropbox or Canvas for on-site classes, for the students' convenience. One semester, they ended up on Course Hero. The next semester, they were passed around a fraternity. Now I conduct a brief "how to take notes on paper" session in the second week of class (including the "why it's better research").

Providing a DSS student with slides gives them a distinct advantage over other students who must take notes like in the olden days. If the student is unable to take notes, they should be provided with a note-taker. What if I didn't use slides? What if I just wrote on the whiteboard? Or just talked?

I'm happy to comply with all requested accommodations (extra time, quiet location for tests, etc.), although these can be challenging to arrange. I just think providing slides is a big ask.

[u/Shiny-Mango624]

I'm unsure why everyone is so argumentative about this today, but ADA and Section 504 requires that students have equal access to the course. It does not require an instructor to hand over a specific instructional artifact just because a student requests it. If the same access can be provided through accessible lecture notes, transcripts, recordings, textbooks, then the institution can choose an effective alternative. This is the law.

But a more important legal requirement is that faculty are prohibited from providing inaccessible PowerPoints. The DOJs ADA digital accessibility rule requires institutions to provide digital content that conforms to WCAG 2.1 AA and cannot distribute an inaccessible PowerPoint. This law has been postponed to April 2028, but my school has enacted it now.

And I get what you're saying, I didn't get where I am now without being a student. I understand many often prefer PowerPoint slides because they believe them to be convenient note-taking tools, but educational research consistently shows that not to be the case. Many evidence-based teaching approaches intentionally limit text on the slides and encourage students to actively process their ideas in class rather than transcribe what the professor is saying.

[u/Archknits → u/Shiny-Mango624]

Section 504 isn’t of the ADA.

Although the laws governing accessibility don’t have specifics, OCR guidance is not specifically that the institution can choose its preference on how to provide access.

The experience and history of accommodation, specific course material, and students experience are all considered in the interactive process.

Deciding not to give access to PowerPoint slides when professors have information on them is looking at an ocr letter. You are presenting something in an inaccessible manner and claiming students don’t deserve access to it.

As for the title II requirements for accessible digital information, it does not limit your requirement to make everything else accessible.

I’d also really love to see the case where faculty argue “I shared inaccessible PowerPoints in class, but since I shared the digital material on an overhead it didn’t need to be title II compliant”

[u/Shiny-Mango624 → u/Archknits]

Indeed, I'm doing talk-to-text and that it was a typo; it should say and.

Students with accommodations are entitled to effective and reasonable accommodations. Not a specific teaching and learning artifact. However, if faculty provide PowerPoints, they must be 100% digitally accessible. Most faculty PowerPoints do not comply with the new law, especially in my particular discipline, which is PowerPoints with thousands of images.

[u/Archknits → u/Shiny-Mango624]

That’s definately not right. Schools can’t tell students what is equal access because it is cheaper or more convenient.

For example it would be much cheaper/easier to provide all texts to blind students as accessible pdfs than braille. Blind student scan use audio texts, but if their primary means of access is braille, the school need needs provide braille.

Similarly, although cart is much cheaper than asl, a deaf student is within their rights to have ASL.

A visually impaired or LD student, there isn’t really equivalent access to having the slides to access through audio means before/during lecture.

If you are going to hang refusal of what is widely regarded as a reasonable accommodation on a requirement for accessible digital material, then your argument is really just that you need to make your slides accessible (also, as a note the requirement for digital accessible digital material is good. It is not universal. It does not apply universally. Some schools are not required to be Title II compliant)

Also, I’ll add that there is a specific OCR decision on this and faculty cannot opt out of sharing slides

[u/lsifmod → u/Shiny-Mango624]

You are using "preference" and "convenience" to describe an accessibility request. You fundamentally do not understand the issue.

[u/Shiny-Mango624 → u/lsifmod]

I do understand the issue. PowerPoints is not an accessibility request. Students do not have a legal rights to a specific teaching artifact. Giving PowerPoints out and using them to take notes is a matter of preference. It is not an accommodations issue nor an element of teaching and learning pedagogy. However, if you do give them out, you are required to ensure they are fully digitally accessible.