Accessibility Resources

Creating accessible electronic documents can help all students engage more deeply with your content. Accessible documents provide options for effective use, and in some cases, can be the difference between a document being usable and not (see one example of HTML vs PDF for screen readers).

This guide is for educators who are interested in improving the accessibility of the documents they create and post for electronic use. Most general guidance provided by universities does not adequately address the challenges faced in creating documents for STEM content; this guide is meant to compile best practice workflow options that STEM educators are currently using.

There are many potential paths towards creating accessible content. The tool that is best for you will depend on your desired output and the available time you have for learning a new workflow. We’ve tried to anticipate these factors within each workflow’s description.

While there are some opportunities in the guide for you to learn a new workflow, there are others where it is expected that you will need assistance. If there is a task in the guide that you would like to accomplish but feel you need additional support to do so, please reach out so we can craft a best path forward. The goal is progress not perfection; if you’re committed to this, I would recommend adding a statement of your commitment, along with two methods of contact for students to request assistance, to your syllabus and/or your Canvas course home page (this recommendation comes from “How to Comply with Colorado Accessibility Laws”).

I hope this guide will evolve and improve based on our collective experience. If you have workflows for creating accessible documents that are not currently listed and that you think others would benefit from, please email me so I can add them to this guide.

Measuring Accessibilty

How do we know if our documents are accessible? While this can be a complex question, there are tools available that can help. The following are a couple of tools that I have found helpful.

• For web documents, the WAVE browser extension will provide an evaluation of your content with one click. You can quickly see issues that may need attention, such as images missing alternative text or insufficient contrast between text and background colors.
• For PDF documents, Adobe Acrobat Pro provides built-in accessibility checks. Adobe Acrobat Pro can be accessed for free by CSU faculty.

A Guide for STEM Content

You can browse all accessibility tools we’ve compiled, or you can reference the guide below which is organized by content type. For each, we list some common things to avoid, as well as potential workflows for producing that content in an accessible format.