Key Practices for Creating Accessible Materials

All course content should be accessible to all students. Instead of waiting to create or reformat accessible content until you have a student with a documented need for it, create accessible content from the onset.

Watch the video below to learn a few quick tips for creating accessible content.

How to Guides

Now that you’ve learned some general strategies for creating accessible content, it’s time to explore creating content in specific programs.

Click the links below to access information about creating accessible materials in the Microsoft Suite. If you have limited time, focus on the program or programs you use frequently for your courses.

• Creating an Accessible Microsoft Word Document
• Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations
• Creating Accessible Tables
• Creating Accessible Images
• Create Accessible Spreadsheets
• Create Accessible PDFs 
• Checklist to Evaluate Digital Content_UB
• Course Accessibility Checklist

A note on PDFs

You may have heard that PDFs are an accessible document type. While it’s true that more users are generally able to open PDFs without issue, creating material as a PDF does not automatically make it accessible to students using screen readers or other assistive technologies. Be sure to follow the guidelines above when creating PDFs to ensure they are fully accessible.

Adding Captions to Panopto Videos

You likely also use video in your courses. If you host your videos on Panopto, the UBalt video storage site, you can easily add captions to your videos with a few clicks and adjustments.