5 Tools for Making Your Digital Course Materials Accessible, Flexible, and Usable for All
Jim Stachowiak and Christine Scherer
Introduction
Whether you’re teaching in-person, hybrid, or remote, there are digital tools you can use to make your course more accessible and aligned with UDL principles. This session will give a crash-course demo in creating accessible content in Canvas, as well as how to use built-in accessibility tools, such as UDOIT and Canvas’ accessibility checker. We will share numerous free tools available through Northwestern, including Read&Write Gold and SensusAccess, that provide options (reading with support, listening to audio forms, etc.) for how students can interact with your accessible designed materials to remove barriers presented by traditional text. Combining accessible Canvas design and tools that provide access options make your digital course materials flexible enough to offer students the ability to use their strengths to get the most out of your materials.
Pre-Work
None
Session Recording
Presentation Transcript: Tools for Making your Courses More Accessible (Word document)
Additional Resources
While many of the following resources were created for a Northwestern audience, the concepts and are available to those at other institutions as well. Check with your institution’s accessibility office to inquire about the availability of Read&Write Gold, SensusAccess, and other assistive technology software.
Creating Accessible Sites
- Accessible Course Design in Canvas Checklist (School of Professional Studies @ NU)
- Accessible Documents: Word, PowerPoint, & Acrobat (WebAIM)
- Creating Accessible Documents (National Center on Accessible Educational Materials)
- Creating Accessible Word Documents (WebAIM)
- How Do I Make a Course Accessible? (School of Professional Studies @ NU)
- How Do I Use the Accessibility Checker in the Rich Content Editor as an Instructor?
- How to Use UDOIT, the Canvas Course Accessibility Checker (Information Technology @ NU)
- PDF Accessibility: Converting Documents to PDFs (WebAIM)
- Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDOIT) (University of Central Florida)
Tools
- Accessing Read&Write Gold through Northwestern
- Getting Started with Read&Write for Google Chrome (Texthelp)
- Read&Write for Google Chrome Feature Demos (Video)(Texthelp)
- Read&Write for Mac Feature Demos (Videos) (Texthelp)
- Read&Write for Windows Feature Demos (Videos) (Texthelp)
- Using SensusAccess through Northwestern
- What is SensusAccess (Videos) (SensusAccess)
Read & Write Gold Syllabus Text: Read & Write Gold is an optional text reading and writing program with numerous beneficial features. Originally developed to assist users with print disabilities, such as visual impairments, dyslexia, ADHD, etc., this program provides a wide array of tools to assist with reading, writing, and notetaking. One of the most useful tools is the text-to-speech function, which students may use to convert digital text into an audio format. Read&Write Gold is available for free to all Northwestern students, faculty, and staff. Visit the Northwestern IT site on Read&Write Gold for more information about the software, as well as instructions on how to download it.
