Web & Brightspace
Organize pages clearly, use meaningful headings and links, provide sufficient color contrast, and make sure course content can be navigated using assistive technology.
ACCESSIBILITY AT SUNY POLY
Digital Accessibility
SUNY Polytechnic Institute is committed to creating an inclusive digital environment where everyone can access, understand, and participate in our courses, websites, documents, and online resources.
AT A GLANCE
Accessibility Fast Facts
WCAG
Accessibility Standards
Follow current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines when creating digital content.
ADA
Equal Access
Digital content should provide equitable access to students, faculty, staff, and visitors.
UDL
Universal Design
Design learning experiences and content with a wide range of users in mind from the beginning.
EVERYONE PLAYS A ROLE
Accessibility Is Everyone's Responsibility
Creating an accessible digital environment is a shared responsibility. Faculty, staff, administrators, web editors, and content creators all play an important role in ensuring that digital information can be accessed and used by everyone.
Accessibility is most effective when it is considered from the beginning of the content creation process—not added as a final step.
CREATE ACCESSIBLE CONTENT
Where Accessibility Matters
Accessibility applies to more than websites. Consider accessibility whenever you create, share, or publish digital content.
Documents & PDFs
Create documents with proper structure, readable text, descriptive links, alternative text, and appropriate tagging for PDFs.
Video & Multimedia
Provide captions and transcripts for video and audio content. Make sure important visual and audio information is available in an accessible format.
Images & Visual Content
Provide meaningful alternative text for informative images and avoid using images as the only way to communicate important information.
ACCESSIBILITY BASICS
Start With These Best Practices
Clear Structure & Layout
Use descriptive headings, logical organization, and consistent navigation so users can easily find and understand information.
Readable Content
Use clear language, descriptive link text, appropriate heading structure, and enough spacing to make content easier to read and understand.
Color & Contrast
Make sure text, links, buttons, icons, and other visual elements have sufficient contrast with their backgrounds.
Alternative Text
Provide meaningful alternative text for informative images so their purpose and information can be understood by users of assistive technology.
Captions & Transcripts
Provide captions for video and transcripts or equivalent accessible formats for audio and multimedia content.
Accessible Documents
Use proper headings, lists, links, tables, tags, and reading order when creating Word documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and PDFs.
UNIVERSAL DESIGN FOR LEARNING
Design for Everyone From the Start
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) encourages instructors to provide multiple ways for students to engage with content, access information, and demonstrate what they know.
Designing courses and materials with accessibility in mind benefits everyone—not only students who use assistive technology.
RESOURCES & TRAINING
Tools to Help You Create Accessible Content
Deque University
SUNY Poly employees have access to Deque University, an online accessibility training platform with courses covering web, mobile, document, and digital accessibility.
Use Deque University to build your accessibility knowledge, learn practical techniques, and improve the content you create.
NEED HELP?
We're Here to Help
Have a question about making your course, document, website, or other digital content more accessible? Start with the accessibility resources above or contact the appropriate SUNY Poly office for assistance.
What is ADA Compliance?
The Department of Justice (DOJ) published the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Standards for Accessible Design in September 2010. These standards state that all electronic and information technology must be accessible to people with disabilities.
The ADA differs from Section 508 regulations, which are an amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and apply to all information technology, including computer hardware, software and documentation.
Accessibility Web Content Quick Guide Checklist
You can self‐evaluate the content of your course using this form. Web content includes the Brightspace items or pages you created using the content editor, but not any attached files.
Download the accessible web content checklist
What Can You Do to Make Your Courses More ADA Compliant?
Clear Layout and Design: The different parts of a web page need to be easy to locate and identify. Sometimes it is not easy to identify things like navigation menus, links, and content. Labels may be difficult to identify and associate with their corresponding form fields and controls.
Understandable Content: Content needs to be easy to follow and understand. For most content, this means simply avoiding overly complex sentences and jargon, and providing clear layout and design. For some complex content such as medical information, separate, easy-to-read information may be necessary.
Colors with Good Contrast: There needs to be sufficient contrast between text color and its background (technically called luminosity contrast ratio). This includes text on images, icons, and buttons. Too little contrast makes the content difficult for some people to read. (While some people need high contrast, some people are sensitive to brightness and need to change the colors.)
Video Captions: Captions are a text form of everything that is spoken in the audio as well as other important audio information. This could include information about who is speaking if it is not visible, sound effects, music, laughter, etc. Captions are synchronized with the visual content. All audio played with visual content needs to be captioned, including video and animations.
Best Practices Through Universal Design for Learning
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a set of principles and techniques for creating inclusive classroom instruction and accessible course materials. At its core is the assertion that all students benefit when they are given multiples ways to take in new information, express their comprehension, and become engaged in learning. This video features faculty and students at Colorado State University describing the benefits of UDL. Includes captions.
How People with Disabilities Use the Web: Overview
This resource introduces how people with disabilities, including people with age-related impairments, use the Web. It describes tools and approaches that people with different kinds of disabilities use to browse the Web and the barriers they encounter due to poor design. It helps developers, designers, and others to understand the principles for creating accessible websites, web applications, browsers, and other web tools.
Keeping Web Accessibility in Mind
At the heart of UDL is the commitment to inclusive pedagogy. Those involved in the educational process have a legal and ethical responsibility to ensure that instructional materials are accessible. Federal and state laws hold institutions of higher learning legally responsible for accessible course content.
Design adjustments to consider:
- Add text to your images.
Many websites include images. However, if there is no text to identify the image, a blind person's screen reader could not identify the image. The user would not have any way of knowing if the image is a logo, link to another page or simply a stock photo.
For example, a state website may have a picture of the governor. The blind person should be able to use their screen reader to go over the image and hear, "photo of the Governor [name]." - Don't use image-based PDFs.
Another simple adjustment you could make is to not post scanned document images in PDF format. Image-based formats are challenging to the visually impaired because they cannot be read by screen readers or text enlargement programs.
All posted PDFs should be tagged, have optical character recognition performed on them, and be searchable. - Allow for adjustments in color and font size.
Web designers often design in such a way that does not allow the user to adjust font size or color. While they may be protecting their brand, they are also inhibiting some users. Many visually impaired need to use high contrast color settings or very large fonts to read a website. Don't design your website in a way that makes it impossible for them to do this. - Enhance your multimedia.
Make images and video more accessible by adding audio descriptions to images, including narration of changes in setting, gesturing and other details. In addition, add text captions for the deaf.
Accessibility Checklist
This Quick Accessibility Checklist is meant to help faculty and staff who want to develop or modify Web-based course material, lectures, and assignments in an accessible way.
W3C Quick Guide
A customizable quick reference to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 requirements (success criteria) and techniques.
Tips W3C
This page introduces some basic considerations to help you get started writing web content that is more accessible to people with disabilities. These tips are good practice to help you meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) requirements. Follow the links to the related WCAG requirements, detailed background in the "Understanding" document, guidance from Tutorials, user stories, and more.
Deque University is an online training platform that focuses on digital accessibility. It offers over 30 courses covering accessibility for various platforms and digital types including web, mobile, and documents (MS Word, PDF). SUNY procured the service university-wide and all courses in the curriculum are available to SUNY Poly employees free of charge. Learn more about Deque University and request an account.
