accessibility

39 posts

Image depicting individuals with multiple abilities

Accessibility Issues in Documents

Creating documents with accessibility in mind helps a variety of learners. Students with visual disabilities may need to use a screen reading device, which needs to have ADA friendly documents to ensure the device can read the content to the student. Other elements, such as tables and links, can help everyone by having greater descriptiveness. Many tools, like Microsoft Word and Google Docs, have built-in features that help with creating accessible and well composed documents. Heading styles Heading styles are built-in to any word processing program. These styles allow for a breakdown of sections of a document, similarly creating an […]

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Accessibility is for Everyone

Ensuring anything a person creates or modifies is accessible has the added benefit of helping everyone. A created object can help people of differing abilities in unexpected ways. Documents Designing documents with accessibility in mind generally causes them to be better formatted and searchable. This enhances the design of the document itself, while maintaining all the features needed to ensure accessibility. For example, using proper headers creates a navigation structure, allowing for a user to jump around a document easily. The same structure also allows for a single click creation of a table of contents. Presentations Presentations can also have […]

Image depicting individuals with multiple abilities

What is Web Accessibility?

Web accessibility is intended to ensure the web works for the widest possible audience. This means that any item, tool, or web element can be accessed by everyone, including those with differing abilities that may require additional elements to ensure access. Perspective through numbers A significant portion of the United States population has some form of a disability. Prevalence of disability by age, from the American Community Survey 5-year estimate, 2011-2015 Age Group Estimated Total Number Estimated with Disability Estimated Percent with Disability All Ages 311,516,332 38,601,898 12.4% Under 5 years 53,637,150 159,879 0.8% 5 to 17 years 72,307,218 2,853,439 […]

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Adding tags to images in your Canvas course

After you add an image to a course you are not done yet. You can add an image to your course then you need to edit the ‘Alt Text’ tag so it is done right. The Alt Text should describe the image and the importance of the image in context to how it is used in your course. So a banner image could simply say “Banner image Canvas at Moraine Valley.” When an image is used in an assessment the alt text needs to give enough detail so that the student using a screen reader or other aid has the same […]