Accessibility Tips

Accessibility Tips for Teaching

Creating Accessible Course Materials

Teaching online presents new opportunities and flexibility for both faculty and students. The online mode can also present barriers for learners. This resource offers some tips to minimize barriers by making content accessible for everyone and offering an inclusive environment.

When new online courses are developed in collaboration with the UWB-IT Academic Technologies, the expertise of the team members help ensure that courses are accessible. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact us at uwbdl@uw.edu.

This resource offers some tips to minimize barriers by making content accessible for everyone and offering an inclusive environment. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact us at uwbdl@uw.edu.

• Provide well-formatted PowerPoint or Google slides and Word or Google documents and minimize the use of PDFs. Whenever possible, add content directly to Canvas pages.
• Use Library persistent links (permalinks) for articles or other electronic materials instead of uploading its PDF to the course.
• Add alternative text (alt text) to all images, including figures and charts.
• Use descriptive links instead of “click here” or the full URL.
• Provide captions or transcripts for videos whenever you can. Ideally, all video content should have captions or an accompanying transcript, but we know that may be a tall order in this time of disruption. Here are four tips to help make videos more accessible:

General tips

• Add content directly into Canvas pages.
• Avoid using PDFs as much as possible. It is the least accessible type of document available unless it has been remediated.
• If you have forms that students need to fill out, use properly-formatted Google or Microsoft forms.

If you are new to accessibility, or to see additional resources, see the Getting Started with Accessibility UW resource.

If you have questions or need assistance, please contact us at uwbdl@uw.edu.