The second year of UD’s Accessibility Initiative begins this fall. This initiative charges faculty, students, and staff at the University with making all digital content accessible to everyone. This includes websites, course content, and any digital products and services we use.
We have focused on trying to build awareness around what accessibility means and what you need to do regarding your content in Canvas. New content should be made accessible from the beginning, so we are encouraging everyone to use the built-in accessibility checkers that vendors such as Microsoft and Adobe make available. There is even an accessibility checker in Canvas’ Rich Content Editor! Documentation is also available on the Accessibility website and all vendor websites to help you.
For existing content, Ally was implemented in Canvas as a tool to identify any issues regarding existing files in your courses. Ally provides assistance in improving the accessibility of those files along with alternative formats that can be used by your students. We have also purchased a new scanner in the Faculty Commons which can be used to scan original documents and other resources that have been flagged as not being OCR’d (Optical Character Recognition). Stop by and check it out – it’s for faculty use!
We will be hosting more workshops and events this year to assist you in these efforts as we work towards the University’s remediation timeline. There are Accessibility Ambassadors in all the colleges who we will work with to share information with you throughout this initiative. The Canvas Accessibility Overview site is open to all faculty as a resource. The site is continuously being updated, but there are still many resources for you to use in your efforts to help us make all our digital content accessible.
