As part of our commitment to inclusion and equity across a diverse student body, digital accessibility means designing online content so that everyone can use it.
Digital accessibility benefits all students, regardless of ability. It supports those who use assistive technologies like screen readers, voice input, or keyboard navigation to access learning materials. It also helps multilingual learners, students on mobile devices, and anyone navigating a disability, temporary medical condition, or situational barrier.
Whether you're creating videos, writing documents, or selecting web content, ensuring digital accessibility is both a best practice and legal responsibility. In April 2024, the Department of Justice issued a final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that established required technical standards. This rule requires UIW to ensure websites, applications, and course content meet Level A and Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) by April 26, 2027.
Information and user interface components must be presented in ways that users can recognize and understand, regardless of their sensory abilities. This means content should not rely on a single sense, such as sight or hearing, alone.
Perceivable Examples
Provide alt text for images.
Add accurate captions and audio descriptions to videos.
Provide a transcript for audio and video.
Use sufficient color contrast between text and background.
User interface components and navigation must be usable by all people, including those who rely on keyboards, voice input, or other assistive technologies. This means content must not require interaction that some users cannot perform.
Operable Examples
Ensure all functionality is available using a keyboard.
Provide enough time for users to complete tasks.
Avoid content that flashes more than three times per second.
Use clear and consistent navigation.
Include skip links or landmarks to bypass repeated content.
Information and the operation of the user interface must be clear and predictable. This means content should use plain language, behave in consistent ways, and help users avoid and correct mistakes.
Understandable Examples
Use clear and simple language.
Provide instructions and labels for form fields.
Ensure navigation and layout are consistent across pages.
Identify the language of the page and any language changes.
Offer helpful error messages and suggestions for fixing input errors.
Content must be reliable and compatible with a wide range of current and future user tools, including assistive technologies. This means using clean, valid HTML and ensuring accessibility features remain intact across platforms.
Robust Examples
Use semantic HTML elements, such as headings, lists, tables.
Ensure ARIA roles and attributes are used correctly.
Test content with different browsers and screen readers.
Avoid using outdated or unsupported code.
Keep accessibility features functional during updates or changes.
10 Essential Skills - Beginner's Guide: Watch a 20-minute training video or read through the 10 skills most people need to know when creating webpages, online courses, documents, and emails or preparing to purchase technologies.
Canvas Course Accessibility Guides: From adding headings and alt text, to creating data tables and descriptive links, here you'll find instructions related to Canvas courses.
Web Disability Simulator: This browser extension lets you experience how people with different disabilities or inadequate abilities perceive a website. You can simulate color blindness, low vision, dyslexia, and more.
Disability Simulator: This tool lets you explore vision, motor, and cognitive impairments.
Colorblind Webpage Filter: Enter a URL and select from protanopia, deuteranopia, tritanopia, or greyscale/achromatopsia for a preview as seen by those with colorblindness.
WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools: Either paste a URL into the W3C webpage or install the WAVE browser extension for Chrome, Edge, or Firefox to make checking compliance simple. A detailed results panel shows critical errors, contrast issues, warnings, and complete explanations of any issues found.
ANDI: The ANDI bookmarklet is available for most browsers to provide automated detection of accessibility issues. It can reveal what a screen reader should say for interactive elements and give practical suggestions to improve accessibility.
WebAIM Image Alt Text Checks: This page demonstrates the function of alt text with interactive elements to help you learn the purpose of image descriptions.
Fonts Info: Get the Chrome, Edge, or Firefox extension and eliminate guesswork in identifying font size, weight, style, color, line height, letter spacing, and more.
Ally for Canvas Courses: Upload your documents to your Canvas sandbox to check their compliance.
WebAIM PowerPoint Accessibility: Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular tools for creating slide show presentations. This article outlines how you can make PowerPoint files more accessible on the web.
WebAIM PDF Accessibility: A great deal of effort is often devoted to remediating PDF files with accessibility issues. Most of this work can be avoided by choosing a source document that supports conversion to an accessible PDF. This article focuses on Microsoft Office 365 source documents exported to PDF using Acrobat.
PAC PDF Check: The PAC tool combines machine checking with human effort to comprehensively ensure PDF compliance.
Adobe Scan & OCR: The Adobe Acrobat Scan & OCR tool can clean up image scans of documents and use the recognize text feature to ensure PDF files are accessible.
WebAIM Contrast Checker: Enter any two colors to check their contrast ratio and get instant feedback on WCAG compliance.
Color Palette Generator Create color combinations your whole audience can appreciate and follow Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) with ease. Color pairings generated with this tool follow WCAG 2.1 AA based on a contrast ratio of 4.5:1. The pairings have sufficient contrast for use with normal text, large text, and graphics.
Accessible Color Palettes: Learn how to select appropriate colors and enter a HEX value to create custom color palettes.
