Accessibility

The definition of "accessible" used by the Office of Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Education is as follows:

"Accessible" means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally, and independently as a person without a disability.

The Law and Compliance Standards from the NC Virtual Learning Community

Resources

• What is WCAG? WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) for Beginners

• WCAG 2.2 (Latest WCAG version)

• Digital accessibility video series from the US Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights 

• Accessibility Statements & VPATs (R-CCC)

• The National Center on Disability and Access to Education Cheatsheets

These one-page accessibility resources, or “cheatsheets,” have been developed to assist anyone who is creating accessible content. These free resources are catered to less-technical individuals, such as faculty and staff.

• Digital Accessibility (Portland State University) 

• Posters for How to Design for Accessibility (design guidance for low vision, D/deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, users on the autistic spectrum and users of screen readers)

• Protocol for Creating Accessible OER (a guidebook)

• Tips and Resources NC Virtual Learning Community (NC VLC)

How-to's

Word Processing:

• Checking Accessibility in Word Files (video - 3 min, 40 sec)

• Using Heading Styles to Structure a Document (video - 2 min, 12 sec)

• Creating Tables in Word (video - 3 min, 10 sec)

Microsoft Office

• Create accessible file names

• Creating accessible documents, by Microsoft

• Word and PowerPoint Accessibility Evaluation Checklist, by WebAIM. 

• How to produce accessible Microsoft Word Documents, Powerpoint slides, PDF Files (training modules)

• Make Your PowerPoint Presentation Accessible to People with Disabilities

• Create Accessible PowerPoint Presentations 

Google Suite Specific: 

Make Your Document, Presentation, Sheets, a Videos More Accessible by Google

Creating Closed Captioning and Transcripts:

• How to Create a Youtube transcript with Youtube  (video - 1 min, 29 sec)

Working with Images:

• Inserting Compliant Images (video - 2 min, 454 sec)

• Making Your YouTube's Closed Captions More Accessible (video - 4 min, 37 sec)

• Adding Alt-Text to a PPT and Google Slides Images (video - 2 min, 35 sec)

• Alt Text Decision Tree

• Poet Image Description -  Interactive practice understanding and creating alt + text  (We do not recommend uploading images to this external practice site)

Tools

Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit: 

Brickfield is able to check any content that has been authored in Moodle such as labels, pages, Moodle books, activity descriptions, topic headings, etc) for accessibility. It does not check content linked out from Moodle and hosted on other sites (e.g. YouTube). It does not scan your uploaded files (eg. Lecture slides, PDFs, Word documents, etc.) for accessibility. To create accessible files, refer to Concordia’s Accessibility Modules below and other accessibility resources on the how-to section of this accessibility page:

Brickfield Resources: 

• What is the Brickfield Accessibility + Toolkit

• How to Add the Brickfield to Your Moodle Courses

• A Guide for Teachers 

• Using the Brickfield Accessibility Toolkit (detailed video)

Other Tools

• Live Captioning in Chrome browsers for any video  (Be sure to add closed captioning as required for ADA purposes) (video - 1 min, 51 sec)

• Windows 10 Built-in Accessibility Tools and Features

• Type with Your Voice- Google Docs and Slides 

• Mac Accessibility Short Cuts

• WebAim Color Contract Checker