Document Accessibility

When you are creating documents to post online, you have some special obligations to make sure that your documents are accessible to the widest audiences possible.

Essentially, there are 7 basic principles of making your documents accessible:

  1. Create documents which are well structured and which include headings which are machine readable.
  2. Provide text alternatives for all images, graphics, audio, and video.
  3. Ensure that all text has a strong contrast to the background color (test by printing out on a black & white printer).
  4. Avoid using colored text, and do not use colored text (alone) to indicate a category or type of information.
  5. Use headings for columns and rows in tables; use introductory paragraph to describe designs of complex table layouts.
  6. Provide unique hyperlink labels which are descriptive of the content which is linked.
  7. Convert documents to a universally accessible file format (recommendation is Adobe Acrobat Reader / PDF format).  

Making your documents accessible is fairly easy to do, but it requires some planning and a few special skills.  The specific skills you need will be shown in the next topic of this course.

Making Your Documents Accessible

The links below open in a new window.

Video: Preparing Your Documents for Online Use (3 min 40 sec)
Handout:  Making Your Word Documents Accessible (pdf)

Specific Skills


You should convert your content documents to the PDF format so that they open directly in D2L and other websites. 
Microsoft Office documents create browser security errors in Internet Explorer and force the viewer to own Microsoft Office software to use the files (or to install special browser plug-ins before files will display).

Video: Security Issues Caused by Microsoft Office Documents in D2L (0 min 55 sec)

NOTE: If you have worksheets or other homework which students must complete using Microsoft Office programs, then it is appropriate to post those files directly in D2L with additional instructions for students on how to properly download and save the files for editing.

Associated Law and Policy 

Unlike Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act which require a reasonable accommodation be made after a qualified individual with a disability makes a request, the laws relating to online document accessibility are in effect at all time for all users.

Under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, institutions accepting Federal dollars must make their web and electronic documents accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies. In addition to the Federal law, agencies of the state of Minnesota are subject to state of Minnesota laws and accessibility guidelines (Nonvisual Technology Access 16C.145, Minnesota Human Rights Act, Minnesota Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Guidelines, and MnSCU Web Accessibility Guidelines).

Review the guidelines and sites above for specific details of the laws and standards.

The Student Perspective

WebAIM has an excellent video titled Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind (Flash).  This provides interviews of three users with different accesibilty needs.  They also have a video titled Experiences of Students with Disabilities (Quicktime / transcript) - which shares the frustrations of students who want to be independent and need online content be accessible.

If you have deeper interest in learning about online accessibility, here are some sites you should consider.

 

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