Learn more about Accessibility and Inclusive Design

Inclusive Design (ID) is "Essential for Some, Useful for All" (W3C:WAI.)

Inclusive Design "considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference."

Source: Inclusive Design Research Centre.

Accessibility is important for everyone.

By applying the principles of Universal Design (UD) in the creation and delivery of curricular content, we can meet the needs of students with disabilities and greatly improve access to as many students as possible.

For example...

• Captioned videos are essential for those who are Deaf/deaf or hearing-impaired. Captions are also useful to those who may be dyslexic, have ADD/ADHD, or are not familiar with the language spoken in the video.
• The inclusion of headers and bulleted lists in a digital document (e.g., Word, PowerPoint) or webpage (e.g., Canvas, SharePoint, WordPress) are essential for blind or visually-impaired persons using a screen reader to access and navigate content at the page. This type of semantic formatting and organization is also helpful to those who are sighted for making sense of different elements or chunks of content.
• Text-based links, such as, Utilizing Descriptive Text, are helpful for everyone in that they more clearly communicate information than most URLs/web addresses do.

User Perspectives: videos by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

• Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore the Impact and Benefits for Everyone: These 10 short videos (7:36 minutes total) provide insight into varying user perspectives.

IT/Web Accessibility at Evergreen

Includes information about creating accessible content and Evergreen's Accessible Tech Workgroup.

Related Canvas Guides

• General Accessibility Design Guidelines: This document outlines some general best practices when designing a course for accessibility concerns.

• Accessibility within Canvas: Ensuring an accessible and pleasant experience to all users, regardless of disability, is a key focus of Canvas.

• Creating Accessible Tables in the Rich Content Editor: General guideline: tables should be used for data display, not layout.

Check your Microsoft Office documents for Accessibility

• Use the Accessibility Checker available in Microsoft 365 applications such as Word and Excel to locate and correct issues.
• Use the MS Office 2016 Accessibility Checker for Mac.