Prioritizing Course Accessibility Tasks

Begin with courses that have the greatest impact on the largest number of students. Consider prioritizing courses that:

• Enroll large numbers of students.
• Are taught frequently or offered every year.
• Are required for a major, program, or degree.
• Contain a large amount of online content.
• Are likely to be taught again in future semesters.

Work through each course site in the following order.

1. Remove Unused and Outdated Materials

Delete duplicate files, old announcements, unused activities, and materials that students no longer need. Removing outdated content makes your course easier to navigate and reduces the amount of material that needs to be reviewed for accessibility.

2. Make New Course Materials Accessible

Whenever you create, update, or add new materials to your online course site, make sure they are accessible. Because many courses are reused from semester to semester, making new materials accessible now will gradually increase the accessibility of your course over time and reduce the amount of remediation needed in the future.

Make the syllabus and other essential course documents accessible.

• Begin with the syllabus, course schedule, assignment instructions, grading information, and other administrative documents.

Resource: See our webpage on creating accessible documents for instructions on how to ensure new course documents are accessible.

Create accessible Moodle activities.

• While Moodle itself is accessible, make sure the instructions for assignments, discussion forums, quizzes, and other Moodle content are clearly structured and accessible.

Resource: See our webpage on creating accessible Moodle activities and resources for detailed instructions.

Make sure new assigned readings are accessible.

• When adding new assigned readings to Moodle, use accessible resources whenever possible. Linking directly to library materials, such as online articles or ebooks, is often the best way to ensure course readings are accessible.
• If you cannot find the readings you need through the Libraries’ existing electronic resources, you can request ebooks, print books, and other resources using the Libraries’ Request-a-Purchase form. You can also request many materials through Interlibrary Loan.
• If you need to use materials from outside the library, review our resources on creating accessible documents and accessible PDFs before sharing those materials with students.

Resource: See the Library’s tutorial on posting permalinks for instructions on linking to library resources.

Make sure new lecture notes and presentations are accessible.

• Create accessible versions of new lecture presentations, handouts, and notes before sharing them with students.

Resource: See our webpage on creating accessible presentations.

Make sure course videos are captioned or transcribed.

• Post videos to platforms that can generate automatic captions and transcripts, such as YouTube or Google Drive. Review automatically generated captions for accuracy before assigning videos to students.

Resource: See our webpage on making videos accessible.

3. Review and Improve Existing Course Materials

Once you are comfortable creating or locating accessible materials, review existing content in your course. Improve inaccessible materials or replace them with an accessible alternative whenever possible.

Review instructions for Moodle activities.

• Make sure instructions for assignments, discussion forums, quizzes, and other Moodle content are clearly structured and accessible.

Resource: See our webpage on creating accessible Moodle activities and resources for detailed instructions.

Review existing assigned readings.

• Whenever possible, replace scanned or static PDFs with links to accessible articles, ebooks, or other resources available through the Libraries’ collections.