Develop Accessible Instructional Materials

What & Why

Accessible course materials are formatted so a person with a disability may navigate it using a screen reader to access the document.

It’s the right thing to do. Accessible content and documents benefit all users, not just people using assistive technologies (e.g., closed captions)
Navigating with a screen reader is easier if the web page or document is formatted properly.
It’s the law. Federal ADA laws require us (because we receive federal funding) to make any file we post digitally meet compliance standards.

Four techniques improve the accessibility of your course content for students with disabilities. They are:

Structure (sans serif fonts, headings, lists, tables with headers, text/background contrast, and descriptive links)
Alt text for images (a written description that can be read aloud by a screen reader)
Accurate, properly captioned videos
Accessible 3rd Party Resources (publisher resources, YouTube or Vimeo videos, external websites)

Best practices for creating accessible files

PDFs are screen-readable (You can select, highlight, or copy text.)
No Word documents are uploaded in Brightspace. (This often requires downloads.)
Hyperlink text is descriptive (avoids using "click here").
Headings have been created using text style in the toolbar, and headings are nested appropriately.
Link names are descriptive (don’t paste a URL in a doc).
Uses lists (don’t number paragraphs manually).
Excellent text/background contrast (for low contrast sensitivity and those with “color blindness”).
Tables are tagged with header rows and/or columns.
Documents have a header and a footer.
Images have an alt tag.
Audio recordings have a transcript, and videos are captioned.
Google Docs and Slides pass a Grackle check.
Content in Brightspace passes an accessibility check.

See this detailed checklist for more guidance.

How to Create an Accessible Document (my.css.edu)
Brightspace Instructor Guide - Accessibility - PDF from Saint Mary's University (2022)
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights launched a video series covering a variety of topics on digital access in education. There are 19 videos (each under 6 minutes in length).
Grackle Docs - Step by Step Guide. (n.d.). Berkeley.Edu.

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