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Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching

Creating Accessible Learning Materials

Below are some tips for creating accessible videos, documents, images, PDF and PowerPoints for your courses. This page covers accessibility related to:

    • Documents
    • Images
    • PDF Files
    • PowerPoint Presentations

Videos

Review your existing recordings to make sure:

    • The videos have a clear quality
    • Include closed-captioning and audio transcript
    • Audios have minimal background noises

Editing videos takes time. You can set a goal to review and edit one at a time. For your future videos, make sure they have a clear quality, closed captioning, and audio has good quality or minimal background noises.

Documents

Almost all instructors use documents in their classes. To know if your documents are accessible, use the Microsoft Word’s built-in- accessibility checker. As you create new documents, make sure you:

    • Provide clear and consistent layouts
    • Provide structured headings to make sure that someone can access them using screen readers and see the organization of the content. WC3 provides a guide on using headings appropriately.
    • Use descriptive wording for hyperlinks
    • Use Sans serif font style like Arial and Helvetica. Some fonts like Times New Roman and Palatino have additional strokes that make it difficult to read
    • Use a dark-colored font on a light-colored background (Read WC3 guidelines on color contrast)
    • Avoid using red-green or yellow-blue combinations as contrasting colors. It can be disadvantageous for students with colorblindness
    • Avoid underlining words (only hyperlinks should be underlined)
    • Include headers, labels and summaries for any table or chart.
    • Use the Microsoft guide to create accessible documents: Microsoft: Creating accessible Word documents.

Images

If you are using images in your documents and PowerPoints make sure to:

    • Add alternative text to all non-decorative images or graphics found on your documents 
    • Avoid animated or blinking images. Some people are sensitive to flashing images.

WC3 created a decision tree to help determine the appropriate type of alt text to use. Additionally, consult the articles listed below to create accessible images.

PDF Files

It is recommended that PDFs include the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for screen reader access. Check your PDFs accessibility using this guide. Start with 1 or 2 of your PDFs and then set a goal to fix them as your time allows.

PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoint is one of the most used presentation software. However, many PowerPoint presentations are not accessible. If you are using PowerPoint in your classes, consider looking at these items:

    • Text (font, size, color, audio transcript)
    • Image and graphics (alt text, quality of image, animation)

Addressing these items will already make a big difference for students with disabilities.

 Additional Resources:

Need help with Accessibility?

Contact the Disability Access Center

email: ssd@pfw.edu  

phone at 260-481-6657

For teaching assistance:

Request CELT Services

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