Using Accessibility Checkers

To improve the accessibility of your documents or course sites, using accessibility checkers can give you a place to start. These tools use automated processes to to find common accessibility concerns.

Best Practices:

Use accessibility checkers early in your process to lessen the number of concerns you have to manage as you move forward.
Focus on basic items first:
- Use formatting styles
- Include alternative text or mark images as descriptive
Then move on to more complex concerns:
- Edit fonts to ensure they are clear and not overly stylistic
- While you are at it, you can also edit your headings styles to ensure the font is clear and the color of the fonts are high contrast colors (black is preferred on a white background)
- Double check that the alternative text is descriptive enough (if it is too long for the alt-text box, consider including the description in the body text
Remember that accessibility checkers are not perfect, and manual checking will also be needed!
- Items to manually check include: page numbers, heading/reading order, language clarity, fillable text/forms