There are four main categories of disability accommodation:
- Visual – Blindness, low vision, color-blindness
- Hearing – Deafness
- Motor – Inability to use a mouse, slow response time, limited fine motor control
- Cognitive – Learning disabilities, distractibility, inability to remember or to focus on large amounts of information
According to the Quality Matters rubric, online courses should:
- acknowledge the importance of ADA requirements
- provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content
- have links that are self-describing and meaningful
- demonstrate sensitivity to readability issues
The following are resources to help you design accessible online materials.
Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, PDF
Accessible PowerPoint Presentation Viewing a PowerPoint presentation in a browser by selecting the ‘Open’ option does not enable the text to be read by a text-to-speech program or a screen reader such as Jaws; thus a user who is blind, has low vision, or is using these types of assistive technologies would not have access to the presentation. Open the Accessible PowerPoint Presentation handout to find out how to make a PowerPoint presentation accessible.
Accessible Word Document and PDFThis is a handout to find that explains how to make a Word document of PDF file accessible.
Online Conversion Tools for Adobe PDF documentsAdobe offers several tools to create, convert, distribute, and exchange secure and accessible PDF documents.
Websites
Keeping Web Accessibility in MindGain an appreciation of web accesibility by understanding the user perspective(Source of video: The ASD Project)
WebAIM.org – This web site is one of the best resources in terms of developing and retrofitting web content for accessibility.Accessible Template Websites– Design to standards using accessible templates for websites from Dreamweaver 8.
VideoUniversal Accessible Video (UAV) The UAV was designed and programmed by the Office of Distance Learning to provide an user-friendly process for adding closed captions to a variety of video applications commonly used by faculty at WKU.
How to enable captions in a Windows Media Player?
Our staff is available to consult individually with WKU faculty members on questions related to accessible online course development. To schedule a consultation, call (270) 745-5107, or contact us by email at tsonline@wku.edu to arrange an appointment.