Course Accessibility

Teaching with Accessibility in Mind

Accessible teaching ensures all our students can fully engage with our course materials and methods, regardless of their abilities or backgrounds. It's not just about compliance; it's about creating an environment where every student can thrive. We can proactively design our courses to accommodate all learners, making our teaching more effective and our students' experiences more rewarding. For more information, please contact the IST Learning Design team at ISTLearningDesign@psu.edu.

On April 24, 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) finalized a ruling under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), establishing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA as the official legal standard for digital accessibility (Penn State policy AD69 follows WCAG 2.2 AA or the most up to date standards.) This means that all public institutions—including universities—must ensure their digital content is accessible to individuals with disabilities. Penn State has until April 24, 2026, to meet this compliance requirement.

For faculty, this includes ensuring that all course materials—across both World Campus and in-residence courses—meet accessibility standards. Accessible design not only supports students with disabilities but also enhances usability and learning for all students. The good news is that there are detailed standards, helpful tools, and the IST Learning Design (LD) Team has resources and expertise to support you!

Fact Sheet: New Rule on the Accessibility of Web Content
PSU Accessibility:
- DOJ Rule High Level Summary
- Accessibility Checklist
IST LD: WCAG Accessibility Resource Checklist
PSU Accessibility Learning Path: Introduction to Accessibility

The WCAG standards are vast and can be overwhelming. Fortunately, they have sorted the guidelines into an organizational model called POUR. POUR stands for Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. So, in the most simplistic terms, think of the following as you review or create your course content:

Perceivable: Can my content be perceived with the senses, especially sight and sound?
Operable: Does my content operate and function how it needs to so all students can navigate through it?
Understandable: Is my content organized and labeled so navigating it is understandable to all students?
Robust: Can assistive technology navigate my content without issues or errors?

Utilizing the POUR model helps us begin thinking about accessibility in the broadest sense. Once you are ready to dive deeper, Penn State offers a wealth of trainings and tools to remediate course content, linked below:

Penn State Accessibility Learning Path
Introducing Anthology Ally for LMS
PSU Accessibility: Testing for Accessibility

When teaching a course, it is likely that you will receive letters from students who require additional support in the form of academic accommodations. Faculty members are expected to provide certain types of accommodations. The most common types of accommodations are extra time for assignments and assessments and flexibility accommodations. You might also see requests for assistive technology or alternate formats for course materials.

If you receive a letter from a student but are unsure of how to provide these accommodations, please reach out to IST’s Learning Design team for guidance.

IST Learning Design: istlearningdesign@psu.edu
UP Student Disability Resources: upsdr@psu.edu
World Campus Student Disability Services: sds@outreach.psu.edu

Here are some more resources about providing academic accommodations at Penn State.

University Park Student Disability Resources: Accommodations

World Campus Student Disability Services: Disabilities and Accommodations

How Can I Make My Course Content Accessible?

Accessibility is more of a marathon than a sprint, but the IST LD team has compiled five ways to begin making your course content accessible, detailed in the subsequent sections. Below are overall resource links on making course content accessible

PSU Accessibility: Course Accessibility: Start Here
PSU HR Build: Accessibility 101
ACC 101: Accessible Course Design

One of the exceptions to the DOJ ruling includes files marked as archive. The catch? This needs to be done before April 24, 2026. Here's how:

Under Files, create an Archive folder in your Canvas course.
Move old files or reference files to that folder.

The above steps help prevent superfluous accessibility work.

If you put in the work to revise and make course content accessible, but your overall Ally score is still low, those old files in your Canvas courses are dragging your course accessibility score down. For your overall Ally score to improve, pull those files out of the course and put the archive folder in a cloud space such as OneDrive or SharePoint.

The IST LD Team saw a Course accessibility score go from 68% to 99% just from moving old/unused files out of the Course Template. [HL1] More information on exceptions to the rule can be found in the links below.

DOJ Fact Sheet: Summary of Exceptions
PSU Accessibility: DOJ Rule High Level Summary - Exceptions

Nearly all content creation formats have their own native accessibility checkers, and they are the perfect place to begin. Below are some native checkers available for Canvas and Office 365.

Anthology Ally in Canvas

Anthology Ally is a LTI plugin integrated into all Canvas courses designed to enhance the accessibility and usability of a course for learners of different abilities and backgrounds. Ally gives you an overall snapshot of your course accessibility, individual indicator gauges for uploaded files, and accessibility percentages that can be viewed when editing announcements, discussions, pages, assignments, and quizzes. Ally also allows course content to be translated into different formats for compatibility with assistive technologies.

Ally is a robust tool that helps instructors recognize and remediate course content making it easier for students of all abilities to consume and learn across various devices and formats. More information about Ally can be found in the links below.[HL1]

PSU Accessibility:
PSU Accessibility Learning Path:
- Canvas Accessibility
- Anthology Ally Training
Anthology Ally: Instructor Feedback

Office 365 Native Accessibility Checkers

Microsoft Office 365 has accessibility checkers built-in to nearly every application. Utilizing those checkers should become part of your normal process of creation. Below are select resources, as well as links to additional training.

Microsoft:
PSU Accessibility:
- Microsoft Word Tips
- Microsoft PowerPoint Tips
PSU Accessibility Learning Path:
- Microsoft Word Accessibility Basics
- PowerPoint Accessibility Basics
PSU HR Build:
- Accessibility 102: Microsoft Word
- Accessibility 103: PowerPoint

PDF Accessibility

Portable Document Format (PDF) files are universally compatible; however, PDF files are routinely difficult and costly to make accessible. We generally discourage PDF files if other formats are available. Below are some tips on how to handle PDF files.

Anthology Ally can give a generalized score of a PDFs accessibility. If the score is low, try the following before investing time and energy on remediation:

Is there a copy of the source file (Word document, PowerPoint) that was utilized before it was made into a PDF file?
Can the source content within the PDF be found in the library or online in a more accessible format?
Is there alternative content that is accessible that will meet the same learning outcomes?

If you find yourself needing to remediate a PDF file for accessibility, our LD Team has tools and resources available to help support you. You can reach out to us at istlearningdesign@psu.edu. Below are some resources, trainings, and tools you can explore.

PSU Accessibility:
Accessible Learning Path: PDF Accessibility Overview and Introduction
WebAim: PDF Accessibility
PSU Adobe Licenses (select Adobe Acrobat)

PowerPoints (PPTs) are frequently used for both in residence and World Campus courses, and the accessibility considerations are slightly different for both formats.

Below are some very basic PowerPoint (PPT) accessibility areas to keep in mind:

Use sufficient color contrast
Avoid color coding (using color as a primary means of information)
Use descriptive link text
Verbally describe images and graphics that are important

If a PPT presentation is going to be shared after a live presentation or in a World Campus course, accessibility checking and remediation will require more time and attention. IST LD has resources and expertise to help support you in this process. Below are some tips and resources on ensuring your PowerPoints files are accessible.

PowerPoint Accessibility Tips:

Utilize an accessible PPT template
Use PPTs native accessibility checker
Check Outline View throughout your PPT creation process
Consider alternative formats for complex content such as math and code (PPTs cannot display math and code accessibly)

PowerPoint Accessibility Resources:

IST LD Accessible PowerPoint Templates
PSU Accessibility:
PSU ACC 101: Microsoft PowerPoint
PSU Accessibility Learning Path: PowerPoint Accessibility Basics
WebAIM: PowerPoint Accessibility
Section508.gov: Create Accessible Presentations
Microsoft: Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible to people with disabilities

People learn better from pictures and words than from words alone; this is a research-backed foundational principle of multimedia learning. These elements need to be made accessible so all students can consume information equally. Below are some examples of what to keep in mind when selecting multimedia content, resources, and trainings.

Multimedia accessibility tips (not an exclusive list:)

Use high-quality images and graphics to avoid blurriness and pixelation
Ensure visual content meets sufficient color contrast
Avoid:
- Color coding
- Images of text
- Images of code
Create alternative text descriptions of all visuals
Choose videos that have accurate captions and audibly describe necessary visuals on the screen or have an Audio Description (AD) track available

Multimedia accessibility resources:

When you want to share a link in a course, email, presentation, or document, using descriptive link text is essential to making that link accessible. Generic text such as “click here” does not provide enough information, and full URLs are overwhelming and read as-is by screen reader users.

To make your links accessible, use text that describes what is being linked to, highlight that text, and then right click or find on the toolbar the option to insert link. Below are some additional resources.

PSU Accessibility: Link Text
PSU ACC 101: Links

WebAIM: Links and Hypertext

Course Accessibility

How Can I Make My Course Content Accessible?

Anthology Ally in Canvas

Office 365 Native Accessibility Checkers

PDF Accessibility

Legal Statements