How to prioritize the remediation of course content

As an instructor being asked to improve the accessibility of your courses, you may be wondering where to start. How do you even know if your content is accessible?

We suggest reading a few of the guides available on this website that are relevant to the tools and types of content you use. Don’t read to do anything with your content yet, but get an idea of what digital accessibility means for content in your course. We want any new content that is created for courses to be accessible from the start, so we won’t need to remediate it later.

When you’re ready to start improving accessibility, start with the syllabus. Accessible course syllabi are one of our earliest priorities. To assist with this, we have informative accessible syllabus templates available on the Provost’s website; you’ll find a link to them on this site’s guide for Word documents.

Next, make assignment guidelines accessible, to help students in knowing what they need to accomplish in the course.

Also, check on the accessibility of the digital copy of your course textbook: Knowing the publisher’s timeline to accessibility, and how attentive they are to it, will be helpful to guide future steps.

If you are teaching many courses, you may want to ask your department to help prioritize which course to assess first, beyond taking these initial steps. You may want to consider factors like enrollment numbers, whether the course is required, or the complexity of the subject matter.

The content of the course will need to be approached in ways that make the most sense for the discipline, the goals of the course, and the resources available. Key content, media content, and third-party tools used in the course should all be considered in terms of their digital accessibility. The guides on this site should help in making accessibility improvements, and additional help resources will be found here as they become available.

Reach out if you have questions as you continue to create accessible experiences for our students.