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College of Health and Human Sciences
Accessibility by Design

Faculty Responsibilities

Faculty play a vital role in producing content for the university, whether it’s for instructional or research purposes. Faculty are expected to ensure that any content they’re creating and distributing is accessible at least to a base level. This baseline of accessibility is an essential step towards meeting required WCAG compliance standards. Students who need full accessibility will receive additional support from the SDC.

Use the Electronic Accessibility Rubric

Please refer to the Electronic Accessibility Rubric for content in your courses. Faculty are expected to work towards the Universal Design Goals on the rubric to provide a base level of accessibility.

The universal design goals for common content from the rubric are summarized below. See the full rubric for more details.

If you still need assistance after you have reviewed the rubric and related tutorials, please email CSU IT Accessibility Support. For multimedia questions, please email TILT Caption and Audio Description Support.

Universal Design Goals by Content Type

Scanned PDF

Scanned PDF is the most inaccessible type of document and the highest priority to fix. This applies to PDFs that contain only images of text, not to PDFs converted from other programs.

  • Ensure the copy is clear and legible. If not, find or make a new copy.
  • Upload to Canvas:
    • Anthology Ally is a new tool within Canvas that takes care of text recognition automatically.
    • Do not disable alternative formats, as this is how students access the more accessible version.
    • Students can download alternative formats by clicking on the down arrow icon next to a file and choosing “OCRed PDF.”
  • If not using Canvas, other tools are available to recognize text in scanned PDFs. These include:
    • Adobe Acrobat Professional (departments may have licensing)
    • Adobe Cloud OCR (free with login)

Additional steps, such as adding a title or a document language, require the use of Adobe Acrobat Professional. These steps are not currently included in Universal Design Goals. This may change if Anthology Ally adds new functionality within Canvas.

Digital PDFs

Digital or converted PDFs are from another program like Microsoft Word, or provided as digital originals by a publisher. These types of PDFs already have recognized text and meet Universal Design Goals. You can tell if a PDF has recognized text by selecting text on the page or searching within the document.

Additional steps for digital PDF accessibility require Adobe Acrobat Professional, but these are not included in Universal Design Goals.

All Other Document Types

These concepts apply to multiple document types, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Canvas, and web content.

Please note that alternative presentation tools have significant accessibility concerns and should be avoided.

See the tutorials on this website on implementing these concepts in specific platforms, focusing on Universal Design Goals:

Multimedia

Prioritize these items for multimedia content:

Creating Content:

  • Create good quality audio recordings 
  • Ensure that any text in videos has sufficient contrast 
  • Describe visual content orally as much as possible 

Sharing Content:

  • Avoid Canvas’ built-in media player 
  • Use Echo360 or Kaltura to post video and audio content in Canvas 
    • Enable captions and transcripts for download 
  • If using YouTube videos, ensure that auto-generated captions are enabled 
  • Ensure that podcasts or radio broadcasts have transcripts, or that auto-transcripts are available for audio-only content 

See the tutorials for Multimedia.

How to Prioritize

Faculty are responsible for the Priority Tasks for each content type in the tutorials on this website. The tutorials explain how to ensure your content reaches a “base level of accessibility.”

You likely won’t be able to fix all of your content at once. The key is to prioritize content, to incorporate accessibility into your workflow, and to improve over time.

  1. Prioritize fixing any Scanned PDFs you have in the course. This is the least accessible format and will create the most barriers for the most students. For students with a “Base Level Accessibility of Course Materials” accommodation, this is also the first priority.
  2. Prioritize the type of content you use the most, whether that’s PDF, PowerPoint, videos, etc.
  3. Try to stay at least a couple weeks ahead of when readings or coursework are due so students are able to complete the work in an equal timeframe to other students in the course.
  4. If your student has a “Captioning” or “Audio Description” accommodation, prioritize the tasks for Multimedia. These steps will simplify the process for the captioning support team. Make sure to coordinate with the captioning team as far as possible in advance.

Tips for Proactive Accessibility

  • Remove outdated content that you no longer use
  • Consider whether PDFs can be converted to a Canvas page, as remediating PDFs can be time-consuming
  • Make sure you replace old content with the new versions to reduce the need for individual accommodations in the future