Online Course Accessibility Checklist

The following checklist is a basic level list to work towards online course content accessibility. Instructional Technology is happy to consult for more complex situations. The goal is to be able to answer yes to all of the following questions.

Syllabus

• Does the syllabus have a statement about statement of support for students with disabilities? See Disability Services for Assistance
• Does the syllabus have a clear outline for course content and expectations?
• Does the syllabus list have a contact for technical assistance?
• Does the syllabus list a turnaround time for online communication (i.e. 24 hours response on emails)?
• Does the syllabus state standards of appropriate communication online?

Documents

• Can text be highlighted, copied, and pasted?
• Were headings used?
• Were headings used properly so that a heading level was NOT skipped?
  • Good: H1, H2, H2, H3, H3, H3, H2, H2
  • Bad: H1, H3, H3, H2, H5, H4. (for example, H2 was skipped)
• Is there sufficient color contrast between text and background colors?
• Do images (which offer important information not contained in the text) include text descriptions? 
• Was the built-in MS Office Accessibility Checker used?
• View Creating accessible Word documents from Microsoft Office Support for more information.

PowerPoint Presentation Slides

• Was the PowerPoint created with a template?
• Can the order of the text in the presentation be verified in the “Outline” panel?
• When tabbing, does the cursor move in a logical order if it were read aloud?
• Is there sufficient color contrast between text and background colors?
• Do images (which offer important information not contained in the text) include text descriptions?
• Was the built-in MS Office Accessibility Checker used?
• View Creating accessible PowerPoint presentations from Microsoft Office Support for more information.

Excel Workbooks

• Do images (which offer important information not contained in the text) include text descriptions?
• Were header rows and column headings specified? 
• Was the hyperlink text meaningful?
• Were merged cells avoided?
• Was the built-in MS Office Accessibility Checker used?
• View Creating accessible Excel workbooks from Microsoft Office Support for more information.

Video and Audio

• Is all video content (web, DVD and VHS) captioned?
• Are transcripts available for video-based materials that were not able to be captioned?
• Are transcripts available for audio-based materials?