When you are creating documents to post online, you have some special obligations to make sure that your documents are accessible to the widest audiences possible.

Essentially, there are 7 basic principles of making your documents accessible:

1. Create documents which are well structured and which include headings which are machine readable.
2. Provide text alternatives for all images, graphics, audio, and video.
3. Ensure that all text has a strong contrast to the background color (test by printing out on a black & white printer).
4. Avoid using colored text, and do not use colored text (alone) to indicate a category or type of information.
5. Use headings for columns and rows in tables; use introductory paragraph to describe designs of complex table layouts.
6. Provide unique hyperlink labels which are descriptive of the content which is linked.
7. Convert documents to a universally accessible file format (recommendation is Adobe Acrobat Reader / PDF format).  

Making your documents accessible is fairly easy to do, but it requires some planning and a few special skills.  The specific skills you need will be shown in the next topic of this course.

Associated Law and Policy 

Unlike Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act which require a reasonable accommodation be made for qualified individuals with disabilities, the laws relating to online document accessibility are in effect at all time for all users.

Under Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, any institution accepting Federal dollars (including education grants and financial aid) must make its web and electronic documents accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies. In addition to the Federal law, as an instructor you are subject to state of Minnesota laws and accessibility guidelines (Nonvisual Technology Access 16C.145, Minnesota Human Rights Act, Minnesota Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Guidelines, and MnSCU Web Accessibility Guidelines).

Review the guidelines and sites above for specific details of the laws and standards.

If you have deeper interest in learning about online accessibility, here are some sites you should consider.

• Web Accessibility In Mind (WebAIM)
• Usability.Gov - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
• Web Accessibility Initiative - International standards developed by the World Wide Web Consortium
• TRACE Center Resources - University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering, funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research
• Adobe - Accessibility Resources
• Microsoft - Accessibility Resources