◉ REQUIRED STANDARD

Expectations

1. Current accessibility standards are wide ranging and impact various areas of the course; ergo, to satisfy this standard, the course must:

   1. • Provide for text alternatives of images and other non-text content, including user interface components

      • Provide that prerecorded audio is available in a visible format and that silent animations are available in an audible format

      • Provide for synchronized captioning of prerecorded video and multimedia

      • Provide for audio description of prerecorded video and multimedia

      • Provide for captioning of live video and multimedia

      • Provide that information and prompts are not conveyed only through color

      • Provide for specified contrast between foreground and background of text and images of text (e.g. 4.5:1)

      • Provide for the use of text, as opposed to images of text

      • Provide that headings and labels are descriptive

Examples

• • Courses utilizing visual elements, such as charts and graphs, must provide text-based descriptions of these.

  • Courses utilizing videos or animations with spoken text, music with lyrics, actions, etc. must provide synchronized captions, including text descriptions of music, actions/events, etc. Such captions must be 99% accurate or better. The same is true of live video (e.g. lectures, presentations, etc.).

  • In general, colors should be avoided as visual cues (e.g. "Click on the red arrow to continue.").

  • Content should have sufficient contrast between the foreground and background (e.g. avoid red text on a white background, etc.).

  • Documents should present accessible text; namely, no scans of chapters in PDF format that have not been processed via optical character recognition.

  • Tables should have headings or labels that sufficiently describe the contents in rows or columns, and use the appropriate markup to indicate this (e.g. TH element in HTML; in Word, creating header rows/columns, etc.).

  • Images should have alternate descriptions (via the ALT attribute in HTML, or populating the appropriate field in D2L when inserting images).

  • MathML should be used for all equations and formulae.

  • Course content should be organized by module/week/topic, not by type, as this is easier for students to navigate when using assistive technology.

References:

• • Federal Access Board's ICT Refresh

  • Federal Access Board's 508 vs. WCAG 2.0 comparison table

  • How to meet WCAG 2.0 (Quick Reference)