Accessibility on the Chromebook

 

Like the mighty Transformers, Chromebooks have "more than meets the eye" when it comes to features. One very important example of this is the array of built-in accessibility tools that Chromebooks contain out of the box.

Believe it or not, many of the accessibility tools that you search for to meet student accommodations (and just generally allow more choices for students to learn) are already a few clicks away on a Chromebook - no browser extensions needed. Let's go and find them!

In this overview video, the hosts scroll through an eye-popping number of features that students can enable on their Chromebooks. Better yet, those features follow a student's account if they switch shared devices or swap a malfunctioning device for a working one. It's truly set it and forget it.

Here are just some of the things you can enable in the Chromebook Accessibility settings:

• Select-to-Speak (Text-to-Speech)
• Dictation (Speech-to-Text)
• Screen Magnifier
• On-screen Keyboard
• Cursor customization (color, size, highlighting)

...and here's a link to a fun visual walkthrough of how to open and explore those settings.

That's right - - there doesn't need to be "an app for that," because your device already does these things on its own. Yay!

One thing that the resources above don't tell you about is a little setting called "Always show accessibility options in the system menu." I highly recommend turning this to the ON position when you first go in to add an accessibility feature. This way, the next time you open your "clock" menu on the Chromebook, you'll see the Accessibility Settings icon right there in front of you:

About once a week, we hear from a teacher, a paraprofessional, or an administrator about a student who either needs a new assistive feature enabled on their device, or whose third-party browser extension is not working properly. We want to share the knowledge far and wide that there are onboard Chromebook tools that fix many of these issues, and that they're just a click or two away!

Students sometimes play with these settings after they find them, and on occasion, they switch on a setting that they can't figure out how to switch back off. You or the student can almost always fix those situations using the settings in the Accessibility menu. If you get stuck, no problem - reach out through the Helpdesk and someone will work to get things back to normal.

If you or the teachers you work with could benefit from more in-depth information and practice with these tools, please just reach out. And remember, many of these tools assist students who do not have a documented accommodation - they provide access and choice for any student. It's worth letting students have a say in what would help them complete their work - within your parameters, of course. : )

We hope you have a "transformative" experience learning about Accessibility tools on Chromebooks!