Accessibility

As instructors, we have legal and ethical obligations to ensure our courses are fully accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities. We use digital resources in our courses because we believe they enhance learning. However, unless carefully chosen with accessibility in mind, these resources can have the opposite effect for students with disabilities, erecting daunting barriers that make learning difficult or impossible.

Simply Said: Understanding Accessibility in Digital Learning Materials Links to an external site.

Accessibility Overview (H2)

Multimedia (H3)

Videos must have accurate captions. Auto-generated captions (auto-captions) can have errors and are not sufficient. Captions help many students in various situations including students who:

are deaf or hard-of-hearing
are in environments that are particularly loud or where they cannot hear the audio
have learning disabilities or difficulty focusing
are learning particularly challenging topics or topics with a lot of vocabulary
are second-language learners

Audio files must have transcripts. In general, the goal is to have all audio information also visually perceivable and all visual information auditorily perceivable.

Images should have a caption and alternative text (alt text). Alt text is a brief description (no more than 150 characters) that is read by a screen reader. If the image is too complex to describe in 150 characters, use the alt text to define the image and include a more thorough description in the caption or body of the text. Images that are purely decorative (do not provide any relevant information) should be marked as decorative. Alt text should not begin with "an image of" (or similar phrase) because screen readers will state that the text is from an image.

Text (H3)

Color should be used sparingly and not the sole means of indicating meaning. Text and background should have sufficient color contrast Links to an external site.. These are essential for readability. Other considerations for readability include avoiding decorative fonts and images of text.

Hyperlink text must be meaningful. This is a good link to the Accessibility Toolkit Links to an external site.. Don’t use “click here Links to an external site.” or the full URL of the link.

Lists should be created using the feature built in to the content editor, rather than typing the numbers manually. Use numbered lists for sequential lists and bulleted lists for non-sequential lists.

Styles and structures built into the content editor should be used to create page formatting. Sighted people can scan a page for bold text, screen readers scan based on headings and styles. Headings should be sequential. The headings in this section are identified (H1, H2, etc.) as a demonstration.

Tables are for data not for formatting. It can be tempting to use a table as a way to create columns on a page - with images on one side and text on the other. However, this causes accessibility issues with the content. Accessible formatting strategies depend on the platform being used. For web pages, use CSS; for Word, use columns. Because tables are used to organize data, the will need a caption as well as row and column headings. These can be set in the "table properties" feature for most platforms.

WCAG 2.0 (H2)

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Links to an external site., developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, provide an international standard that defines accessibility of web-based resources. The principles of WCAG 2.0 are applicable to other digital assets as well, including software, video, and digital documents. The University of Washington has developed an IT Accessibility Checklist Links to an external site. that can help anyone creating or choosing digital resources to understand the accessibility requirements related to the features and functions of those resources.

Optional ASCCC OERI Webinar

Creating Accessible OER Links to an external site.: This webinar will provide an overview of the basic considerations for developing accessible content. Topics will include proper use of: links, alternative (“alt”) text, headings and styles, and colors. You will also learn about accessibility checkers for Microsoft Office products, Canvas, and websites.