Digital Accessibility
What is Digital Accessibility?
Digital Accessibility (DA) and corresponding Federal and Illinois State regulations and Institutional guidelines aim to provide inclusive content for all people accessing online content offered by SIUE. The requirements include online course content related to teaching and learning, in addition to other content publicly available. To ensure DA, content should include components such as, but not limited to:
- Captions and transcripts for videos
- Alternative-text (alt-text) for graphics and pictures
- Structure within documents by using titles, headers, and other formatting tools
- Careful use of tables and other graphic organizers to ensure proper formatting for assistive technology
Digital Accessibility Resources for Faculty, Staff, and Administrators
Many popular document creation applications, such as those within the Microsoft Suite, have embedded accessibility checkers that help identify and confirm that text has structure, images have alt-text, and tables have repeating headers. A Knowledgebase article on file accessibility is also available for quick tips.
Anthology Ally in Blackboard
For employees with access to Blackboard, our subscription comes with Anthology Ally. Ally provides a simple visual indicator to convey how accessible uploaded content may be. The Ally visual indicators use red (nearly inaccessible), orange (accessible with room for improvement), and green (very accessible) speedometers to quickly communicate where DA may need further attention. By clicking the red, orange, or green speedometer next to an uploaded file, faculty can view the accessibility concerns and, in most cases, receive steps to remediate the document.
Captioning in YuJa
When recording videos using YuJa, the video recording and streaming service for SIUE, be sure to review the captions that are auto-generated. The auto-generated captions provide a great foundation for ensuring accessibility of video content, but they must be reviewed by a human to ensure accuracy. It is also recommended that the captioning transcript be exported and provided alongside the video, For assistance with this task, please see Digital Content Captioning Support.
SIUE Office for ACCESS
Another resource for providing accessible content and ensuring content is accessible to all students is the SIUE Office for Accessible Campus Community & Equitable Student Support or ACCESS. ACCESS regularly communicates student, faculty, and staff needs for accessibility and provides support for ensuring educational content is accessible to the greater community. ACCESS offers an accessibility checklist to assist the SIUE community with ensuring accessibility of content.
ITS IDLT
The ITS Instructional Design & Learning Technologies team is staffed by instructional designers who can consult and offer assistance with accessible course design and course content.
