How to Make Materials Accessible

The following checklist provides recommendations that benefit everyone, regardless of their ability, to access and interact with the materials. Accessibility Checklist to follow when checking digital content.

If you missed the Creating Accessible Course Materials Panel Discussion, you can watch the YouTube recording by clicking on Creating Accessible Course Material Panel Discussion (50:37).

Getting Started

The resources provided will help with editing and creating accessible materials. Additional resources include:

• Ally Blackboard tool used to score digital course content for accessibility, includes instructions for fixing the issues, and Alternative format downloads for students.
• How to Make Your Course Accessible lists the top 15 accessibility issues and how to solve them.
• IDC instructional design team offers course accessibility consultations.
• IDC computer lab has software available for document remediation.
• Ultra Accessibility Overview has information on all the accessibility features in Ultra
  • Ultra Accessibility Checker (Powered by Ally) information on how to use this tool to improve the accessibility of items added to a course

Best Practices

• Creating accessible digital content ensures it is available and usable by all users, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. To achieve this, think about accessibility before, during, and after the creation of all digital content. Review and fix accessibility issues before sharing the content with others.
• Begin by providing headings in documents, alternative text for images, descriptive links for URLs, formatting tables, including captions for videos, providing transcripts for audio, reviewing color contrast, and much more.

Learn More/How To's