Modern technology has allowed documents, websites, and platforms to be made accessible to everyone, regardless of their individual learning differences. We all want to create learning platforms and courses that accommodate these differences. Doing so not only meets legal requirements, but it also shows compassion and is ethical. It is important when creating courses that we keep in mind universal design principles and do our part to make documents, videos, etc. within our courses accessible. The Faculty Development Center wants to assist you in this process by providing links and support. There are 3 main areas of concern addressed in this blog post today:
-Microsoft Word documents
-PowerPoints
-PDFs
Below, you'll find some great resources to assist you in ensuring accessibility of these kinds of documents.
How to Make Accessible Word Documents - Portland Community College, 2015
How to Make Accessible PowerPoints - Portland Community College, 2015
How to Make Accessible PDFs - Portland Community College, 2015
Please note that articles on the library databases that are in PDF format are usually accessible and can be read by screen readers.
In a subsequent blog we will discuss videos and how they can be captioned so check the blog often.
As always please contact me (jposton@bellarmine.edu) or Adam
(aelias2@bellarmine.edu) in the Faculty Development Center if you have any questions.