[Athen] Question regarding Alt Text requests and agreements

[Susan Kelmer]

We do not make a student fill out a form.  And we handle the conversion/tracking of books differently than we do handouts.  We almost never use the student's syllabus to give us our priorities, but that is more of a volume problem than anything else.  Our production center serves 102 students, and there is no way I could keep up with 102 students times 4-5 classes' worth of syllabi.  

That being said, we do have a process, that I maintain.  

Students send us their requests for textbook material via email, and we work on a FIFO (First In, First Out) basis.  Students who request early often have their books in plenty of time.  Students who request late find themselves at the bottom of the pile for production.

For articles, handouts, powerpoints, etc., students are told when they have their AT Intake that we need four business days to turn around that type of material.  This means if they want to read an article on Friday morning, I had better have it by Monday morning.  Using a plain old piece of paper, I keep a running list of the handouts that need to be done, in the order they need to be done or by due date.  I do have a staff of students who help with conversions, and they know to take a look at those pending things every time they come in, and work on those articles as they present and are due.  I work on those same materials, as well.  If a student gives us handouts the night before they want them, I am pretty blunt about telling them I can't promise the articles will be done in that timeframe.  The student has to take responsibility for getting us things in a timely manner.  They can come in in person, or send us things through email.  They are required to tell us when they would like to have the materials back in an accessible format so we can use that information for prioritizing.

I make exceptions every once in a while about syllabi.  I currently have two students - one with a profound learning disability (he really cannot read print at all but is not cognitively impaired) in a defense/mapping program, and one who is blind and in our doctoral anthropology program who has an immense amount of reading to do.  For each of these students, because the production is complex and there is an overwhelming amount of reading, I use the syllabus to keep us on track, and I download their articles straight from Desire-to-Learn.  Our goal with both of these students, because of the volume of reading, is to be about two weeks ahead of their reading schedule.  This takes an incredible amount of work on our end, and I can't imagine doing that for 102 students!

Susan Kelmer
Alternate Format Access Coordinator
Disability Services
University of Colorado Boulder
303-735-4836