Accessibility

Accessibility is important for ensuring that every student can make the most out of your materials. There are many things you can do to make your materials accessible for students with disabilities. Not only is it mandated by law Links to an external site. that schools accommodate students' disability needs, but these accommodations can benefit all of your students. The minimum best practices are as follows:

  • add alt tags and captions to all online tables, images, and graphs
  • add video subtitles or transcripts
  • maintain high contrast between font and background (the WebAIM Color Contrast Checker Links to an external site. can help with that) 
  • use a minimum of 12 pt font size for text (9 pt for footnotes)
  • avoid the use of tables for formatting - only use them for data that needs to be displayed in a table
  • do not put important text in an image file (jpg, png, tiff, etc.) - screen readers will not be able to read it, and it will likely be illegible on smaller devices

Using Microsoft Word and formatting your text with the built-in styles (headers, subheaders, bulleted or numbered lists, alt tags) is a simple way to ensure accessible content that will be read accurately by screen readers.

If you want to hear for yourself how a screenreader would read your content, you can test it out. There are built-in screenreaders for Macs (VoiceOver), PCs (Narrator), and Chromebooks (ChromeVox). Learn more about these and other assistive technology tools here Links to an external site..

You should also consider access to technology - will students who don't have internet access or a computer still be able to use the resources?

Affordable Learning Georgia has put together an excellent OER Accessibility Evaluation Rubric Links to an external site.to address access for students with disabilities, as well as general usability and pedagogical accessibility. You can fill it out and submit the information in a form so that others can see how accessible your OER is, or fill out the Word document template.  

If you’d like to learn more about other steps you can take towards accessibility, here are some resources recommended by the Faculty Innovation Center (FIC) at UT Austin:

Going further than accessibility, Universal Design for Learning offers a framework for optimizing learning for everyone.

Image credits: "Beyond Blended" (cropped) and "Universal Design for Learning" by Flickr user Giulia Forsythe Links to an external site., in the public domain. 

 

 

 

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