Welcome
Welcome to the SPH Digital Accessibility Resources hub. Here, you’ll find practical guides for making course materials accessible using tools like Descript, Adobe Acrobat Pro, FeedbackFruits, and built-in checkers in Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, and Canvas. Our step-by-step tutorials fit into your workflow, making accessibility easier.
Join CTE Digital Accessibility Trainings
As educators at Texas A&M, we all share responsibility for creating an inclusive learning environment. Take the first step toward making your course materials accessible to all students by attending CTE's Digital Accessibility Sessions. Your participation directly impacts student success and ensures compliance with university standards.
The 7 Core Accessibility Skills
Digital accessibility is essential for compliance with federal standards (e.g., WCAG 2.1, ADA). The 7 core skills below apply to content created in all digital formats.
Include alternative text, or "alt text," for every meaning image in your digital content.
Why it matters?
Images, charts, and graphs are key means of providing information in course materials. However, people with visual impairments cannot see that information. Alternative text provides a text description of visual depictions that can be read aloud, offering visually impaired individuals and sighted individual a similar experience. Also, if a sighted user has a limited internet connection and images cannot or are slow to load, the alternative text will provide the user with the information the image portrays.
Explore more: Take our short microlearning courses on Alt text, an accessibility skill
Ensure that foreground and background colors and other visual elements contrast each other.
Why it matters?
Design appearance varies across different viewing environments. While your content looks one way during creation, users of adaptive technologies like screen magnifiers often customize color settings to meet their needs.
Also, relying solely on color to convey information creates barriers for color-blind individuals, people with low vision, and anyone viewing content in bright sunlight or on older displays. Always provide multiple ways to convey important information beyond just color.
Explore more: Take our short microlearning courses on Accessibility Through Color and Clarity
Structure your online content with paragraph styles in documents or heading tags on web pages.
Why it matters?
Most people don’t actually read a webpage from start to finish. Instead, we tend to skim through it, looking for the parts that matter to us. Properly using headings helps screen readers do the same thing. When headings are set up correctly, users of screen readers can hear a list of them and jump straight to the section they want. If headings aren’t used, those users have to listen to the whole page to catch any important details. Screen readers don’t identify bolded text or different font sizes as headings, but they do recognize text that is formatted as headings.
Explore more: Take our short microlearning courses on Headings, Key to Structure
Provide human-edited captions for videos, and transcripts for audio-only content.
Why it matters?
While captions and transcripts are often associated with supporting students with hearing impairments, their benefits extend to a wider audience. Students with learning disabilities can find them helpful in processing information more effectively, while individuals studying in noisy or quiet environments can rely on captions when audio is difficult to hear. Additionally, many students prefer consuming content in multiple formats, making captions and transcripts a valuable resource for enhancing comprehension and engagement across the board.
Explore more: Take our short microlearning courses on Teach with Accessible Multimedia
Write links that are clear, descriptive, and make sense on their own.
Why it matters?
Links are essential for online navigation. Instead of vague phrases like "Click here," use clear, descriptive text for hyperlinks, especially for screen reader users. Generic labels can confuse users who listen to link lists, as they don’t convey where the link leads. Meaningful hyperlink text enhances understanding and improves navigation, as screen readers announce that it is a link before reading the description.
Explore more: Take our short microlearning courses on Crafting Accessible, Click-Worthy Links
Use lists whenever possible to organize key concepts, sequences, or groups of three or more related items.
Why it matters?
Lists help users comprehend text more quickly. Writers can use them to reduce reader fatigue resulting from trying to comprehend dense or complex paragraphs. Lists can provide a break in the document flow and encourage users to stick with the content.
Explore more: Take our short microlearning courses on Accessible Lists: Helping Students Learn at a Glance
Keep tables simple by using a clear structure, including a header row and/or column, and providing a summary in a caption or alt text.
Why it matters?
Unlike sighted users who can easily see and identify the row and column of a cell by looking around, which helps them understand what the value in that cell represents, screen readers present a different challenge. They read out the cells in a straight line from left to right and top to bottom without showing which row or column the value is in. This makes it really hard for users to connect the data with the right headers.
Explore more: Take our short microlearning courses on Table Accessibility Made Simple
Create Accessible Materials
Empower your documents with structured content, clear headings, and descriptive visuals.
Transform your slides into accessible presentations with intuitive layouts.
Convert your PDFs into scannable, searchable, legible, and readable resources.
Deliver inclusive multimedia experiences with synchronized captions, rich audio descriptions, and clear transcripts.
Enhance your Canvas courses with intuitive navigation, clear content organization, and accessible interactive elements.
