Thank you for your interest in working to make the digital content at SLCC more accessible for all students.
Accessibility is about ensuring that every student has an opportunity to learn and access the information needed to succeed. By implementing accessibility principles, you will be making your content more effective and engaging for all learners.
To help you do this, we have developed a process you can follow to make sure all elements of your course are accessible.
Step 1: Take the Digital Accessibility at SLCC course
We have developed a digital accessibility course that will guide you through the principles and process of identifying and fixing accessibility issues in your digital content. There is an open version of this course you can reference any time and a facilitated credential version of the course, where you will submit assignments and receive detailed feedback on your accessibility efforts. You can register for the facilitated course in NeoED.
Step 2: Bookmark or download the Accessibility Checklists
The course includes Accessibility Checklists that are a list of the basic principles of accessibility for Word, PowerPoint, PDF, and Canvas. These checklists can be used in conjunction with other accessibility tools to ensure you are making your whole course accessible in the most effective way possible.
To make it easy for you to access them later, you can bookmark (or favorite) the checklist page from the open version of the course or download/print out the document versions of the checklists.
Step 3: Clean up your course
Before checking your course for accessibility, we highly recommend cleaning up your course. You may have eight versions of syllabi in your files or three versions of just one image. If you start by cleaning up your course, you won’t have to check the accessibility of as many files, just the files you use.
To help with this effort, SLCC has adopted a new tool called TidyUP. TidyUP allows you to quickly identify files in your course that are not being used. For more information on how to use TidyUP, navigate to the following resources:
- TidyUP User Guide - find everything you need to know about how to use TidyUP and all its features
- TidyUP Training Series - a series of videos helping you get setup and running along with the basics of TidyUP
- TidyUP Video Tutorials - these videos dive deeper into the different features of this tool, providing you step-by-step tutorials in using TidyUP to its potential
Step 4: Create a course inventory
At the end of the Digital Accessibility Course, you will also learn how to make a Course Inventory (list) of all Canvas items (pages, assignments, etc.) and Files to assist you as you check for accessibility of all Canvas items (pages, assignments, etc.) and Files to assist you as you check for accessibility.
Step 5: Identify and fix accessibility issues in your course
Use the course inventory to guide you through each Canvas item and file in the course. As you review each item and file, pull up the checklists, evaluate them for any accessibility issues, and fix them.
You can also use your course inventory to track your progress in making your course accessible. You can make notes for outstanding accessibility issues that you need help with and/or mark items/files complete once you have fixed all the issues.
Step 6: Submit remediation requests if needed
You are not alone in your accessibility efforts. At times during your remediation efforts, you may encounter documents you still want to use, but you’re not sure how to make them accessible. This is a good time to contact Accessibility & Disability Services. They can help you remediate a document or brainstorm ways to include the idea of the document, but in a different, more accessible way.
ADS Remediation Service
Frequently Asked Questions
Can’t I just use Panorama (the little icons next to pages and files) to make my course accessible?
Making digital content accessible is ultimately a human endeavor. No AI can catch all the accessibility issues. Panorama only catches some of the accessibility issues, and getting a 100% score in Panorama does not mean that your file or page is accessible. Panorama and other tools can assist you with making parts of a document accessible, but it is up to you to check for accessibility by using the checklists and the knowledge you gain in the course to make things fully accessible.
Feeling overwhelmed?
Making your course accessible becomes manageable by breaking it down into smaller chunks. When you take the course, just do one module per week. When you start working on your course inventory, just take a little time to make one item accessible each day.