Accessibility | Online Learning

Accessibility and Universal Design

Certain accessibility requirements must be addressed when developing learning materials for electronic dissemination to students. Online education courses, resources and materials must be designed and delivered in such a way that the level of communication and course-taking experience is the same for students with or without disabilities.

Accessibility compliance

Need help?

Resolutions and the Law

The 2011 Distance Education Accessibility Resolution (doc) by Foothill College Faculty Academic Senate strongly encourages faculty to familiarize themselves with the requirements specified in the Distance Education Accessibility Guidelines for Students with Disabilities and to take immediate steps to ensure that their online courses and materials are in compliance with these guidelines.

See Distance Education: Accessibility Guidelines for Students with Disabilities (pdf) from the Chancellor's Office California Community Colleges.

By law, Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act , learning materials, including interfaces, images, sounds, multimedia elements, and all other forms of information, must be made available for use by anyone, regardless of disability.
Detailed information about accessibility guidelines are available at Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Why accessibility?

Still not convinced of the need to address accessibility? Watch this 11 minute video - To Care and Comply: Disability Access produced by Portland Community College.

Real Connections: Making Distance Learning Accessible to Everyone (12 minute video)

Groups Issue Guidance on Making Digital Learning Accessible to All - Tips and guidance, brief case studies, and dozens of links to resources to help explain why accessibility is important, what the legal requirements are, and how it aids in learning.

Disabilities

Cognitive Disabilities - WebAIM article
Invisible Disabilities - Invisible disabilities, accomodations, and universal design from University of Washington DO-IT publications and videos

Learn the basics about Web Accessibility

Introduction to Web Accessibility - Great WebAIM article that describes various disabilities and how they affect the ability to navigate online content and what can be done to improve the experience.

BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit - Great eBook that shows you how to make your course accessible and why you should.

Constructing a POUR Website - Putting people at the center of the process

Equal Access: Universal Design of Distance Learning Programs

✔ Accessibility checklist for online course content

Provide alternative text descriptions (ALT text) or captions for meaningful images, charts, and graphics
- Appropriate Use of Alt Text by WebAIM
- When using complex images such as info-graphics, in addition to a succinct alt tag, make sure to provide the following disclaimer as a caption or close to the image:
  
  If you are unable to view this complex content, contact the DRC at (650) 949-7017 or email adaptivelearningdrc@foothill.edu.
  
  Visit the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) to learn more about:
  - How to describe complex images and math images
  - Find tools for creating accessible math, and more
Properly format heading levels (using Styles) to structure the webpage or document
- Headers are short descriptions, 3 to 5 words, of the content that follows
- Screen readers create links to the headers which allows a person using the screen reader to navigate to the contents without having to listen to all of the preceding contents being read back to them.
- Learn more about heading levels
Format listed items as lists (bullets or numbers). Do not type them in.
Write meaningful text for links (do not use "click here" links or urls for text, instead, describe where the link is pointing)
Tables are used to display data and are not used for layout. Tables must have headers and a proper reading order.
- Learn how to create tables from WebAIM
Do not rely on color alone to convey meaning. Use text with color. If text color denotes meaning, make it bold or italicize it.
Use PDFs that are tagged. Learn more about how to make a PDF accessible at WebAIM.
Ensure that all audio and video content includes appropriate captioning
- Only use audio with available transcripts
- Only use video with accurate closed captioning that is synchronized (YouTube auto captioning is usually not accurate enough to meet accessibility requirements)
- Learn more about captioning
Only link to external websites that are accessible (or provide an alternative)
Do not use broken links and do not underline text for emphasis which can be confused for a broken link
Whenever a software plug-in is necessary for use of content, provide a link to download that software plug-in (e.g., PDF reader, Quicktime, Flash Player)

Caption videos and provide transcripts for audio recordings

All required instructional video for online and hybrid courses MUST be captioned and audio must be transcribed.

Captioning and Transcribing (Videos and Audio) - Learn more about how to caption videos, where to find captioned videos, and what to do to get a video captioned that you don't own.

Make math accessible

Using publisher material?

Find out what to ask publishers - BEFORE you adopt their textbooks or require your students to use their websites. Find out the list of questions to ask publishers.

Canvas

Learn how to make your Canvas course accessible with tips and tricks from the Canvas community.

Accommodating Students in Canvas - Discussion on how to set up accommodations for assignments, quizzes, and modules

Grant extra attempts in a quiz

General Accessibility Design Guidelines

Accessibility within Specific Canvas Features

The Rich Content Editor (RCE) in Canvas supports multiple accessibility features for easy content creation:

Learn how to use the Rich Content Editor to make your Canvas pages completely accessible

Alt text must be added to embedded external images - Embed images from the web in the Rich Content Editor
Headings for table columns and rows can be changed in either the Rich Content Editor or the HTML Editor view - Edit content in the RCE's HTML editor

Learn more about Accessibility in Canvas

Creating Accessible Online Courses with Canvas - Self-guided Canvas course designed to provide you with the basic information you need in order to create accessible online courses with Canvas.

Make sure your documents are accessible! If you are creating a PDF from a Word document, it is best to first make the Word document accessible and then save it as a PDF. If you do not have the source document of the PDF, then you will have to use Adobe Acrobat Pro X11 to make it accessible. Below you will find tutorials and guides on how to make your documents accessible.

Guidelines

ED Accessibility Requirements for Electronic Documents - Key concepts, step-by-step instructions for Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Adobe Acrobat PDF (all are .doc from U.S. Department of Education)

Microsoft Word

If you use a Mac and have the latest version of Word 2016, you will be able to use the built-in Accessibility Checker and when you save it as a PDF, the tagging information will be preserved.

Create Accessible Word Documents (WebAIM article)

How to make a Word document accessible - (Portland Community College)

PC: Convert Microsoft Documents to PDF

To create a tagged PDF make sure to use 'Save As'. Using 'Print to PDF' will strip out the tags and it will no longer be accessible.

The screenshot shows accessibility results from Adobe Acrobat Pro Accessibility Checker:

Document on right saved using 'Save as PDF' - no errors due to missing tags
Document on left saved using 'Print to PDF' - errors due to missing tags

Mac: Convert Microsoft Documents to PDF

Word 2016

To preserve tagging information when saving your document as a PDF, make sure to select the option that is best for electronic distribution and accessbility.

arrow pointing to option for best for electronic distribution and accessibility

Word 2011 and prior versions

Mac version of MS Word 2011 and prior versions do NOT produce tagged PDFs required for accessibility. You can use SensusAccess to convert your Word document to a tagged PDF by following these steps:

Go to SensusAccess
Select File
Press the Browse button to find your document
Press the Upload button on the right of the Browse button to upload your document
Select Accessibility conversion
From the Targeted format drop-down menu, select pdf - Tagged PDF
Type in your email address
Press Submit
Check your inbox for the email from SensusAccess to get your pdf document (turn-around time ranges from a minute to longer depending on document size)

Verification of Accessibility Compliance Tools

WAVE

WebAIM Quick Reference: Testing Web Content for Accessibility
Use WAVE to verify that your webpage is accessible - Submit a URL for Accessibility Verification and get a detailed report
Get the WAVE Chrome extension - Install the Wave icon on your toolbar and with the click of a button, you can check accessibily of your webpage. You can also use the interactive contrast checker to verify foregraound and background colors provide enough contrast.

Achecker

How to use Achecker to check accessibility of content in Etudes Modules
Use Achecker to verify that your webpage is accessible - Submit a URL to test accessibility and conformity to various international accessibility standards
Video of Instructions for Using Achecker to evaluate a website for accessibility (8.52 minutes)

WebAIM Contrast Checker

WebAIM Contrast Checker - Interactive checker lets you verify foreground and background colors provide enough contrast

Evaluating Document Accessibility

Accessibility Checker in Microsoft Office

Accessibility Checker for Windows
Accessibility Checker Word 2016 for Mac (only available in version 2016)

Free PDF Accessibility Checker (PAC 2) - The freeware program PAC provides a fast way to test the accessibility of PDF files.

Document Checker - Check older versions of Word, PowerPoint, Open Office, Adobe, and more

Screen Readers

Introduction to Screen Readers - Victor Tsaran from Yahoo shows the core functionality of screen readers and how they interact with the desktop. (27 min)

WebAIM Screen Reader Simulation - Experience what it is like to use a screen reader

The Secrets of Screen Readers Revealed with Sean Keegan (1 hour webinar)

Additional Tools

My Web My Way - Tips for students about how to make the web easier to use

Learn how to make your online course and learning materials available to ALL students regardless of learning style or disability and then get assistance from the Foothill Online Learning staff.

Course Accessibility

Fill out the Accessibility Checklist

Web Version (docx) - Contains links to request help and to learn more about each item
Print Version (docx) - Same checklist as the web version and shows urls of each link

Request Assistance with
Accessibility Issues

Captioning/Transcription

Option 1: Request captioning through the DRC

State-funded grants are available to get professional captioning and transcription for video or audio content that you have created for your online and/or hybrid courses. In order to apply for funding please send the following to Mayra Aguilera (aguileramayra2@fhda.edu) at the Disability Resource Center:

Your name and contact info
Course Number, Section and Title of course that will contain the video or audio (must be fully online or hybrid course)
Quarter that you will use the video or audio
Total number of minutes of the video or audio
Type of media: video or audio

The DRC will send the captioned file to you. If you have a YouTube channel and own the video, you can upload the captions in YouTube. If you do not own the video, you can use Amara. Visit the Captioning page and click the 'How' tab to learn how to add captions to videos.

Option 2: Request captioning of your own videos using 3C Media Solutions

Make sure you have uploaded your videos to 3C Media Solutions before makeing a request to have them captioned.

You can get grant-funded captioning services from 3CMedia Solutions with LESS paperwork! This service is only available for instructional use and videos that have been uploaded to a 3C Media account. This service is paid for through the DECT grant, and is only available as long as the funding lasts.

Note: This request is NOT available for:

Videos that are hosted on YouTube and placed in your 3CMedia account
Non-instructional video (e.g., entertainment)
Any videos hosted anywhere outside 3C Media Solutions

Set up your Account

Set up your free 3C Media account (select "Foothill College" for the Organization)
Upload your video to your account
Request captioning by filling out the form located under "Details & Options" area of your video

The captions will be automatically added to your video which normally takes 3-5 business days. The video with captions will then be playable on the 3C Media Solutions website.

Read the 3C Media Solution FAQs to learn more.

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