The Nest

Accessibility of online course content is an important part of following Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. Designing accessible courses provides educational opportunities for all students.

A significant number of people have disabilities that can make it difficult for them to access online course content. As faculty, we do not know who in our class may experience difficulty with online content. Therefore, ensuring content is accessible helps all students, even those without disabilities.

Below are tools and recommendations for how you can make your course content more accessible on the Nest.

Alt text's purpose is to describe images for those unable to see them. This includes screen readers and browsers that block images, but it also includes users who are sight-impaired or otherwise unable to visually identify an image.

When uploading an image onto an html document that is part of your instruction ... include a short description of the image in the alt text field.

The purpose of descriptive links is to provide users with the proper context of where clicking the link will take them. Screen reader users often navigate websites going from link to link, using the tab key (or shift-tab to go backwards), so providing links that make sense is vitally important and necessary.

DO NOT USE "CLICK HERE"

BE DESCRIPTIVE!

Examples:

• Direct link to video.
• Watch video on Youtube.
• Select to download X handout. 

The accessibility checker in the Nest indicates if there are no issues, or offers suggestions to fix identified accessibility issues on html document pages you've created.

Video: How to use the Accessibility Checker in the Nest.

Using heading styles helps people with eyesight impairment to understand how the document is organized. Screen readers and Braille users can also jump between headings, which makes navigation much more efficient than if there are no headings.

On the left is how text is read by screen reading software when using heading styles. On the right is how the text is read without heading styles.

Heading Styles should be used when creating documents, pdfs, or presentations: 

• Microsoft Word
• Google Docs
• Pages
• PDFs
• Powerpoint
• Keynote
• Google Slides

When using html documents, in the Nest, heading styles can be found under Format.