Accessibility with Nearpod: How-To

Nearpod makes every instructional moment interactive by empowering teachers to create learning experiences with formative assessment and dynamic media. We are committed to helping teachers create inclusive learning environments, and make continual improvements to ensure our platform is accessible.

To monitor our progress, Nearpod uses the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT), a form created by partnership by the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) to provide evidence of a product’s compliance key regulations of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. The VPAT is the starting point for Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACR) which describe the accessibility of Nearpod features. Nearpod’s most recent VPAT targets WCAG 2.0 AA and is available upon request.

We focus on accessibility with our lesson delivery experience and authoring tools. Because teachers create and customize their own experiences in Nearpod, we cannot guarantee that every lesson will be accessible. Nearpod does offer many features that support accessibility, below is a guide designed to help teachers maximize the accessibility of their lessons.

In this article, find how Nearpod is accessible in these ways:

• Create accessible lessons
• Deliver accessible lessons
• Hear from every student

Create accessible lessons

I. Offer text accessibility through Immersive Reader

Nearpod uses Immersive Reader to provide text-to-speech, translation, contrast, and additional text accessibility features within a lesson. Immersive Reader is compatible with many of Nearpod’s content  & activity features, however, Immersive Reader does not read text on images. This feature is available on both the web and iOS app versions of Nearpod. 

Here are some tips for ensuring that students can leverage Immersive Reader during your lesson:

1. Create your lesson with the Nearpod slide editor or through our Google Slides add-on. This will ensure that all text on content slides can be read by Immersive Reader
2. Ensure that question types and content in your lesson are supported by Immersive Reader. Here’s how Immersive Reader works with Nearpod’s features:
   • Immersive Reader is supported on content slides created within the Nearpod slide editor or with our Google Slides add-on
   • Reads the question directions:
     • Open-Ended Questions
     • Matching Pairs
     • Draw It
   • Reads the question directions and answer choices:
     • Quiz
     • Poll
   • Does not read questions or answers:
     • Memory Test
     • Fill-in-the-Blank
     • Time to Climb
   • Nearpod's Immersive Reader integration does not support reference media, embedded websites, or other Nearpod content features not mentioned here.
3. Text accessibility: other screen readers
   • If your students are using a screen reader other than Immersive Reader, it will function within Nearpod in the same way that it would on any other website.

II. Include videos that offer closed captions

Close captions for videos are supported in the following instances:

1. For videos uploaded through YouTube that contain created-added captions (within Youtube), those captions will be available when the lesson is taught through Nearpod
2. Nearpod Original and Flocabulary videos contain lyrics within the video
3. Nearpod Original and Flocabulary videos offer PDF lyrics

III. Multiple options for student responses

Nearpod offers 11 ways for students to demonstrate what they know. Some question types offer multiple ways for students to respond to the same question. While creating lessons, consider these features as ways to offer multiple options for student responses.

1. Open-Ended Questions: When enabled, students can respond to these questions with text, recorded audio, or both
2. Draw it: Students can respond with drawings, text, and/or images (uploaded and via Google Safe Search)
3. Collaborate Board: Students can respond with text and/or images (uploaded and via Google Safe Search)

IV. Multiple representations of information

Nearpod offers 12 media types, so teachers have various ways to present information. While creating a lesson, consider student needs when determining how information is presented.

V. Offer in-lesson supports

Nearpod offers multiple ways to embed in-lesson supports to meet accommodations for students.

1. Provide reference media to support questions by adding audio, text, video, and reference websites
   • Reference media is supported on the following activities: 
     • Open-Ended Question
     • Draw It
     • Poll
     • Quiz
     • Collaborate Board (images only)
     • Time to Climb (images only)
2. Add recorded audio to content slides

Deliver accessible lessons

Nearpod offers multiple ways for teachers to increase accessibility while delivering lessons.

I. Make it simple for students to join lessons

There are multiple ways for students to join the lesson. When delivering your lesson, consider which option or options will be most accessible for your students.

1. By going to nearpod.com/student and entering a 5 character code
2. Directly via a link
3. By accessing a lesson embedded in an LMS

II. Easily allow students to preview lessons in advance, or review after

Offer a Student Paced code before or after a Live Lesson so that students can preview and review content at their own pace.

III. Allow students to control their experience while watching a video

When delivering a video through Nearpod, select the “Student plays” option in Live Lesson mode so that students can control the speed and volume. This mode is the default for Student Paced videos.

1. Students can watch videos in Nearpod at three playback speeds to slow down the video, and can pause and rewind the video as needed
2. Students can control the volume of the video on their device

IV. Easily personalizing lessons and provide accommodations for all learners

With Nearpod, you can duplicate a presentation to create alternative versions. Here are some ways that lessons could be customized:

1. Add in reference media supports for formative assessments
2. Alter question types for formative assessments
3. Alter content types, for example, replace a PDF text with a video
   

Hear from every student

Nearpod ensures that teachers hear from every student for every question to support 

I. Get live insights into every student's learning with the live Teacher View

Nearpod’s teacher view provides student responses to every question in real-time, so teachers can quickly understand where every student is in their learning.

1. With Co-Teaching, teachers can provide access to the live teacher view to their co-teacher, so both teachers can monitor responses.