NAU Equally Effective Alternative Access Plan (“EEAAP”) Information

Any Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in use at Northern Arizona University (“University”) should be fully accessible to people with disabilities. If a product or service is not fully accessible, an EEAAP should be in place to compensate for the lack of accessible feature(s). This plan should be developed in advance of any requests for accommodation so that in the event of a request for access, there will be minimal delay in providing the accommodation.

Considerations:

“Accessible” means that a product or service can be used as independently, fully, and with equivalent ease, by a person with a disability as by a person without a disability. This may not mean that the product or service has the same method of access or the identical ease of use for each person.

Methods of access for computer-based systems should include options for working without a visual display,  working without sound, working in a magnified modality, and working without a mouse or other pointing device.

Sample cases:

• A required training video does not have captions, so it cannot be understood without sound.
  Possible solution: add captions to the video. Contact the Usable Materials Center for assistance.
• An online training course cannot be used without a mouse.
  Possible solution: re-code the course so that it works with all basic input technologies. Contact the Accessibility Analyst for assistance.
• An informational document or webpage cannot be processed by a text-to-speech program, which is often used by people who have difficulty reading visually.
  Possible solution: re-construct the document to be accessible. Contact the Accessibility Analyst for assistance.

Note that it is generally not appropriate to ask a person to call or come to your office so that you can “do it for them,” particularly if your computer-based system is otherwise available to everyone 24 hours a day from wherever they might have internet access.  It is acceptable to offer everyone the option of getting personal service during business hours, but it cannot be your sole method of providing access to people with disabilities.