All SoPA Canvas courses will be designed for accessibility, usability, and universal design, in compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and other relevant federal and state laws and regulations.
Accessibility for online courses means that the course content is designed so that people with disabilities can use them. For example:
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A video in a course becomes more accessible to someone with a hearing impairment when it includes closed captions.
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An image in a course becomes more accessible to someone with a visual impairment when it includes alternative text describing the image.
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A web page in a course becomes more accessible to someone who is colorblind when it uses carefully chosen high contrast colors for text and the background.
The definition of “accessible” used by the Office of Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Education is:
“Accessible” means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally, and independently as a person without a disability.
Universal design for learning is a broad strategy to learning that includes accessibility as one component. The UDL guidelines include:
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Provide multiple means of engagement
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Provide multiple means of representation
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Provide multiple means of action and expression
SoPA embraces Universal Design for Learning for all of its online courses. This means we take a comprehensive and systematic approach to creating course content, activities, and assessments that include flexibility and adjustments to meet the individual needs of all learners.
SoPA is proactive in its efforts to ensure access for all learners. In the past many institutions provided accommodations only upon request. Just as builders no longer wait for someone in a wheelchair to show up to install an elevator, we take active steps to make as much of our content broadly accessible to all learners as possible.
Instructors are responsible for ensuring that all content, activities, and assessments that they add to their courses comply with current accessibility standards and follows the principles of Universal Design for Learning. SoPA instructional designers are available to provide guidance and solutions to faculty to achieve these goals.
The Goldman Center for Student Accessibility will provide assistance for any student who requires accommodations beyond our normal accessibility strategies. See https://accessibility.tulane.edu/faculty.
Text is usually the most widely accessible type of content. For example, people with visual impairments use screen reader software to read the text on the screen aloud to them.
Best practices
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Use the default color, font, size, and headings for all text.
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Use bold for emphasis.
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Use tables for tabular material.
There are a few important details to keep in mind with regard to ensuring text is accessible:
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Color |
Use the default text color and background color to ensure the highest possible color contrast. Changing text color, changing the color of the background, or adding a highlight to text may make the text harder to read. Avoid using color alone to differentiate text (“Do the problems in blue and skip the ones in green.”) |
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Font |
Use the default text font. The default font in Canvas has been optimized for accessibility and legibility for the widest range of learners. Changing the text font may make the text harder to read. |
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Size |
Use the default text size. Even if the text looks too large or too small on your computer, it will probably look different on other computers. Computers and browsers are designed to allow the person reading the page to change the size of the text to make it easier to read. |
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Headings |
Use the default heading styles provided in the Canvas Rich Content Editor toolbar. Use Heading 2, Heading 3, and Heading 4 to create a hierarchy of headings on your pages. |
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Emphasis |
Use bold for emphasis. Using underline, italics, color, highlight, or size to emphasize text may make the text harder to read. |
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Capitalization |
Use sentence-style capitalization. Capitalize the first letter of the sentence and proper nouns. Avoid ALL CAPS. |
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Tables |
Use tables for tabular material, that is, material organized into rows and columns. Using tables for layout (such as setting text in columns) can make text hard to read (it is especially confusing for people using screen readers). |
Using the defaults will also save you time (you don’t have to change it over and over on every page) and it will make your content look more professional by making it look more consistent.
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Include descriptive alternative text for all images, unless the image is purely decorative.
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Do not use scanned images or photos of text, unless you provide an accessible alternative.
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Provide a detailed text alternative for all complex graphics such as charts or infographics.
When you upload an image to Canvas, provide alternative text that fully describes the salient elements of the image. Screen reader software reads this alternative text aloud to users so they know what the image contains.
Scanned images or photographs of text cannot be read by screen reader software, and so are effectively unreadable to people with visual impairments. Avoid using such images unless you can also provide a text alternative.
Complex graphics such as data charts or infographics are not accessible to people using screen reader software unless you can provide a detailed text alternative.
Provide a text transcript for all audio content.
Provide closed captions or a text transcript for all video content.
[To come: instructions for using ShareStream to generate video captions]
Include a text or audio description of important visual information in a video.
Closed captions or a text transcript provide a text alternative to the audio content in a video, but they do not necessarily provide a description of the visual content on the screen. Whenever possible, include a text description of important visual information. One way to do this is if you are recording a voice-over for a PowerPoint, be sure to describe the important visual elements on each slide thoroughly. Then when the audio is rendered into a transcript or closed captions, you already include a description of the visual elements of the slide.
When you create documents for your students to download, keep accessibility in mind.
Use Content Pages in Canvas to provide students with content that includes text and images. Avoid having students download a document to read content or instructions that could simply appear on a Content Page in the course, where the student can view the text without a download.
Word documents (.docx files) are easier to ensure accessibility than PDFs (.pdf files). Organize your content using Heading 1, Heading 2, and so forth to improve accessibility. See links to other guidelines for improving the accessibility of Word documents in the Resources below.
Best practices
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Avoid file downloads for content or instructions that simply could be read on the screen.
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Use Word documents with properly formatted headings and other elements to ensure the best level of accessibility.
PowerPoint or Keynote presentation files must be properly formatted to ensure accessibility. If you distribute your presentation files to your learners, keep accessibility in mind. Visit the link to the WebAIM page on PowerPoint accessibility in the Resources below. Converting a PowerPoint file to a PDF may make the document less accessible.
When you make a video recording of your PowerPoint presentation with audio narration (sometimes called “screencasting”), keep accessibility in mind. The video must include closed captions or a text transcript for the audio narration. When you record the audio narration, include an audio description of important visual information in the presentation slides so that people with visual impairments have a video description.
Asynchronous text discussions are generally quite accessible. Be sure to apply the text accessibility guidelines above to any text content you add to discussions. If you use other types of media in your discussion posts, such as audio, video, images, documents or presentations, the guidelines on this page still apply.
Student discussion posts and replies using text are usually accessible, but if students use other types of media, it may make their contributions less accessible. While you can’t require your students to make their content accessible, you can keep an eye out for content that may present accessibility issues for some students, and try to offer alternative modes of accessing the content.
Live web conferences using audio and video in real time are great for engaging your students in discussions of relevant topics, but they can present challenges for accessibility.
If you use screen sharing for a PowerPoint presentation, keep in mind that you need to describe important visual content on the screen. This can also help anyone who joins the live web conference by phone and can’t see the visual part of the presentation.
Real-time closed captions for audio are not ordinarily available for our live web conferences, making the audio inaccessible for students with hearing impairments. If you know you have a student in your course who needs accommodations for audio accessibility, contact the Goldman Center for Student Accessibility. Another alternative is that if the live web conference is recorded, closed captions can be added to the video after the event is over.
Canvas includes an accessibility checker tool in the Rich Content Editor toolbar to help you identify some accessibility issues in your content. Use it, but don’t rely on it alone, as it will not catch all types of accessibility issues in your content.
Visit the Goldman Center for Student Accessibility faculty page at https://accessibility.tulane.edu/faculty
Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education http://udloncampus.cast.org/
Do’s and Don’ts on Designing for Accessibility https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/09/02/dos-and-donts-on-designing-for-accessibility/
Accessible Syllabus https://accessiblesyllabus.tulane.edu/
Making Your Word Documents Accessible https://support.office.com/en-us/article/make-your-word-documents-accessible-d9bf3683-87ac-47ea-b91a-78dcacb3c66d
Create and Verify PDF Accessibility https://helpx.adobe.com/in/acrobat/using/create-verify-pdf-accessibility.html