Stanford
Office of Accessible Education

Document Remediation by OAE’s Alternate Format Team

The Alternate Format Production team in the Office of Accessible Education (OAE) remediates inaccessible educational materials for students that need them in alternative - sometimes, specialized - formats such as braille, html or docx. 

In order to meet our legal mandate to provide disabled students with equal access to instructional materials, the Alternate Format Production team requires  course materials 2-7 days before they are released to students in the class, as detailed below. 

Each class has its own unique materials, structure, and timeline. As such, the following are guidelines. Certain materials may require additional time, such as content in a language other than English, complex images and music.

Converting materials to  braille and tactile graphics is very time-consuming. If faculty do not have content ready per the guidelines below, then it may be necessary to offer assignment extensions to the student.

If you have a student enrolled in one of your courses that requires alternative formats, you will be contacted by a member of the Alternate Format Team to establish  an understanding of when documents are used, and to define a process for document access.

Page Content

Books

If a book is being used in the course you will need to provide:

  1. Title
  2. Author
  3. ISBN number
  4. Edition
  5. Is this edition critical, or would others be acceptable?
  6. Projected reading schedule for the book

Books that are used extensively in a quarter need to be identified before the quarter starts, (Higher Education Opportunity Act, 2008)

Readings - Book Chapters, Journal Articles, Articles

Please provide

  1. Bibliographic source for readings
  2. Access to your Canvas site, course website, or however else materials are distributed to students
  3. Projected reading schedule

OAE needs a minimum of 5 full business days to convert these materials into an accessible format. Technical and foreign language content may require additional time.

Other content/handouts created by instructors

Please provide the original source files e.g. tex, pptx, docx as well as the pdf file that will be distributed to students

OAE needs a minimum of 5 full business days to convert these materials into an accessible format.Technical  and foreign language content may require additional time.

Lecture Slides

Please provide

  1. Original source files, e.g. pptx, keynote, google slides
  2. Pdf or other file format that is distributed to students

OAE needs a minimum of 2 full business days to convert these materials into an accessible format.

Problem Sets/Assignments and Solutions

Please provide

  1. Original source files, e.g. tex, docx
  2. Pdf or other file format that is distributed to students

OAE needs a minimum of 3 full business days to convert these materials into an accessible format.

Lecture Notes or Lab instructions/handouts used in class

Please provide

  1. Original source files, e.g. tex, docx
  2. Pdf or other file format that is distributed to students

OAE needs a minimum of 3 full business days to convert these materials into an accessible format.

Exams

Please provide

  1. Original source files, e.g. tex, docx
  2. Pdf or other file format that is distributed to students

OAE needs a minimum of 3 full business days to convert these materials into an accessible format.

Converted exam materials will be returned to you by email, or can be picked up at the OAE front desk by you or a TA. You must identify who will be picking up the exam if it is a TA.

It will then be up to instructors to distribute these materials to the student that needs them for their exam. OAE will not release materials directly to students unless we have explicit, written authorization from the instructor.

Practice Exams

Please provide

  1. Original source files, e.g. tex, docx
  2. Pdf or other file format that is distributed to students

OAE needs a minimum of 5 full business days to convert these materials into an accessible format.