Accessibility Guidelines
When adding content to your Brightspace course, you should ensure that the content is accessible to all students, regardless of any physical or other disability they may have (e.g., a condition that requires the use of a screen reader). The list below contains some tips for making course content accessible.
1. Set clear course expectations
- Support students by building a logical course structure that is easy to follow.
- Make use of the Content Overview page and add your course syllabus to it.
- Identify course expectations clearly to help students manage their workload.
2. Make time limits and deadlines flexible
- Consider that some students need longer to work through course content than others. Therefore, give plenty of time to work on content/assignments.
3. Provide alternative learning materials
- Offer course materials that can be engaging in multiple ways (e.g., text, videos, images).
- Provide a text-only alternative to graphics, video, or audio recordings.
- Use optical character recognition when scanning files and uploading them as PDF; add tags to documents for easier accessibility by screen-reader users.
- Choose HTML over Word documents or PDF to enhance accessibility for screen-reader users.
4. Follow accessibility guidelines when creating files
- For information on creating accessible web (html) content, please visit this resource: Making Course Content Accessible for the Web.
- For information on creating accessible PowerPoint files, please visit this resource: Accessibility Checklist for Microsoft PowerPoint Files.
- For information on creating accessible Word documents, please visit this resource: Accessibility Checklist for Microsoft Word Documents.
- For information on creating accessible PDF documents, please visit this resource: Accessibility Checklist for Adobe Acrobat PDF Documents.
Other general tips for creating accessible content
- Use a simple layout that does not organize content in columns or tables.
- Use headings to communicate the relationship between sections.
- Include a table of contents for longer topics.
- Include detailed captions below tables and graphs.
- Make links accessible by giving them meaningful names; do not use “Click here” etc. A great guide to accessible links has been published by Smashing Magazine.
- Avoid using blinking or flashing multimedia.
- Avoid using only colour to convey meaning.
- Ensure strong contrast between the text and the background.
This is a summary of more extensive recommendations published in Brightspace Documentation: Create Accessible content in Brightspace. You can also refer to this resource on web standards when creating content for more information.