This checklist is designed to help faculty create accessible courses that provide equal access to all students, including those with disabilities. Please ensure that your course meets these requirements to contribute to an inclusive learning environment that supports diverse learning needs.
Checklist Items:
- All content and learning activities are available in Brightspace no later than 7 days before the first day of class.
- Provide course materials in accessible formats, such as screen reader-friendly PDFs or HTML.
- Accommodation Statement is present and easily located.
- Copyright law is followed. Course breaks no copyright considerations. Where possible, Open Educational Resources, free, or low cost materials are used.
- Transcripts are provided for audio materials (mp3, wav, etc.) and videos/screencasts have closed-captions.
- Hyperlink text includes the hyperlink purpose and avoids raw URLs. For example, “Brightspace Help” is used instead of “https://go.geneseo.edu/brightspace.”
- All links, files, videos and external URLs are active, working, and up-to-date. Course is free of spelling and grammatical errors.
- Images are used to support course content (e.g., banners, headings and icons). They have text descriptions (alt text) or captions for more complex descriptions.
- Color does not overpower the course information. Enough contrast between text and background makes information easy to read. Color alone is not used to convey meaning.
- Styles (e.g. Paragraph, Heading 2, etc.) are used to format text. Sans serif (e.g., Arial or Helvetica) fonts are used. Font size 12 is the standard body text font size.
- Tables are only used for tabular data, and not for layout and design of non-tabular data. Tables include a title, description, and header rows and columns.
These requirements draw from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Please check out our accessibility resources for more information.