After meeting with your Instructional Designer to discuss the weekly flow of your course, go to your course site in your learning management system and build out a complete module, including overview content, course materials content, and assignments. Then duplicate this module so that the page structure and formatting for each module is consistent. Ideally, your entire course site will be populated prior to the launch of the pilot. If you are under time pressure, the minimum task is to complete all content for the first 3 weeks of the term.

Plan to meet our Accessibility criteria for success from the very beginning of your course build. Because Oregon terms are only 10 weeks long, students with disabilities are often unfairly delayed if content and assignments need to be remediated to be accessible. Accessible course materials are a Universal Design for Learning move that align with the matrix introduced in Year 2, Unit 1.

The Department of Justice requires that all course materials used in public higher education must meet WCAG 2.1 AA standards [Website]. Given this requirement, you may already incorporate the following accessibility standards into your course design. For instructors new to teaching in higher ed, plan to consult with your Instructional Designer regularly to make sure you can apply each standard in your course build.

Heading Structure

Use appropriate heading structure for documents and course pages. In course pages, apply Heading 1 to each major section title of the page. For documents, apply Heading 1 as the document title within the page and the title of each major section (for example, Assignment Title, Purpose, Tasks, Criteria for Success). Within those sections, use Heading 2 for subsections as needed.

• Criteria for success: Course pages and documents include appropriate structure with headings, lists, and reading order.

Descriptive Links

Use descriptive link anchors and include the link destination in square brackets. For example, Rubric Template and Grading Scheme [Google Doc] is preferable to https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PDXEU.

• For more information on accessible links, visit Year 1, Unit 6.
• Criteria for success: Course links are descriptive rather than displaying the URL text by itself.

Alt Text for Informative Images

Add alt text for informative images. Provide 10 words maximum describing the visual content of an image so that students who are blind or have low vision can access the same information as sighted students. If an image is only decorative, you don’t need alt text.

• For more information on writing alt text, visit Year 1, Unit 8.
• Criteria for success: Course images include alt text and text descriptions for infographics, figures, and charts.

Figure Numbers and Captions

Use figure numbers and figure captions for all informative images. Learning management systems sometimes prompt you to complete text fields for figure captions when you insert an image. If your learning management system does not have this feature, insert a figure number and figure caption as a line of text near the image on the page so that screenreader users can discern the association by proximity. This ensures that everyone can reference an image easily. It also ensures that each image’s pedagogical purpose is clear to students and future educators.

• For more information on writing figure captions, visit Year 1, Unit 8.
• Criteria for success: Images include figure captions.

Lists

Use list formatting. The list feature in your word processing software is designed to signal to screen reader users that content is intentionally grouped or numbered. Don’t type in dashes or numbers yourself.

• Criteria for success: Course pages and documents include appropriate structure with headings, lists, and reading order.

Use of Color

Don’t use color to denote meaning. People who are colorblind, or who printed your course materials in black and white, will miss the emphasis or distinction communicated by changes in text color. Instead, use textual cues like “Remember, the first draft is due Tuesday” or “Please note: this is a group project.”

• Criteria for success: Course does not use color alone to denote meaning.

Slides

Slide decks may present accessibility and licensing challenges that make them tricky to share. This is because slides can pull in images and other content from multiple sources, and have complex layout options – the same reason that some instructors appreciate this format. The following guidelines will help you avoid some common pitfalls.

• Use slide layouts. Slide layouts are templates that are pre-built in PowerPoint, Google Slides, and other presentation software with titles and content placeholders that are recognizable by screen reader software. They ensure that users can access the content in the right order. (The presentation notes field is accessible to screen readers.)
• Use openly licensed, equity-minded images. To find images that represent diverse people, visit Open Images [Website] on the Open Oregon Educational Resources website. This page collects repositories of openly licensed images with an emphasis on inclusion.
• Write an attribution statement for any openly licensed content that you are reusing from other sources. The easiest way to do this is with the Open Washington Attribution Builder [Website]. If attribution statements don’t fit on the same slide as the content you are reusing, create a “credits” slide at the end of your deck.
• Add an open license to the title slide so that future educators know how to retain, reuse revise, remix, and redistribute the content. Open Licenses Step by Step [Google Slides] shows you how to do this.
• Follow the standards for accessibility previously explained in this section: add alt-text to images, avoid using color to denote meaning, use descriptive links, and ensure that videos have audio captions. See WebAIM PowerPoint Accessibility [Website] for more details.
• Slide decks can meet multiple Accessibility criteria for success.

Licenses and Attributions for Populating Your Module Template with Accessible Content in your Learning Management System

“Populating Your Module Template with Accessible Content in your Learning Management System” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.