Faculty Resources
Make Your Course Accessible
Why should I make my course accessible?
- It makes your course more equitable by reducing barriers and making learning available, usable, and meaningful for all learners, especially for our students with disabilities.
- It communicates that we expect, welcome, and are proactive and prepared for all learners at CCC.
- Compliance with Sections 504 and 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- Reduces cognitive load for learners, freeing up more brain space to engage with their learning.
What can I do to make my course more accessible?
HERE ARE 5 THINGS YOU CAN DO RIGHT AWAY
- Make your materials screen reader-friendly by using the built-in styles and formatting (for headings, lists, columns (instead of tables), paragraph styles, etc.) for all of your documents and online content.
- Making documents more accessible in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel
- Making documents more accessible in Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets
- Using ATTO/HTML editor in Moodle/web-based apps
- Include descriptions for any images by using ALT-text. Follow the best practices of ALT-text and learn how to include these descriptions in Moodle, Google Docs, and Microsoft Word.
- When posting weblinks online or in documents, make them descriptive, not navigational (for example, Clackamas Community College Website NOT click here). Follow the best practices of “Creating Accessible HyperText Links” to ensure all users have access to the resources you post.
- Captions ensure that hearing-impaired people can access videos, Zoom meetings and classes, and any kind of recording, but research shows that captions benefit everyone. Turn captions on in Zoom during all live, real-time sessions. As of 2023, any video recorded to the Zoom Cloud or uploaded/recorded in Kaltura (My Media) will be automatically machine captioned. Machine Captions are rarely perfect and can be easily corrected by the video owner in both Zoom and Kaltura.
NOTE: If you have an older video from before auto-captioning or those captions are disabled for some reason, you can request and enable machine captions through Kaltura. - Use an accessibility checker on your stuff (Yuja Panorama in Moodle, Microsoft Word Accessibility Checker, Google Docs Accessibility Checker