Learning Resources: Course Accessibility Guidelines and Tutorials: Course Accessibility Homepage

Welcome to the Fundamentals of Accessibility Guide!

Whether you are creating a course from scratch or working on an existing course, the guidelines and tutorials provided here will get your course scoring in the green for accessibility!

Getting to Green

For each resource type, we provide information about the basic benchmarks for accessibility. As you work, keep these general best practices in mind:

Make all images and videos accessible by providing alt-text and captions.
Make all documents screen-reader friendly.
Use sufficient font size and color contrast.
Ensure that color and/or font size are not the only means of conveying the importance or order of information on a page.
When using hyperlinks, make the link text meaningful. "Links should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. For example, avoid using link texts such as "Click here," "See this page," "Go here," or "Learn more." Instead include the full title of the destination page." - quoted from Microsoft's web page, Make your Word documents accessible to people with disabilities.

Making Fixes

For each topic, we tell you the easiest way to fix the major accessibility issues in your course. For some resources, getting a 100% accessibility score will never happen - and that's ok! An item doesn't have to score 100% in order to be accessible to students. The goal is to make everything as accessible as we can - so get that score in the green.

Use the menu to select an area of accessibility you'd like to address.

Recommended Workflow for CAP

Recommended Workflow for Course Accessibility Project (CAP)

1. Note the minimum score needed on the Course Accessibility Documentation Form that Christina emailed you.

2. Go through your course, in order, page by page. Items with issues are marked with a meter like the ones shown on this page. Fix each issue on the page by uploading a better file, adding alt-text to an image, or fixing something on the page itself - whatever is needed. Be sure to save your changes, and continue to the next page.

3. Once you have gone through all of the active pages, go to your Course Files. Delete any files and pages that are no longer needed, especially ones you've just replaced with better versions.

4. Run an Accessibility Report and check out your new score. Did you reach or exceed the minimum required score listed on the CAP Documentation Form? If you did, record the new score on the form!