Office of Equal Opportunity and Compliance

Digital accessibility refers to the practice of making digital content (such as emails, files, and websites) usable by everyone, including people who use assistive technology to access and interact with digital content. To get started with the basics of digital accessibility, check out the Accessibility Learning Path assembled by IS&T on LinkedinLearning! This resource does require a Linkedin account to access; West Chester faculty, staff, and students can sign in with their WCU credentials. If you'd like to go further, the Accessibility - WCAG 2.1 Level AA Learning Path extends this introduction.

For those who'd like a more hands-on approach, Toronto Metropolitan University has created the Accessibility Maze browser game, which demonstrates access barriers, and D2L's Accessibility Lab guides users through experiments with assistive technology and accessibility techniques. To access the D2L Accessibility Lab, you will need to create a free account.

For instructors, Quality Matters, a non-profit organization focused on improving online education, offers the Accessibility & Usability Resource Site, where they've curated resources for improving the accessibility and usability of online learning experiences.

The Teaching & Learning Center has developed a Digital Accessibility Checklist , based on WCAG 2.1 standards and accessibility best practices, that can be used as a reference guide when editing documents and media. File-specific versions of this checklist are also available in the appropriate sections of this resource page.

• Programs you might use to make these files: Word, Pages, Google Docs
• Biggest concerns at a glance: headings, formatting of lists & tables, color & size of fonts
• Document Accessibility Checklist
• How to create accessible documents in:
  • Microsoft Word
  • Pages (Apple)
  • Google Docs
  • Microsoft Outlook

• Programs you might use to make these files: PowerPoint, Keynote, Google Slides
• Biggest concerns at a glance: reading order, slide titles, alternative text
• Document Accessibility Checklist
• How to create accessible slides in:
  • Microsoft PowerPoint
  • Keynote (Apple)
  • Google Slides

• Programs you might use to make these files: any scanner, Word, PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote, Google Docs, Google Slides, Adobe Acrobat, Canva
• Biggest concerns at a glance: reading order, tags,
  selectable text

  Scanning a document creates a PDF that is completely inaccessible to screen readers, because despite the file format, the PDF actually contains images of text instead of plain text that a computer can read and interact with directly. To check if your PDF is a scanned document, try to click inside the document and select some of the text with your cursor. If you're not able to select the text, you'll need to follow the steps to convert the scanned document into a PDF before working on the reading order and tags.

  
  
• Document Accessibility Checklist
• How to:
  
  • Create an accessible PDF
  • Fix an inaccessible PDF
  • Convert a scanned document to an accessible PDF

• Programs you might use to make these files: Panopto, Zoom, Audacity, Voice Notes, Camera
• Biggest concerns at a glance: captions/transcripts, descriptions of visual content
• Media Accessibility Checklist
• How to:
  • Make video & audio media accessible
  • Edit video captions
    • Panopto
    • Zoom
    • YouTube

• Programs you might use to make these files: D2L, Modern Campus CMS, Google Sites, Wix
• Biggest concerns at a glance: headings, navigation, flashing content
• Classroom Accessibility Checklist
• How to:
  
  • Add accessible images to a website
  • Write alt text for complex images