ADA compliance and teaching linguistics online

Abstract

Only 8.8% of faculty have reported receiving formal training for develop-ing ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) compliant online courses (Gould & Harris, 2019), yet in any given semester, faculty may be required by federal law to make their course accessible for a student that has enrolled with a disability. Linguistics faculty face many of the same challenges (namely time and resources) as other disciplines with implementing ADA federal guidelines. However, there are further obstacles with linguistic specific topics (such as dialect illustrations, phonology, morphology) that require special attention when devising accessible material for those that are either visually or hearing impaired. Through the exploration of an un-dergraduate linguistics course (LING 2050: Language of Now), this paper reflects on best practices, suggested modifications, barriers in developing an ADA compliant online linguistics course, and presents a resource developed by the author aggregat-ing resources that facilitate making a course ADA compliant.