Accessibility

Online Accessibility and Usability Overview

Web accessibility is important to ensure that course materials are available to everyone so that each student has equal access and equal opportunity. It levels the playing field for all your students. While some students in your class may have a more visible disability, other students may have less apparent disabilities. Accessibility guidelines help make your course available to everyone: Just as wheelchair ramps are useful for people with strollers, skateboards, and delivery dollies, so too are video captions for students who are deaf helpful to students with cognitive disabilities, students with sleeping children, and students who are English Language Learners.

Usability Design Solutions

Think of your online course as a foreign country. When your students arrive, how will they know where to go? How will they know what to do and when to do it? How will they understand the language of this new and unfamiliar country? By providing students with consistent and familiar landmarks for wayfinding, clear and efficient instructions written at their language level, and easy-to-use technologies, your students will spend more time learning and less time asking for directions because they became lost or disoriented.

Four Steps to an Accessible Syllabus or Document

Good document structure supports all types of learners by improving the organization and presentation of information and allowing for assistive technology to work effectively. The following steps will make your documents accessible and apply to all text-based files including HTML (Web), Word, and PowerPoint.

1. Provide appropriate document structure using the heading styles, list styles (bullets or numbering) and paragraph tools in your word processor.

2. Select appropriate typography: sans serif fonts (Arial) are most legible.

3. Format tables: Assign a header row and provide alternative text.

4. Format images: provide alternative text or long descriptions for images.

Video Accessibility

It is also important to ensure the video materials are accessible. When selecting videos to use in your class, it is helpful to search for videos that already have closed captioning. For example, in YouTube, when you search for a video on a particular topic, you can add "cc" to the search term and you will only have videos that are closed-captioned show up in your search field.

If you record a video, you can upload it to YouTube, and YouTube will automatically create closed captioning, although there will be some errors. There are many videos available on how to edit the automatic captions that YouTube provides shortly after you upload a video. Here is one how-to video. Here is an Updated new method video.

TIPS: Quick Accessibility Check

Here are some tools that you can use to quickly check accessibility:

• Microsoft Office: Accessibility Checker Guide

• Adobe Acrobat DC: Accessibility Checker Guide

• D2L Accessibility Checker: Accessibility Checker in Brightspace HTML Editor

• Web Accessibility Checker:

  • WAVE

  • 508 Checker