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Making Your Syllabus ADA-Compliant

Making Your Syllabus ADA-Compliant

This article guides you in creating an accessible syllabus in Microsoft Word that is inclusive for all students and complies with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Please use the latest version of Microsoft Word.

Accessible Microsoft Word Syllabus Checklist

A PDF syllabus is not recommended as it is labor-intensive to make accessible. While using “Save As” to save a Word document as a PDF preserves some of its accessibility, the PDF is not fully accessible. Using “Print to PDF” strips the document of accessibility components it had in Word.

Insert headings
Select Home from the menu tabs at the top of your Word document. Select the text that you want to become the heading.
Click on the Styles button and choose a Heading 1 for the title of your syllabus. Sub-headings under Heading 1 should use a Heading 2. Sub-headings under Heading 2 should use Heading 3, etc.
Use accessible fonts and images
Use sans serif (e.g., Arial or Helvetica) fonts and at least size 12 for font size.
Use images sparingly and add alt text by right-clicking on the image and choosing View Alt Text.
Create descriptive hyperlinks
Instead of using raw links, type the title of the resource and link it to the web page. (ex. Office of Accessibility Services).
Ensure that all links are current and working.
Use built-in bulleted and numbered lists
Use the list icon under the Home tab to format bulleted and numbered lists.
Make a table more accessible
Only use tables for tabular data, and not for layout. Avoid merged cells and multi-level columns.
Clicking on your table will make the Table Design and Table Layout tabs appear. Check the Header Row box in the Table Design tab. In the Table Layout tab, click Repeat Header Rows.
Use the built-in accessibility checker
Under the Review tab, click the Check Accessibility button and pass the built-in checker.

Download this basic sample ADA-compliant syllabus in Word and its annotated version.

Contact our Digital Accessibility Analyst with questions or instructional design team for Brightspace help.

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