Guidelines for Creating Accessible Course Materials

Course Documents and Presentations

When creating text based instruction for students, it is usually best to include the text in your Moodle page. The native accessibility features in Moodle will enable you to create accessible text much easier without the need to open or save extra documents. If you do need to create a separate document or include a slide presentation, please follow the guidelines below.

Select a font that is easy to read

• Select a font that is easy to read (Arial, Tahoma, Verdana, Calibri)
• Make the text a size of 10 points or greater
• Avoid light text colors, or colors that are similar to the background
• Do not use text color as the only means of differentiating text sections
• Avoid floating text boxes. Text in these boxes are not necessarily read by screen readers in the intended order

Use properly formatted headings to structure the page

• Use native text styles in your word processing program (Heading, Normal, Body)
• Text styles allow for easier navigation of the document using a screen reader
• Use native list options instead of hand-numbering items

Write meaningful link text

• Type out text that describes the link instead of generic text like "click here". Screen readers often use this text to describe the link destination.
  • ex: Lynchburg College
• If the document my be printed for students, include the URL after the link text.
  • ex: Lynchburg College (www.lynchburg.edu)

Include alternate text descriptions

• When including images and graphs in your document, include alternate text descriptions for screen readers
• Alternate text descriptions (alt text) can be accessed in the image or graph properties.

Create properly formatted tables

• Include column headers for all data tables
• Avoid split cells or nested tables
• Tab through an included table to ensure the reading order is correct

Ensure correct item order in slide presentations

• Use native slide layouts to ensure screen reader compatibility
• If multiple text boxes or elements are used, edit item order on the slide to ensure correct order for screen readers
• (all elements must be accessible using keyboard only)

Audio and Video

When creating or selecting media files for online courses, it is important to ensure those files are accessible to all students. The following guidelines will help you know what accessibility features to look for when selecting or preparing audio and video files.

Detailed verbal descriptions

• Detailed verbal descriptions of video content assist students who struggle seeing the video
• If a slideshow presentation is being recorded, include a link to the presentation file.

Keyboard accessible media players

• All audio and video players used must be keyboard accessible for students who cannot us a computer mouse
• (YouTube, LC Media Server, and Google Drive are all keyboard accessible)

Captioning and transcripts

• All audio and video files selected or created for online and hybrid courses should include closed captions
  • Video instructions for adding captions to YouTube or Google Drive.
• Writing a script before recording video aides in creating captions
• Dynamic transcripts can be included to provide further accessibility to media files