Accessibility and Educational Technology
Why is accessibility important?
Thoughtful and basic accessibility practices are crucial in education because they ensure that all students—including those with disabilities—have equal access to learning materials, tools, and opportunities. The following tips and best practices are not all encompassing, and for official accommodations please be sure to consult the UCSD Office for Students with Disabilities (OSD) for more resources.
Canvas Accessibility Best Practices
- Add Alt-text to images
- Use descriptive text in hyperlinks
- Use headings appropriately
- Create lists with bullets or numbers
- Don’t use tables to create page layouts
- Use bold, italic, or underline to emphasize text instead of color
For more information on each of these items and how you can incorporate them into your Canvas course, please visit Canvas’ Course Accessibility Checklist.
All of the above best practice tips will not only help assistive technology such as screen readers interpret course content more accurately, but they will help create fair, effective, and inclusive education for all learners.
Canvas Accessibility Checker
The built-in Canvas Accessibility Checker can help point out common accessibility errors within the Rich Content Editor spaces of your course. If any issues are found the checker will highlight the issue and provide an opportunity to implement a fix.
Lecture Slides and Accessibility
If you have lecture slides and distribute them to students, please ensure that accessibility best practices are used. Microsoft has plenty of tips on this for PowerPoint as well as information on a built-in accessibility checker on their "Make your accessible Power Points accessible" page. Google Slide users can find similar information "Make your document, presentation, sheets & videos more accessible" page.
Multimedia Accessibility
Accessibility and good design often go hand in hand. The same features that make media easier to navigate for students with disabilities also make it clearer and more engaging for everyone. Consider these best practices:
- Captions: Make sure spoken content is represented in text.
- Visual information: Try to describe any visuals you use so students who can’t see it still understand what’s happening.
- Color and contrast: Use clear contrast between text and background, and don’t rely on color alone to communicate meaning (e.g. in graphs or diagrams).
- Readability: Keep text on slides large, uncluttered, and easy to read on different screens and projectors.
- Flashing or strobing visuals: Avoid using rapidly flashing content.
Training Resources
Additional training resources from Web Accessibility In Mind (WebAIM) can be found below:
Microsoft Office Trainings
PDF Trainings