SUPPORTING STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
Here at Silicon Valley High School, our courses are designed to provide flexibility for supporting students with disabilities and, where possible, we will make further accommodations beyond those built into our courses.
Students Needing More Time
Some students need more time and our self-paced, video-based, teacher-supported format can go a long way to accommodate this:
- Our courses are self-paced–there are no due dates or deadlines.
- Videos can be stopped and replayed as many times as the student needs to master the materials.
- The play back speed of videos can be slowed down, or sped up by clicking on the settings icon in the bottom right corner of the YouTube window.
- There are no time limits on quizzes. Students can take as much time as they need.
- Quizzes can be taken as many times as the student need to master the material. The highest score is the one used to calculate the grade.
- Unit tests are 3 hours, which is ample for most students, but the time limit can be extended on a case-by-case basis if required.
- There are no time limits on assignments. Students can take as much time as they need.
- There is no time limit on the practice final, which can be taken as many times as the student needs to master the materials.
- The final can be taken only once, and is limited to 3 hours, however, this is more than sufficient time for most students. If a student needs more time for the final, this can be arranged through our customer service team.
- Interaction with the teacher can take place via email, so there are no time constraints on when the student has access to the teacher.
- Students wishing to have one-on-one tutoring sessions with teachers can book the sessions by choosing the most convenient time slots on the teacher’s calendar.
Visually Impaired Students
As our courses are video-based, the audio track of the videos often describes the materials being taught. Furthermore:
- Videos can be stopped and replayed as many times as the student needs to master the materials.
- Paper textbooks are a problem for the visually impaired, but as a truly online school SVHS does not rely on paper textbooks at all. All SVHS reading materials are digital–mostly web pages with some PDF documents. Web pages can be read out loud by screen readers deploying with text-to-speech capabilities. For PDF documents, Adobe Acrobat can be configured by the student to enable screen readers to convert text to speech.
- Please see above for how visually impaired students needing more time are able to use SVHS courses.
Hearing Impaired Students
As the courses are video-based, with supporting reading materials, hearing-impaired students can usually click the “CC” icon at the bottom of the YouTube video to get closed captioning. Please see above for information on how hearing-impaired students needing more time are able to use SVHS courses.
Accessibility with the Moodle Learning Management System Platform
The SVHS learning management system is built on the Moodle platform. Moodle’s goal is to be fully accessible and usable for all users regardless of ability. This page describes the current state of accessibility in Moodle as well as the plans for the future.
Moodle’s Accessibility Statements:
Individualized Education Programs (IEP's)
Individualized education programs (“IEP’s”) are created and administered by public schools and charter schools. As a private school, SVHS does not develop or administer IEP’s, but our supplemental courses are often used by students from other schools who have IEP’s.
If your student has an IEP, we understand it is a private document and we do not need to see it—we would simply need the counselor or supervising teacher to explain to us they key accommodations required by the student.
As you can see above, our courses are self-paced and are already ideal for students who need more time. If your student needs additional flexibility beyond what we have identified above, please let us know and we will do what we can to accommodate within the constraints of our system.
University of California, A-G Approved Course List
