Creating Accessible Documents

One of the tools available to students, is a free online program called Desmos (Links to an external site.). It allows the user to create graphs, and then listen to them by either reading out the plots or interpreting changes in tone and pitch.

Creating accessible math is hard. As you heard in a previous video, depending on the type of browser, its version, the type of screen reader and its version, the same equation may be read in multiple ways to the student. 

Below is a video tutorial on how we would recommend you create your math, that would allow our office to provide the student with accessible math.

(P.S I intended on combining the two videos, but ran into issues doing so)

In our introduction to screen readers part 1, we looked at how  a student would navigate your course content. Below is a tutorial on how to set up structure with in your documents to allow a student to easily navigate through them.

To add a heading style

1. Select a text that you want to add a header to.

2. Select Home > Styles (or press Alt + H,…

This document is for all Professors and Teaching Assistants who wish to enlarge font of a document/Exam in word format. Typically, students’ Letter of Accommodation has the approved font size, if it is absent then consider 22, as a least font size for enlargement. Also, such students use a computer or separate set of sheets to record their answers for exams. Hence, the formatting will be done considering such factors. 

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WebAim: PowerPoint Accessibility (Links to an external site)

Our office has found that many faculty create their own PowerPoint slides which make up a large percentage of what faculty upload to their LMS. Below is a step by step video guide on how to create accessible PowerPoints.

For written documentation, please…

The world is filled with a lot of PDFs. In your course, this may be one of the most used content types.  The above video outlines the difference between a searchable PDF, meaning that you can highlight the text, and an image only pdf.

Below are a few things to consider about PDFs. We'll go through each in detail in the following sections.

Many times you may be converting your own content from an accessible powerpoint/word…

SensusAccess (Links to an external site.) is a free online software that allows you to convert files into a PDF format. Users upload files to the system and it is then converted by the software and emailed back to the user. 

SensusAccess works best to create accessible PDFs when:

• You have created an accessible document (i.e Word, powerpoint files)
• You have an imaged PDF that you want to create a…

Now that we've created a structure to our document, the next step is to make sure that students can access the content with in that structure.

Image Description Guidelines (Links to an external site.)

• Do one of the following:

  • For a shape, picture, chart, SmartArt graphic, or other object, right-…

1. Highlight the word(s) or heading to which you would like to add a style.
2. In the Home tab, look in the Styles section. Here, you can select the style you would like to apply to the highlighted text.
3. When you choose a style, the highlighted text will appear to your left in a Navigation pane.…

Accessibility and disability-related accommodations must be taken into consideration throughout preparations and planning your online course to ensure that all students can fully participate.

This quick guide that will enable you to evaluate the most critical elements of your web-based course content.  For more detailed information on these topics and further topics of making your course accessible, please visit our faculty resource pages on …