Making course content accessible

The Teaching@UW page offers some guidelines on making slide decks more accessible on PowerPoint and Google Slides. Here are a few additional practices to consider:

• Provide students with a way to digitally access the slides before beginning, by posting a link to an accessible location and/or putting up a QR code to the slide deck
• Use a simple font, preferably Sans Serif (e.g., Ariel or Helvetica)
• Use minimum 28 pt font for body text (left aligned or justified), bold 36pt font for subheaders (left aligned or justified), and bold 40pt font for headers (centered)
• Check the “Reading Order” of slide content (on PowerPoint and Google Slides) to ensure screenreaders infer content in the intended order. Orders are bottom-up i.e., Title should be the farthest “back” in the stack.
• Check for color contrast in text (by using tools such as the WebAIM Contrast Checker) if using multiple colors. Generally try to avoid only encoding information only by color.

The Teaching@UW page offers some guidelines on making readings and course materials (such as textbooks) more accessible. Here are a few additional practices to consider:

• Ensure required and optional readings, when using digital material, can be accessed by every student either through UW Libraries or as freely available content on the open internet. When using paywalled readings, download and provide offline versions.
• When sharing HTML-based readings, check whether embedded images have alt-text (on a browser such as Chrome or Safari). If not, inform students about that, and prepare to explain image content in class and/or providing some alt text yourself.
• If using “live” webpages such as newspaper article links, where ads and other content can change from day to day, consider saving snapshot versions (through services such as FreezePage) so that “live” content does not cause unforeseen issues or suffer from content-based changes.
• If offering downloaded versions of readings, ensure filenames are descriptive.
• Remove older/unused readings using TidyUp!

The Teaching@UW page offers some guidelines on making assignments and handouts more accessible, including using the Little Forest tool to make PDFs accessible by tagging images with alt text (though note, it sometimes fails to recognize each image, and requires manual correction of alt text). Here are a few additional practices to consider:

• Post handouts and materials required in-class on class-accessible sites (such as the course Canvas site) at least 24 hours prior to class, so that students can download, print out or otherwise have their own version.
• Ensure Assignments and tasks laid out in Handouts can be successfully completed without requiring additional resources that only some students might have access to.
• Offer materials in multiple accessible formats (e.g., tagged PDF, HTML, Word, ePub, etc.)
• Verify accessibility of materials -- through Canvas scores and other means -- before.

The Teaching@UW page offers an instructional video on how to make syllabi accessible:

It is strongly recommended that Instructors use a Canvas site for their courses, and the Teaching@UW page offers some guidelines on how to make Canvas sites accessible for students. Here are a few additional practices to consider:

• If building Syllabus on Google Docs or MS Word, copy over the content on to the Syllabus tab on Canvas.
• Leverage Modules by organizing the course in a linear and logical progression
• If using lists, use the bullet-and-numbers button in the Text Editor, rather than hyphens, as this might not communicate content as lists to screen readers.