On a serious note, please make sure to alt text your media! Disabled people make up the world's largest minority. You should care about accessibility because disabled people matter, but on a more selfish note accessible media guarantees that more people engage with it! 2/7
Writing alt text and image descriptions is really easy, especially on Twitter. When you upload an image to Twitter it'll prompt you to add alt text (or you can click edit to do so). 3/7
Your alt text should describe what's happening in the image, any text in the image, and any other pertinent information. What is the subject wearing, what do they look like, what exactly are they doing? 4/7
If you get stuck or lost, just Google for help! Also there are a ton of disabled individuals who've put together useful threads right here on Twitter - we'll link our favorites in the comments. 5/7
If you're not sure whether an image has alt text, you can use @ImageAltText or @get_altText which are both bots. Just comment with one of these accounts tagged, and the alt text/image description will appear in a comment. 6/7
Tagging these bots is a useful way to politely remind people to provide alt text for images. If you find major organizations that boast accessibility but do not alt text their media here, message them to ask. And direct them to this thread for resources! 7/7
We began this month of Accessibility Actions by sharing stats on the number of disabled undergrads, grad students, & faculty. We used polls to explore lived experiences of grad students. Why does the number of disabled people drop off the higher in the ranks you go? #NDEAM 1/
The fact that few disabled grad students are enrolled may well start at the interview! Here, we show that folks on the job market or applying to grad schools overwhelmingly had inaccessible interviews. 2/ #DisabilityTwitter#DisInGradSchool
This demonstrates a culture that does not often think of disability. Most folks said that, while their uni has an LGBTQ center and a multicultural center, they don’t have a disability cultural center. This sends the message that disability is not something to be celebrated. 3/
With COVID, many people and jobs are more online than ever before. If your website, Zoom meetings, even Tweets aren’t accessible, then a sizable percentage of the population can’t navigate them. Here are some resources to make your digital content more #accessible! 1/13 #NDEAM
@access_guide_ wrote a guide on writing image descriptions to help you understand what’s important to include when you’re posting that cute dog photo. tinyurl.com/ImageDesc. @ImageAltText can be tagged to check if an image on Twitter has alt text! 2/13
If you’re low on spoons and/or don’t have funding to pay someone to write image descriptions for a professional website/presentation (for example), this Facebook community can provide free, crowdsourced image descriptions facebook.com/groups/1376494… 3/13
Today we’ll be talking about the recruiting & hiring of disabled people for #faculty positions. Only ~4% of US faculty identify as disabled; not exactly representative of the ~20% of undergrads who are disabled...
Sgoutas-Emch et al write about cohort hiring as a strategy to diversity #STEM faculty hires. This paper focuses on increasing the representation of women of color in UCSD’s STEM departments and outlines the steps of their cohort hiring ftp.arizonaea.org/home/68489.htm 2/6
The Urban Universities for Health also put out a report on the experiences of universities that have adopted cohort hiring practices. 70% of the universities reported an increase in faculty diversity following the implementation of cohort hiring tinyurl.com/CohortHire 3/6
Hi everyone - we're so excited to have you along with us for the month of #NDEAM (National Disability Employment Awareness Month). We're hoping to take the month of October to create actionable change surrounding ableism in higher ed.
Did you know that roughly 25% of the US population is disabled? Likewise, schools report 20-25% of undergrads are disabled. The sad part is that only 8% of master's students, 7% of doctoral students, and a miniscule 3.6% of faculty ID as disabled #AcademicChatter#AcademicTwitter
As disabled doctoral students we're dismayed by these numbers! We don't see our identities reflected in the academy. As proponents of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) we want to enact real measurable change. #DisabilityTwitter
If you are a TA, staff, or faculty member, have you ever received training about mentoring students with disabilities or promoting disabled student success? 3/
Ok y'all - we know it's the weekend and the world is a trash heap right now and you're burnt out. However, Universal Design strategies help us ALL - profs and students alike! Here are all of our resources on UDL that we've posted today - RT and tag your colleagues 1/5
Print it out, hang it in your office, share it with your grad students. Send it to your cohort members, add it to your collection of pedagogy resources 2/5
@Nicole_Lee_Sch's introductory lecture on UDL practices and why we need them during the pandemic. Send it to you department, share it on your grad student facebook page, watch it in small chunks over the weekend. 3/5