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Office of Accessibility and Compliance
Rocket Hall 1820
419.530.4981
StudentDisability@utoledo.edu
Faculty
Faculty Role in Digital Accessibility
Faculty play an essential role in ensuring that all students can perceive, navigate, and interact with the content, including students who use assistive technologies such as screen readers, captions, voice input, or alternative keyboards. Accessible content helps ensure that all students have equitable access to learning materials and opportunities for success.
Faculty can make meaningful improvements by following a few essential accessibility practices when creating or sharing course materials. Making content accessible is an ongoing effort and responsibility.
This page provides helpful guidance and strategies for reviewing existing content and creating new accessible content for your courses.
UToledo Online training
UToledo Online provides several webinars, demonstrations, and online professional development courses for faculty and staff each semester. See their Faculty Development Training Schedule and Registration site to learn more and register for upcoming sessions.
Specific sessions related to accessible digital content include:
Guidance to Make Course Content Accessible
To help faculty and instructors follow ADA Title II digital accessibility requirements and support UToledo’s accessibility goals, the information below provides practical tips and examples for creating accessible course content. This list is not exhaustive but is intended as a helpful starting point.
Screen-Reader Compatibility
- Use built-in heading styles (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to organize content, rather than relying on bold text or larger font sizes to indicate sections.
- Format tables with proper headers and clear labels, ensuring they convey relationships between rows and columns rather than serving only visual layout purposes.
Example of an Accessible Table
Weekly Schedule
|
Week |
Topic |
Assignment |
|
Week 1 |
Introduction to Online Learning |
Discussion: Introductions |
|
Week 2 |
Course Design Principles |
Quiz 1 |
|
Week 3 |
Accessibility in Online Courses |
Accessibility Reflection |
Why this table is accessible:
- The first row contains clear column headers (Week, Topic, Assignment).
- Each column represents a specific category of information.
- Screen readers can correctly identify relationships between rows and columns.
- The table is used to present structured information, not just for visual layout
alt text
Provide meaningful alternative text (alt text) for every image, chart, or graphic so that screen reader users can understand the information or purpose conveyed by the visual.
Example: If a slide includes a chart showing rising enrollment, add alt text such as: "Line graph showing enrollment increasing from 2019 to 2024."
Resources for creating meaningful alt text:
PDF Formatting
- Whenever possible, share course materials in accessible formats such as Word, PowerPoint, or Blackboard Ultra Documents rather than PDFs. These formats are easier to read with assistive technologies and simpler to update.
- If you use a PDF, make sure it is properly tagged. Tagged PDFs include structured elements such as reading orders, headings, lists, and tables so screen readers can understand the content and navigate it correctly.
- Use real, selectable text instead of images of text. Avoid scanned PDFs or documents where the text appears only as an image, since these cannot be read by screen readers.
- Ensure interactive form fields are accessible. Any forms in PDFs should be fillable and fully usable with a keyboard, without requiring a mouse.
Example of Inaccessible pdf: EPA Sample Letter (scanned PDF)
This file is essentially a scanned image of a printed document rather than a text-based PDF.
why it is inaccessible:
- The pages are images of text, not real text.
- Text cannot be selected, searched, or copied.
- Screen readers cannot interpret the content because there are no underlying text layer or tags.
- There is no structural markup (headings, reading order, etc.).
These characteristics are typical of scanned PDFs; they contain images of pages rather than machine-readable text, making them inaccessible unless OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and tagging are applied.
how to fix it:
- Run OCR in Adobe Acrobat
- Add headings and tags
- Check reading order
- Add alt text to images
Resources for creating accessible PDFs:
Video and Audio Accessibility
To ensure that all students can access course media, videos and audio materials should include captions, transcripts, and clear descriptions of important visual information.
videos
All instructional videos should include closed captions that are accurate and synchronized with the spoken audio. Captions help students who are deaf or hard of hearing and also benefit students who prefer to read while watching.
Example:
If the instructor says, “Today we will examine the causes of climate change,” the
caption should display the same sentence at the moment it is spoken.
audio-only materials
Audio-only content, such as podcasts or recorded lectures, should include a complete transcript so students can read the material if needed.
Example:
If you assign a 10-minute podcast episode for a course activity, provide a transcript
document that contains the full spoken dialogue from the recording.
helpful guide for creating captions, transcripts and audio descriptions
live sessions should have closed captions
Three-step Strategy for Meeting Title II Requirements
To help you make quick, high-impact improvements to the content in your Blackboard courses, we recommend following a simple three-step strategy: Remove, Remediate, and Integrate.
Step 1: Remove
Delete or archive outdated and unused course content. Keeping only relevant materials helps reduce accessibility issues and makes your course easier for students to navigate.
Follow the steps in UToledo Online’s Viewing and Deleting Unused Files guide to locate and remove outdated or unnecessary files from your Blackboard courses.
Step 2: Remediate
Review the remaining content and update materials that may present accessibility barriers. For example, convert scanned PDFs to readable text using OCR (Optical Character Recognition), add headings and proper structure to documents, ensure images include alt text, and provide captions or transcripts for multimedia content.
UToledo Online’s Ally guides can also help to identify inaccessible content in your Blackboard courses and provide suggestions for remediation:
- What is Blackboard Ally? - Introduces you to the Ally accessibility tool in your Ultra course
- Accessibility Indicators - Describes Ally icons, colors, and accessibility scores.
- Instructor Feedback - Review step-by-step guidance for fixing common issues.
- Alternative Formats - Identify how Ally provides accessible formats of content on Blackboard.
- Accessing Course Accessibility Report - Review course-level accessibility data for your Blackboard course content.
- Common Accessibility Flags - Recognize and resolve Ally’s accessibility alerts in your course content.
Step 3: Integrate
Adopt accessible practices when creating new course materials to prevent accessibility barriers from developing in the future.
- Design with accessibility in mind from the start. Ensure that all new course materials—documents, videos, images, and multimedia—are created in accessible formats.
- Use available guidance and resources. Visit UToledo’s Faculty Resource Center on Blackboard for online course design guidance and best practices.
- Collaborate with campus support services. Work with your Instructional Designer, UToledo Online’s Accessibility Coordinator, and the Office of Accessibility and Disability Resources if you have questions or need assistance addressing accessibility concerns in your course materials.
Need More Trainings or Help?
Visit the Training Guide and Tutorials page for training opportunities or tutorials, and visit the Need Help? page for additional support.