Committing to accessible design and teaching means being both proactive and responsive. While 100% accessibility is impossible, here are a few things you can do right now to make your course more accessible.

Use built-in accessible features

MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Canvas have a number of built-in features that can help instructors build accessible content from the ground up. This Accessibility Features page outlines a number of quick things you can do as you are creating content.

Avoid using PDFs

Because they are images, PDFs are inaccessible for many people. Canvas pages, on the other hand, use HTML-based text - a highly accessible format. Well-formatted Word, Excel, and PowerPoint resources are also more accessible than PDFs. The links below provide overviews of how to create accessible Canvas pages and MS Office resources.
If you must use PDFs, make sure they are tagged. "Tags" structure a PDF's content, which helps screenreaders do their job. Without tags, a PDF is essentially blank to a screenreader. Printing to PDF from a web browser does not produce a tagged PDF - you must tag the document yourself. Sound onerous? It is!...which is why we discourage the use of PDFs. The UW Accessibility website provides guidance on how to tag a PDF.

Use the "permalink" for library articles

Many library database articles offer HTML, PDF, or audio versions of articles. The direct link to the article is called a "permalink." After selecting your article, click on the "Permalink" icon 1 , and select the "Copy the Permalink to Clipboard" link. 2 You can use this link in your course to connect learners to the article. Note: Learners will need to log in to the library to access the permalink.

Sample Library resource page showing Permalink icon labeled as one in the Send to section and the Copy the permalink to clipboard link labeled as two

Use best practices for scanning content

Follow the UW's practices for creating high-quality scans to increase the accessibility of your scanned content.

Scan your Canvas course for broken links

The Link Validation tool in Canvas can help you identify broken links in your course. To access the tool, click on the "Settings" link in your Course Navigation Menu and then click on the "Validate Links in Content" option.

Check accessibility of course files with Ally

Ally is a tool in Canvas that helps instructors check and remediate course content for greater accessibility. The link below provides a basic overview of how to use Ally when building course content in Canvas.

What is Ally?

Learn more about accessibility

Check out the UW Bothell Digital Learning team's self-paced Accessibility 101 course. (You will need to be logged in to your UW account to access this course.)