The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) presented a number of resources for accessible course design at a recent accessibility workshop. The best of those resources are highlighted here, with information about how each can support designers and faculty in improving course accessibility.

General Accessibility Resources

Web Accessibility in Mind (WebAIM)

An excellent resource containing numerous articles on various aspects of Web accessibility, types of disability to consider, how to implement alternative text, keyboard navigation, document design, and more. The site also provides links to accessibility tools and checkers.

Accessible Digital Office Document (ADOD) Project

This site contains techniques for making accessible documents in almost every office application software imaginable. Microsoft Office, OpenOffice, iWork, Google Docs, Adobe PDFs, and more are all included here. Each software’s page is divided into techniques and guidelines on how to create more accessible documents.

Accessible PDFs

PDF Accessibility – Accessible Technology Coalition

This site provides an overview of how PDFs work and how to make PDFs accessible, especially to screenreaders.

Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Guides – Adobe

Adobe’s official site for Adobe Acrobat provides numerous guides explaining the tools available within Acrobat, Acrobat Pro, and Acrobat DC to make PDFs accessible.

Accessible Videos

Creating Captioned Video – Accessible Technology Coalition

This article includes information on the elements of good captions, captioning options within video production software, and online captioning services.

YouTube Captions

YouTube’s support page on captioning explains how to add captions and subtitles to YouTube videos and how to upload transcripts for use as captions.

If you have questions about how to use any of these resources in your online class, contact Christine Scherer at christine.scherer@northwestern.edu.