Accessibility: Making course content accessible for everyone

We all know that making course content accessible for students with disabilities is the law, but it also can also help everyone to have a richer learning experience.

We see universal design every day on campus: it is the cutout in the sidewalk that helps both the student in a wheelchair user and instructor with a wheeled suitcase. It is the automatic door that opens to let in the student on crutches or student loaded down with library books. But what about in our courses? Do you know how accessible your course is? Accessibility is a very broad term that can cover more than vision or listening impairments. The needs of students requiring accessibility accommodations are not always obvious or discernible.

What will we do?

In this introductory workshop you will discover the challenges all students can encounter while using Canvas and will learn the simple steps that can dramatically improve the accessibility of course content.

We will begin by demonstrating what it is like to navigate a typical course website without a computer screen. From there, we will touch upon the most common media found in Canvas courses: PDF handouts, Word documents, and video clips.

Following this introductory session, we will offer follow-up workshops that will treat each of these media types in more depth.

Why attend?

• It takes fewer clicks to make an accessible document than it does to make a non-accessible document. Making handouts accessible is a win-win.

• Often times, students who need accommodations do not announce themselves

• Many institutions expect incoming faculty to have some demonstrated knowledge of content accessibility and universal design

This workshop is a partnership between the Media and Design Studio, AccessibleNU, and Northwestern Information Technology.