The digital content in courses is required by law to be accessible to all students from the beginning to ensure equal access to their learning experience and success.
All students can benefit from an inclusive learning environment. These resources contain information on making course content accessible.
The following web sites are helpful in understanding these requirements:
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) are a set of standards defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) that define how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. WCAG 2.1 defines four principles which provides the foundation for web accessibility:
The success criteria have three different conformance levels – A, AA, and AAA – with AAA being the most accessible. Additionally, there are “Sufficient and Advisory Techniques” that demonstrate coding techniques.
Additional references are below:
The creation of accessible course content begins with universal design. The goal of universal design is to minimize barriers and maximize learning. Universal design addresses the "what," "how," and "why" of learning and gives all individuals equal opportunity to learn.
This information contains guidelines for making content created within Microsoft Office accessible for all users. Please note that some of the accessibility tools within Microsoft Office are only available in the PC version of Microsoft Office.
Free tools to caption video include YouTube, Amara and CADET:
These tools can be useful in making sure that digital content is accessible. However, these are only tools and you still must carefully review your content to make sure that you have met the requirements outlined in WCAG and Section 508. A WCAG 2.0 checklist is included below.
These web sites are great resources to utilize when creating accessible content. Penn State and Portland Community College have excellent accessibility web sites that contain extremely helpful information.
