By SUSAN JONES

When Laura Staniland Trybus moved into a role as an accessibility specialist for educational software consulting at the University Center for Teaching and Learning a couple years ago, she saw a need “to bring together an ecosystem of people at Pitt and external partners to support accessibility on our campus.”

Trybus, a certified digital accessibility specialist and assistive technology specialist, created the Teaching Center’s Accessibility Training Partners Program, which addressed all kinds of accessibility issues, both in person and online.

The program is open to faculty, staff and students. It hosts experts — either online or hybrid — on a variety of different accessibility issues.

The goal, Trybus said, is to “support the University and the Teaching Center’s commitment to accessibility, and my goal was to bring in experts from different parts of the accessibility field, which is pretty large.”

Those experts have included people who specialize in: mobile accessibility; neurodiversity and designing learning environments; assistive tech and neurodiversity; and a cutting-edge researcher for assistive tech and digital accessibility.

“I think it’s important to both understand what’s out there right now and then also understand what’s going to be out there in 10 years, five years, so we can prepare for that,” she said.

Cressida Magaro, the Teaching Center’s senior manager of learning environments, said this idea had been discussed before, but Trybus “is the one that took it and ran with it.”

Trybus said they knew there was a need for more support for faculty and staff with a variety of disabilities, but many weren’t coming forward. Then the pandemic happened and instruction was moved online, which amplified many of the issues people were having — “whether it was a visual issue, hearing, or sometimes it was a cognitive issue that had come about.”

“We knew the need was there, and we were finally able to start helping people and connecting with them,” she said.

All the webinars are recorded and available online, which Trybus said has been quite beneficial.

“For example, our first speaker was Meryl Evans, who is deaf, and she talked about how to position yourself in a classroom when you’re speaking if you have a student who is hard of hearing or deaf,” Trybus said. “She gave very specific direction: ‘Stand here. Put your slides here. Talk this way. Position your body this way.’”

At a subsequent webinar, a faculty member approached Trybus after the training and said, “‘Hey, this semester I have a student who’s hard of hearing. Can you offer some concrete advice for how I can help her?’ And I was able to say, ‘Yes, actually, we have this recording that specifies exactly how you can help her, how you can stand, how you can set up the classroom, what does and does not help her.’ And I just sent that recording.”

A lot of people who come to these webinars who may be in marketing. “They manage websites for the University, for their schools, their departments, hey may be administrators for faculty and they help manage Canvas courses, or they’re going to be helping try to help a department move towards this accessibility guideline,” Trybus said. “So, although that may have been a little more advanced, the recording will be there.”

Now many staff are dealing with the Department of Justice’s new requirements in Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act that require all publicly funded entities — including colleges and universities — to adhere to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (see related story).

Some of the webinars, like a recent one of adapting an app for accessibility, may seem too advanced now, but “when they get to the point where they say, ‘OK, the website is taken care of; we have the Canvas courses figured out; let’s start seeing how it works on the app, that recording is there for them to go back to.”

While students are welcome to watch the webinars, Trybus said students are generally getting the support they need from Disability Resource Services. “It’s the faculty and staff who sometimes either want more guidance about how to help their students, or they’re navigating a disability that’s affecting their teaching. And they need guidance on how to be able to continue teaching with whatever disability is affecting their work.”

Last semester, she said, they helped a faculty member who had a hearing issue. “None of us knew she had a disability, and it wasn’t until she felt comfortable telling us that we were really able to help her return to teaching.

“She had been thinking about retiring because it had become increasingly difficult to teach,” Trybus said. “She is now teaching regularly again, and that was very satisfying.

“One of the hard parts for anybody who has a hearing aid in is that if you’re in a room that there’s a lot of background noise, it can be hard to hear,” Trybus said. “And a lot of classrooms are just cement. There’s not a lot of things absorbing background noise.”

Through a partnership between various department in the Teaching Center, they modified the classroom with sound-absorbing panels. They also partnered with Tech Owl — based at Temple University and funded by the state — to get assistive tech for the faculty members and solidify a budget to sustain it.

Trybus said the program has a pretty wide reach with new people attending and returning viewers. The enrolled learning community is now around 150, and Erik Arroyo, Teaching Center director of academic support services, said “it grows a little bit with each and every semester that passes, because it started at zero.”

 “Our enrollment gives me the sense that both our reach is expanding and that there’s still interest and we’re meeting a need that people have, that these topics are relevant to them,” Trybus said.

She tries to schedule about one speaker a month. If you sign up to join the program, you’ll get emailed alerts about upcoming events. They also can be found on the Accessibility Training Partners website, the Teaching Center events calendar and the University Calendar.

The live sessions are open to people outside of Pitt, but the recordings are only available to those with a Pitt sign-on. Also, anyone can sign up to get Trybus’ monthly update. 

Trybus also is available for consultations every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at Hillman Library.

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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