Accessible Text and Documents

Design for Accessibility Guide

accessibility

Accessible Canvas Pages

Checking Canvas Pages To ensure your course content is accessible to all students, it is best to use the accessibility

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accessibility

Accessible Slide Decks

Design for Accessibility Guide Checking Slide Decks Use Microsoft Office PowerPoint’s Accessibility Checker as you create or edit a slide

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Staff at desk using laptop to create accessible content in bright office setting.

accessibility

Checking Word Documents Use Microsoft Office Word’s Accessibility Checker during or after you create or edit a document. This tool

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Individual using tablet with video player icons; accessible digital video, multimedia streaming suggested.

accessibility

Accessible Video and Multimedia

Design for Accessibility Guide Check Video Whether it’s a video you made yourself or one someone else made, it is

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accessibility

Creating Accessible Content

Keep in Mind During Design The easiest way to make sure your course content is accessible is by keeping multiple

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accessibility

Design for Course Accessibility

Accessibility Best Practices For each resource type, this guide provides information about the benchmarks for accessibility. Keep these general best

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Checking Word Documents

Use Microsoft Office Word’s Accessibility Checker during or after you create or edit a document. This tool will guide you on which elements of your document need attention and offer solutions to accessibility issues. Here are some common areas of interest to keep in mind as you create or edit a document:

Include alt-text for all images.
Use accessible fonts (sans-serif like Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana) and size 12pt or higher.
Ensure a high color contrast (4.5:1) between foreground elements (like text and images) and their background.
Use headers, not just bold/larger text, to structure ideas in a logical order.

For a complete walkthrough of Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker, view this Check your Microsoft materials for Accessibility per Section 508 video on YouTube from Dr. Justin Greathouse.

How to Use Word’s Accessibility Checker

You can manually launch the Accessibility Checker using the navigation buttons at the top. With your Word document open, navigate to the top of the page and click the Review tab.

Click the “Check Accessibility” option, then “Check Accessibility” in the dropdown options. If you just want to check alt-text of images, you can select the “Alt Text” option instead.

From here, a window will open to the right displaying the current Accessibility score and a breakdown of any and all issues that need attention. Once all issues are addressed, your document is accessible and ready to be added to your course!

For a complete walkthrough of Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker, view this Check your Microsoft materials for Accessibility per Section 508 video on YouTube from Dr. Justin Greathouse.

Checking a PDF

To check a PDF for accessibility, try to “highlight” the text. If the text will not highlight, your document is a scanned image rather than a text file and is not accessible.

LSSC now has access to a web-based program called Equidox, where you can upload a document and check accessibility. The program also allows you to edit any issues as well! Use your LSSC credentials to sign into Equidox and upload your PDFs to check. Some things to keep in mind:

Equidox works best with Chrome, but may work with other browsers.
Only five people can be actively using the platform at once, so please make sure to log out when you are done using the platform so that others can log in.
You can upload an infinite number of PDFs, in groups of 10 at once.

For a complete walkthrough of how to use Equidox to remediate a PDF, view this Using Equidox to tag and make PDF files accessible video on the DTL YouTube page.