Making Your Online Course Accessible

As an online course developer, becoming aware of just a few design principles is the first step in removing many of the potential barriers to the content in your course. Providing accessible content is not only useful for students with disabilities, it helps all students and is just good design! Here are three resources to give you an introduction to web accessibility:

Introduction to Web Accessibility from WebAIM: Web Accessibilty in Mind.

10 Quick Tips to Make Accessible Web Sites written by www.w3.org/WAI provides an overview of what it means to make accessible sites.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach that helps all students become expert learners. The goal of UDL is to reduce learning barriers for all students, whether or not they have disabilities. These principles can be used as a guide in creating your course.

Accessibility and Software Applications

The following links provide information on how to make accessible documents using these applications:

• Accessibility and Dreamweaver
• Accessibility and Acrobat
• Adobe's Accessibility Center
• Accessibility and Microsoft Word
• Accessibility and Math
• Making PowerPoint slides accessible

Videos about Accessibility

Quality Copies for Course Readings 3:32
Using good clean originals for course readings is important for student access to the material--especially those students who use screen readers.

Web Accessibility - through the "eyes" of a screen reader 3:03
View a website the way a person with a vision impairment would - using a screenreader - and understand why "Click Here" is bad policy and why using a Skip Navigation link is good policy.

From Where I Sit
A powerful video series of eight CSU students with disabilities who share their experiences in the college classroom.

Tutorials and Resources created for Educators

• Georgia Tech created a self-paced online tutorial called Access E-Learning.
• Effective Practices in Online Teaching: Accessibility: A Resource for Faculty in Online Teaching from the University of Maryland.
• The High Tech Center Training Unit (California Community Colleges) creates training manuals and tutorials on subjects related to accessibility.
• The CSU Accessible Technology Initiative web site has several resources.
• Accessibility in Online Teaching: Covers teaching modifications, understanding laws, understanding disabilities, and web site accessibility.

Accessibility Checkers

• Section 508 accessibility checker: http://www.section508.info
• WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM.
• HiSoftware Cynthia Says portal is a web content accessibility validation solution.
• Complete List of Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools
  

Web Resources

The following sites provide more in-depth information about web accessibility:

• Section 508 The legal standards established by the Federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and amended in 1999.
• EASI provides information and training on accessible information technology for persons with disabilities.
• W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is THE organization that develops specifications, guidelines, software, and tools for the web.
• Web Accessibility Initiative aka WAI, is a subgroup of the W3C. Its purpose is to promote accessibility of the web.
  • W3C Guidelines
  • WC3 Checklist
  • WC3 Techniques
  • WAI Quick Tips

WAI has created a tutorial on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This tutorial comprises four sets of slides and can be viewed in total or used to search for a particular reference.

The tutorial's four slide set contain:

1. The Introduction Set
   Explains the interface, navigation, and design used in the sets.
2. The Guideline Set
   Explains why each guideline is important to accessibility.
3. The Checkpoint Set
   Shows each checkpoint and the priority assigned to it. Links to one or more example slides.
4. The Example Set
   Shows how to implement each checkpoint, and what the result will look like.
   

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
-- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web.

Last revised: July 9, 2010
page author: Dr. Patricia Delich