[Athen] Thoughts about inaccessible PDFS in Canvas courses

[Deborah Armstrong via athen-list]

This quarter, I've had a number of students with this problem, and I wonder how much is the responsibility of the disabled student services, and how much the professor's responsibility.
Your thoughts are welcome.
The course is in Canvas and I've had five students taking five different courses with this same issue. The Canvas platform itself is very accessible and the Canvas pages the teachers post are also quite accessible.
But for the course readings, what are posted are pages from a variety of textbooks, all scanned by the professors and presented as image-only PDF files.
I've been steadily converting them as students send them to me, but unlike traditional alternate media, where the student can request a textbook early, these inaccessible PDFS keep popping up a day or so before the student is supposed to have read them.
All of them are relatively short, and I am sure it is saving students money not having to buy textbooks, but instead to have material from a huge variety of books as part of their course.
But it's a nightmare for the poor student who doesn't know if the material he will get will be accessible until almost before it is due. Plus it's a hassle for alt media production.
I've talked to the person here who trains folks on Canvas and he knows a lot about accessibility. But right now they are focusing on something called RSI (regular and substantive interaction) in courses because apparently California law is requiring professors master this stuff. So accessibility he told me is on the back burner until they get through all the RSI training.
When is it our responsibility to make materials accessible, and when is it the professor's responsibility? And what have you done to shove some of that responsibility back to the teacher?
--Debee

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