Creating Accessible Content

Instructions

Colleges should ensure that all staff know how to create accessible electronic content that complies with the federal accessibility standards. TCSG has identified the following training materials to help colleges administer necessary training for college staff.  Each college accessibility coordinator should develop a college training plan to identify training needs and compliance. (See College Compliance Plan Guidelines for additional information about developing college training plans.) College may use this list of resources to help address staff training needs.

WCAG 2.0 Standards

On January 18, 2017, the U.S. Access Board published a final rule updating accessibility requirements for information and communication technology (ICT) covered by Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 255 of the Communications Act. The law adopts by reference the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A and Level AA success criteria for all ICT. Staff should refer to the official W3C WCAG 2.0 website as the definitive source for accessibility compliance questions. The site provides information about the WCAG 2.0 principles, guidelines and success criteria, as well as detailed explanations of How to Meet WCAG 2.0 Requirements. TCSG and its colleges should ensure that their websites and ICT conform to Level AA criteria.

List of Training Resources

General Accessibility Training

TCSG has developed an accessibility awareness video to help familiarize all staff with the issue of accessibility and to help them understand their role in providing accessible content to students and colleagues with disabilities.

MS Word

How to Make an Accessible Document in Microsoft Word (Video)

Easy to understand and comprehensive training videos on how to create accessible documents in MS Word. A series of 14 short videos from the Accessible Electronic Documents Community of Practice (AEDCOP) covers the basics of creating and testing for accessible MS Word content. You may watch all 14 videos in order, or select a video below for a topic of interest.
Module 0: Introduction and Background 
Module 1: Save As a Word Document (.docx) With a Descriptive File Name 
Module 2: Use Styles to Create Headings 
Module 3: Use Built-In Features to Create Lists 
Module 4: Use Built-in Columns to Organize Content 
Module 5: Use Built-in Features to Create Layout and Data Tables 
Module 6: Identify Distinct Languages 
Module 7: Create Unambiguous Names for Links 
Module 8: Duplicate Vital Info in Headers, Footers, & Watermarks 
Module 9: Create Accessible Images & Other Objects 
Module 10: Create Accessible Textboxes 
Module 11: Use Color Plus Text to Convey Meaning 
Module 12: Create the Required Color Contrast 
Module 13: Create Accessible Embedded Files 
Section 508 Basic Authoring and Testing Guide for MS Word 2010 (Manual)
For users who prefer to use a written manual, AEDCOP’s Basic Authoring and Testing Guide for MS Word covers all of the same lessons that are addressed in the above listed video tutorials.

PowerPoint Presentations

Creating Accessible PowerPoint Presentations (Video)

A 13-minute “How to” video that provides step-by-step instruction on the following PowerPoint accessibility basics: Slide Titles, Color and Slide Design, Fonts and Font Size, Alt text, Best Practices and Windows Accessibility Checker.

Excel Spreadsheets

This two-part training video from the Texas Governor’s Committee on People with Disabilities offers clear and easy to understand instructions for making spreadsheets accessible. These short videos (less than 10 minutes each in length) clearly explain how to set up your spreadsheet so that screen readers can properly read your data. While the training is written for users of Excel 2013 and 2016, many of the tips work with older version of Excel as well. These videos are highly recommended for anyone wanting to create accessible spreadsheets.

PDF Documents

Creating an Accessible PDF (Video)

Creating an Accessible PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro 11 is a 12-minute video that shows how to create an accessible PDF with Adobe Acrobat Pro 11. The student will learn how to prepare a Word document before converting to PDF, how to run the Acrobat Pro 11 Accessibility Check and how to make the PDF accessible.

Accessible PDF Documents (Video)

This brief video from The City University of New York shows how to create an accessible PDF document, the characteristics of accessible PDFs and how to use Adobe’s PDF Accessibility Checker. The video demonstrates the three ways that users may make PDF documents accessible:

  • Saving an accessible Word document
  • Scanning to OCR
  • Tagging an existing PDF.

Captions

Screencast-O-Matic (Video)

Screencast-O-Matic is video and audio screen capture software. TCSG has purchased two trial Pro licenses for each college, so any faculty member or staff can use this software to make instructional videos for their courses. To create accessible videos, it is important that you add captioning for the audio recording. Watch this short tutorial to learn how to add captions to your recordings: http://help.screencast-o-matic.com/#details-cof10aePH0.

Graphic Design

Accessibility Guidelines for Graphic Design (www.AcceDe.Info) (Manual)
This manual provides guidelines for making graphic design and forms comply with WCAG 2.0 standards. Excellent resource for graphic designers and PR teams.  Includes information about navigation, font, color contrast, hyperlinks, tables, forms and multimedia. 
http://wiki.accede-web.com/en/notices/graphique-ergonomique

HTML and Web Accessibility

Web Accessibility Evaluation and Design (Videos)

AMAC’s training video on web accessibility is recommended for IT and web development staff.  This module contains 9 lessons, which range from 5 to 20 minutes in length each. Expect to spend about two hours watching this video if you choose to watch the whole module from start to finish. Web developers, who are already familiar with the basics of web accessibility, may want to skip straight to Lessons 6.1 and 6.2: Fixing Web Accessibility Issues. The stated learning objectives of this module are to: define web accessibility, review common terminology used in web design and development, understand how users with accessibility needs access the web, evaluate website for accessibility issues using online tools, remediate code to make a website accessible, and discover how HTML5 and ARIA can be used to enhance website accessibility.

HTML and CSS – Accessibility Guidelines for HTML and CSS (AcceDe.Info) (Manual)

This manual provides easy to understand guidelines for making web pages accessible.  Topics include structure, metadata, images, links, forms, CSS and more.  This manual assures conformance with WCAG 2.0. 
http://wiki.accede-web.com/en/notices/html-css?DokuWiki=2cmm738n2sf2iuhup68sn4hl64