Accessible Content For All Learners

It is our moral and legal responsibility to ensure that all of our students have access to our learning content. Our focus to is on making sure that we are communicating the same message to all students. Accessibility involves things like captions for videos, formatting of text, alt text for images, etc.

One of the best resources available for accessibility is Portland Community College's Accessibility Handbook. This handy guide will walk you through the fine details of making content accessible.

We are fortunate to have disability support and instructional design staff who are willing and able to guide faculty as they make their content accessible. If you have questions about how to make your content accessible, reach out to them.

Text

When formatting text, avoid using only color and font size to emphasize the start of new sections. Instead, use the built in header functions. These will be read by the screenreader which will indicate their significance to non sighted students.

Canvas has a built in accessibility checker that can also be helpful.

Images Alt-Text

Images are often used to simplify complex information or provide an example of a concept. For non-sighted students, be sure to include alt text. Alt-text will be read by screenreaders providing a description in words of the image. Alt-text on images should communicate to students using screen readers all the information a sighted student would gain from looking at the image. We often encourage faculty to imagine they’re describing the image to a radio audience when entering alt text.

For complex images, Portland Community College recently released a guide for working with complex images.

Video Captions

While video content is effective for many students, it’s important we make sure we’re reaching all students. Videos, whether created by the instructor or someone else should include captions that are 99% accurate. Check videos you incorporate into your course to make sure they’re captioned.

Captions are simple to add to videos uploaded to YouTube. In fact, YouTube auto-captions video content so all you have to do is correct any errors. For non-sighted students, it’s important to use descriptive language so that communication doesn’t rely entirely on visual information.

Scanned Documents

Scanned documents are not accessible.