Creating Accessible Content

It's essential to ensure that all users, regardless of their abilities, can access and engage with your content, especially in today's digital age. Creating accessible content broadens your audience and demonstrates your commitment to inclusivity and equality. Here are some key principles and best practices to help you create content that is accessible to everyone.

Creating Accessible Content Heading link

Frequently Asked Questions Heading link

What is the difference between Accessibilty and Accommodation?

Illustration to represent equity, accommodation and accessibility

Most faculty are familiar with the accommodation process facilitated by the Disability Resource Center (DRC) and may wonder why meeting reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities is not sufficient.

Accommodations are based on the needs of individual students who have registered a disability with the DRC. Accommodations are for adaptations that can’t be anticipated or standardized. They are unique to each student and may include testing, ASL/CART, assistive technology, mobility, attendance flexibility etc.

Whereas, Accessibility is what we should expect to be ready for us without asking or planning ahead. Everyone can benefit from accessibility, without having to announce or explain why they need it.

Increasing a course’s overall accessibility helps a broader range of students:

  1. Students with undiagnosed disabilities.
  2. Students who are apprehensive to share their disability with professors.
  3. Students who commute, parent, or work and benefit from consuming course content in alternate formats.
  4. All students have unique learning styles.

What about accommodations through the DRC?

Academic accommodations will still be very important for full student access, and the DRC is still available to support students and staff in implementing accommodations.

DRC Basics for Instructors (link to guide)

DRC Guide to Accommodations (link to site with explanations of common accommodations)

DRC and DCC Guide to Accommodations (link to guide with information about inclusive and accessible pedagogy).

Our 2026 goal is about digital accessibility, which is about creating a universally inclusive learning environment that reduces the need for individual accommodation. By embracing accessibility guidelines, you:

  • Create a single set of universally accessible materials, streamlining course delivery and reducing the need for individual student accommodations.
  • Improve document and file compatibility with evolving technologies, increasing the longevity of your course materials.
  • Create a more equitable learning experience for all students.

This proactive approach shifts from reactive accommodations to inclusive design. It allows all students, regardless of abilities, to engage with your content with fewer barriers. Meeting accessibility guidelines does more than ensure compliance—it enhances learning for everyone and promotes a culture of inclusion at UIC.

Accessibility Training Heading link

Creating Accessible Content Heading link

Creating accessible content on different media can seem overwhelming but if you follow these tips and guides, you should have no problem creating new, or editing your existing content, for accessibility.

Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint

These are the basic steps that you should always take to make sure your word, excel, powerpoint documents are accessible:

  • Use inbuilt accessibility checkers
  • Add document language and title
  • Use styling options that are built into the program; avoid copying and pasting directly from other programs
  • Use “headings” to create a hierarchy in your document. This ensures proper reading order for visually impaired users and helps them understand the content
  • Add alternate text to images
  • Use tables only when necessary; apply table headers and add a table caption and summary
  • Preserve accessibility while exporting from one format to another

Learn more:

Website

To create a welcoming digital environment, designers, developers and content editors need to be aware of and well-versed in accessibility standards and techniques for meeting those standards.

  • Web Accessibility Standards
  • Accessible Development and Design
  • Accessible Web Content
  • Accessibility Checkers and Tools

What is Web Accessibility

Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can:

  • perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web
  • contribute to the Web

Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including:

  • auditory
  • cognitive
  • neurological
  • physical
  • speech
  • visual

PDFs

Create an Accessible PDF

  • Use an authoring tool that supports:
    • Creating documents with headings & subheadings
    • Adding alt text to images
    • Exporting to tagged PDF

PDF Accessibility Remediation

  1. Recognize text for image only pdfs
  2. Tag document (if needed)
  3. Touch up reading order, alt text, etc.
  4. Touch up structure, especially, add or modify headings
  5. Create links from URLs
  6. Specify language and document title
  7. Do a full accessibility check

Common PDF Accessibility Errors

  • PDF language is not specified
  • PDF title is missing or is not meaningful
  • PDF is not tagged (important for document structure)
  • Tab order does not follow the document structure
  • Images don’t have alternative texts
    • Decorative or background images can be marked as decorative or “artifacts”
  • Color Contrast needs manual check
  • Table headers not defined
  • Long PDF documents not having bookmarks
  • Image-only PDFs
    • Need to be converted into a text-based PDF using optical character recognition (OCR)

Learn More

Blackboard/Canvas Best Practices

Blackboard/Canvas Best Practices

Zoom Best Practices

Zoom Best Practices

Audio-Visual/Multmedia

Any videos or audio recordings that are created for a course must have captions and/or a transcript available. In a sense, captions and transcripts are another form of alternative text for deaf and hard-of-hearing users. Rather than alt-text on an image, which is converted into an audio format for blind and low-vision users, captions and transcripts convert a primarily auditory medium into a visual one. This allows deaf and hard-of-hearing users to fully engage with the material.

Descriptive Text Transcript (Web-based Audio)

Audio recordings–such as announcements, podcasts, and interviews–must be accompanied by a text transcript.

Third-Party Recordings

When using third-party recordings, like podcasts, the following steps should be taken to assess the audio and create a transcript:

  1. Was the audio posted by the copyright holder? If so, a transcript may already exist. If one cannot be easily located, the copyright holder should be contact about creating a transcript.
  2. If the audio was not posted by the copyright holder, obtain a copyright-compliant version of the audio.
  3. If the audio cannot be obtained, it may be worth considering the educational value and need of the audio recording. Is there another way of sharing the information with the students?
  4. If you determine that no transcript exists and no accessible alternative can be found, submit the video to a transcription service to produce a transcript, which can be linked on the page with the video. Please contact Global Marketing and Communications web team for vendor recommendation.

Synchronized Captions (Web-based Video)

Like audio recordings, all video recordings should have captions on them. In some cases, such as uncaptioned, third-party videos, descriptive transcripts are an acceptable substitute.

Captions vs Subtitles

Captions are an accessibility tool that many people are familiar with, but it is important to note the difference between captions and subtitles. Subtitles are simply a running transcript of the dialogue that is occurring on-screen. Captions are more encompassing and include a description of any audio that is necessary to understand the information.

Third-Party Videos

When working with third-party video clips like this, work through the following steps:

  1. Was the video posted by the copyright holder? If so, the video may already be captioned. If the video isn’t captioned, it may be worth contacting the copyright holder about captioning.
  2. If the video was not posted by the copyright holder, obtain a copy of the video clip.
  3. If a copy of the video cannot be obtained, it may be worth stepping back and considering the value of the video. What is its purpose ? Could the same information be conveyed through another, more accessible video?
  4. Finally, if you have determined that there are no alternatives to the video and no way to obtain a captioned version, submit the video to a transcription service to produce a transcript, which can be linked on the page with the video. Please contact Global Marketing and Communications web team for vendor recommendation.

YouTube Videos

Please note that YouTube’s auto-generated captions are absolutely not an acceptable form of captioning on a video. While the technology is improving, it is in no way equivalent to human-created captions.

Unscripted Recordings

Many users like faculty create videos throughout the quarter–weekly wrap-ups, announcements, etc. Ideally, these would all be scripted, and those scripts would be the base for the creation of transcripts and/or captions. Short of this ideal, however, consider the following:

  1. Do the videos contain academically important information?
  2. If so, is the academically important information available elsewhere (in text format) on the website?

For example, if a video includes information about one of the assigned readings, but that information is also included in the weekly overview, then captions or a transcript for an unscripted recording are less important. If the academic information in the video cannot be accessed by students in any other way, however, then a transcript is required. That said, it’s a best practice to provide transcripts or captions on as much course material as possible, academically relevant or not so that all students are fully included in the complete course experience.

Virtual or Online Meetings

Meetings hosted on Zoom, Teams or other web conferencing tools should be accessible. Below are requirements:

  1. Accessible ICT: Ensure that the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) used for the meeting, such as meeting software, documents, and websites, is accessible. This includes providing real-time captioning services, accessible digital files, and ensuring that any physical documents are also accessible
  2. Accommodations: Always include a means for attendees to request accommodations in meeting invitations. This ensures that specific needs are met, such as providing sign language interpreters or other assistive technologies
  3. Hybrid Meetings: For hybrid meetings, where some participants are in-person and others are virtual, ensure that all ICT used is accessible. This includes projectors, videos, presentations, and other digital files

In-Person Meetings