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Overview

Anytime you put materials online (either on a website or on Canvas), you need to make certain that they are accessible, that is, that anyone regardless of ability can use them. At first this might seem like a challenging task, but once you get used to a few basic steps for creating accessible content, you will find that accessibility becomes second-nature. This page will give you a basic overview of some helpful resources for the different types of content you either will create or use in your course.

A Few Considerations About Documents

MS Office

Microsoft Office programs have built-in accessibility checkers that can help you make your content accessible. It's always recommended that you create content in a Microsoft program first before converting to other document formats. Also, the newer version of Office products has a very robust screenreading function, which is useful for students who are sight-impaired. Because of this, it's better to upload a Word document than to convert it to a PDF when creating your own content.

Google

The Google family of applications are great for sharing content. Sadly, Google does not have a built-in accessibility checker like the MS Office programs. Until you feel comfortable creating accessible documents using styles, headings, etc., it's always best to create your documents in Word, run the accessibility checker and then convert them to Google to ensure that they are accessible.

PDFs

PDFs are essentially scans/images. If you find a PDF online that is a scan of a textbook, for example, that would show up as just an image to a student using assistive technology. In other words, the student would not have access to any of the scanned text. PDFs are much harder to 'remediate', that is, to make accessible. However, when you create an accessible Word document and then convert it to a PDF, your document will be accessible. Paid versions of Adobe Acrobat do have an accessibility checker. Ally will also give you suggestions for making PDFs accessible.

Note: Even though GCC has Ally and Canvas has a built-in accessibility checker, these tools are just that -- tools. They don't catch everything. For example, if you have an auto-captioned video, (which is not considered accessible) neither Ally nor Canvas will catch that the video captions do not match the spoken text. These programs only capture the accessibility of the 'container' (in this case the way the video is embedded in the page) and not the content (video) itself.

Resources

Accessible Office Documents

@One Self-Paced Courses

University of Washington Accessible Technology

WebAIM

Accessible Google Documents

General Links

It's best to follow the guidelines for creating accessible Word documents when using Google applications.

Accessible PDFs

@One Self-Paced Course

Self-Paced PDF Accessibility

University of Washington Accessible Technology

WebAIM

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