Digital Course Content Checklist

For more guidance and resources, see Improve Accessibility in your Canvas Course in Bearcats Landing.

• Headings are organized in a logical and hierarchal fashion, with consecutive headings (i.e., no skipped heading levels).
• Lists are formatted using the rich content editor (as opposed to manually typed characters like hyphens, numbers, or icons).
• The content is clear and concise.
• All links include descriptive link text that helps users understand the content of the linked page prior to selecting it (i.e., avoid generic phrases like "click here").
• The color contrast ratio between foreground text and background color is sufficient.
• A functional table of contents (TOC) is present on longer course pages.
• If color is used to emphasize important text, is there is an alternate, compliant method used as well?

• All images, grouped images, and non-text elements that convey information and functional graphics have meaningful alternative text.
• Complex images (charts, graphs, diagrams, etc.) have descriptive text near the image (such as a caption or long description).
• The document does not contain images of text whenever possible (text within images disappear when images are not available). If images of text are used to convey information, that text is present in alternative text or in a nearby description.
• If color is used to emphasize important text, you have also used an alternative to color to convey information.
• If sensory information (e.g., shape, size, color, visual location, orientation, sound, etc.) is used to convey information, you have provided an alternative method to convey that information.

• All tables in Canvas have Header cells defined and a descriptive Table Caption, which can added by Editing General Cell Properties.

Follow the accessibility best practices for the file format. Use the tools built into your source program to check your content for accessibility.

If you plan to post your syllabus as a PDF, make the syllabus as accessible as possible in the source program, then export the document to PDF format.

• Word Accessibility Checklist
• PowerPoint Accessibility Checklist
• Excel Accessibility Checklist
• PDF Accessibility Checklist
• PDF Accessibility Basics

• Videos with audio content have accurate, synchronized captioning.
• Audio files have a matching transcript file.
• Videos without audio content have a text equivalent or audio description.

• Content created in the Canvas Rich Content Editor has no issues flagged by Ally or Canvas accessibility checkers.
• Your documents pass the built-in Office Accessibility Checker or the Adobe Acrobat Pro accessibility checker.
• When there is no other way to make the content accessible, you have provided a separate accessible version of the document near the original version.
• Contact the Accessibility Network if you are having trouble.