Taking a Proactive Stance

When you design your courses and create teaching materials for them, a proactive approach will ensure an equally valid educational experience for all your students including those with undocumented disabilities.

The accordion below compiles some of the most important pieces to understanding the rationale behind accessible teaching as well as ways for its implementation.

Checklist for Creating Accessible Content

Your proactive approach will make your content accessible to all your learners by default including those who:

• have a learning disability
• are in a location where they cannot play or her audio
• are not native English speakers and need written-word formats to support understanding
• have a physical disability (as listed below)
  • are blind or have low vision
  • have poor contrast vision
  • are deaf or hard of hearing
  • are colour blind and cannot differentiate between certain colours
  • are using a device with monochrome display
• have a form of cognitive disability

The following list of questions will guide you in the creation of specific accessible content for your course. The guiding questions presented for each of the content items will detail what makes them accessible.  For your convenience, you can download a one-page checklist for quick reference on the bottom.

One-Page Checklist for Download

You can download a one-page word document by clicking on the link: Accessibility Checklist.

Request Teaching Centre Assistance to ensure accessibility in your courses

Our Teaching Development Facilitators will be delighted to meet with you and support you in the implementation of accesibility measures in your courses. Please reach out to any one of us in your team to discuss your needs.

References:

AEM. Getting Started with Presentation Accessibility [handout]. https://aem.cast.org/binaries/content/assets/aem/creating-aem/getting-started-with-presentation-accessibility.pdf

Coolidge, A., Doner, S., Robertson, T., & Gray, J. (2018). Accessibility Toolkit—2nd Edition. BCcampus – OpenEd. https://opentextbc.ca/accessibilitytoolkit/

University, R. (2017). Ryerson Open Textbook Authoring Guide. Ryerson University. https://pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca/authorsguide/

Digging Deeper (Further Readings)