Accessibility practices and tools

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Inclusive course design

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Accessibility practices and tools

Practical guides for designing content that everyone can use.

What is accessibility?

Accessibility is often overlooked in online teaching, but, when ignored, it can create barriers that exclude some students from fully engaging with learning. It is about designing materials everyone can use and understand, including students with disabilities, neurodiverse learners, and those using assistive technologies.

You don’t need to do more—just do things a little differently. Simple changes, like using clear headings or adding captions, can remove barriers and help all students succeed.

Please note: Accessible content is a requirement of Canvas Baseline Practices.

Why accessibility matters

At least 10% of UoA students identify as having a disability.
Many more benefit from accessible design, including students using mobile devices or with temporary impairments.
Accessibility improves usability, clarity, and equity.
It reflects the University’s commitments under Taumata Teitei (vision and strategic plan), and the Disability Action Plan.

Improving accessibility is an ongoing process. Regularly reviewing and enhancing your content—even one page at a time—helps make your course more inclusive over time.

Topics covered

These are the top five issues routinely surfaced in content accessibility audits in Canvas. The Equity Office advises that fixing ‘the five’ will have the greatest impact for enabling accessible content for our students. Focus your attention to them first and then look at accessibility practices for documents and multimedia.

Topic

Advice

1. Headings

Structure Canvas pages and documents using proper heading styles.

2. Links

Write descriptive link text and avoid long or unlabelled URLs.

3. Colour and contrast

Choose colour combinations that are readable and accessible.

4. Alt text

Add useful image descriptions or mark decorative images appropriately.

5. Tables

Use tables correctly for data, not layout, and structure them for assistive technologies such as screen readers.

The practices outlined in the top five are also applicable to PDFs and documents. Further techniques can be applied to multimedia. Review the following two items then proceed with checking the accessibility of your course with UDOIT.

Topic

Advice

6. PDFs and documents

Format Word, PowerPoint, and PDF content using built-in accessibility tools.

7. Video and audio

Add captions and transcripts using Panopto and other supported tools.

Check your course for accessibility

Use UDOIT and other checkers to scan for issues and get quick fixes.

Start with headings