8 Steps to Course Accessibility

Department of Justice updates to regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act go into effect on April 24, 2026. These regulatory updates clarify the requirements for digital access to resources on the websites of public entities, which include state universities. Under the new regulations, all online content must be accessible to people with disabilities (if you are interested in the technical details, accessibility is being defined as meeting the standards for WCAG 2.1 AA). For colleges and universities, this will also apply to course materials, including documents that you have uploaded to Canvas, prerecorded lecture videos, and third-party content like online textbooks. 

Now is the time to take stock of your courses and ensure that they meet legal requirements and will be usable for all your students moving forward. Follow these eight steps to course accessibility, and pace yourself so you don’t run out of time.

Step 1: Assess your Situation

The first step towards an accessible course is to take assessment of the situation so you know what you have to do moving forward. The Ally course accessibility report — located in Instructor Tools within Canvas — is a great starting point. It gives you a snapshot of the types of files and accessibility errors in your course and lets you sort by issues that are high-impact or easy to fix. When you select a specific piece of inaccessible content, it even gives you guidance on how to remediate it. Next, read a quick overview of digital accessibility best practices to give you an idea of what you will do moving forward. The final part of your first step is to notice any third-party products like publisher platforms or LTIs and reach out to the vendor to ask them about the accessibility of the product. This will give you time to encourage them to make changes if necessary.

Step 2: Remove Unused Files

If your Ally course score was low, you might feel overwhelmed. Save yourself time by removing old documents that are weighing your score down. Anything in your course must be accessible, so find another place to store legacy documents. TidyUP is a tool that identifies course files that are not linked or embedded anywhere. You may want to use it to identify items to then delete in Files to make sure you aren’t confusing documents with similar names.

Step 3: Fix the Easy Issues

Keep your momentum going by returning to your Ally course report and looking at the content that’s easiest to fix (located near the top right of the report). You will probably see a lot of issues related to images that lack quality alternative text, insufficient color contrast, and links that don’t have meaningful hyperlinked text. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with these concepts and then work your way through the list using Ally. If there are other issues you don’t know how to fix yet, save them for later.

Step 4: Check Video Accessibility

To ensure course videos are accessible, check that you can understand all of the content from each video with the sound off and then with your eyes closed. If videos you have acquired elsewhere are not accessible, you will need to either find an accessible version or replace them. Videos you created yourself may qualify for centrally funded captioning through UFIT. In addition to captions, instructional videos should contain all of the content in the audio; otherwise, they need to have an additional audio description track. Familiarize yourself with audio descriptions so you can evaluate your videos and so you know what to do as you record new ones.

Step 5: Ditch PDFs, Create Documents

PDFs are notoriously difficult to make accessible as they require detailed metadata that must be carefully scrutinized. Unless your PDF includes complicated data tables with split or merged cells, satisfies specific graphics needs with a complex order of information, or similar, save the PDFs for printed materials and replace them with other file formats such as Word documents, webpages, and PowerPoints. As you replace a PDF with a Word document, make sure you are familiar with Word accessibility.

Step 6: Polish your PowerPoints

If you distribute lecture slides to your students, make sure each PowerPoint document is accessible. In addition to paying attention to appropriate use of color and alternative text on images, you will need to make sure each slide has a unique title and the reading order is accurate. If there are no PowerPoints in your course, you can use this stage as an opportunity to review earlier steps and tackle anything you have missed.

Step 7: Remediate Remaining PDFs

While we attempted to eliminate as many PDFs from the course as possible during step five, there are probably some stragglers that you don’t have in other formats. Now is the time to remediate them and make them accessible. To do this, you will need to use the accessibility checker tool in Adobe Acrobat Pro or a comparable PDF editing software. PDF remediation requires you to pull in all of the previous things you’ve learned as well as acquiring skills that are unique to PDFs. Make sure your PDF has a title and language, and pay close attention to the tags and tag structure.

Step 8: Plan for the Future

By now, you’ve put a lot of work into learning about digital accessibility and improving your course. Check your Ally course score again so you can see how much progress you’ve made and identify anything that remains. Accessibility is not a one-time task: Create a workflow for incorporating digital accessibility into the creation of new materials and into your course revision process to make sure your course quality does not slip. We recommend creating your own digital accessibility resource such as a checklist or a document with links to resources you need. This will help you synthesize and retain what you have learned in this process and help you in the future.