Why Digital Accessibility?
Web accessibility is an important part of establishing an inclusive learning environment that allows all students to fully participate and succeed. Every student deserves and is entitled to equal access to learning resources. Accessible course materials allow all students, those with and without disabilities, to engage with content effectively, leading to better learning outcomes and more inclusive teaching. Ensuring accessibility in our teaching materials reflects our commitment to equity and inclusion. Beyond the critical pedagogical perspective, ensuring web accessibility addresses upcoming ADA Title II requirements. A sincere thank you, from the Rutgers-Camden community, for your commitment to accessibility!
Recommended Steps Towards Digital Accessibility
Generally speaking, a path towards digital accessibility begins with understanding digital accessibility standards and best practices, so that any new content being created is accessible from the beginning.
When looking to remediate previously created content so that it meets current accessibility standards, here is a recommended workflow:
- Use CidiLabs Tidy Up tool to identify and remove any unused or unlinked materials.
- Generate a course accessibility report using Ally.
- Identify highest priority content remediation, which may differ course-to-course, but will include:
- Ensuring document accessibility
- Verifying all video media is captioned
- Confirming descriptive alt-text is available for all images
- Note: The Course Content Helper tool can assist in determining the highest priority areas of remediation in your course site.
Review the Course Accessibility standards from the Office of Information Technology Accessibility (OITA) here. This resource offers a helpful bronze, silver, gold framework for accessibility standards, with detailed guides to meet each level of standards.
Tools for Digital Accessibility at Rutgers
- Anthology Ally
- Generate a course accessibility report in your Canvas course site
- CidiLabs Tidy Up
- Automatically remove unused files from your Canvas site
- Sensus Access
- Convert inaccessible PDFs
- Adobe Acrobat
- Check for accessibility and automatically tag PDFs
- Kaltura
- Share, stream, and automatically caption video media
- Tips for Accessibility in Canvas
- Learn more about the Rich Content Editor accessibility checker and other tools to support digital accessibility in Canvas