Instructional materials for ALL fcourses including, face-to-face (f2f), online/asynchronous, hybrid, and remote courses must be accessible. This ensures that students with disabilities, whether they have identified themselves to the Office of Disability Access or not, have equal access to the educational environment. Additional accommodations may be required by the Office of Disability Access based on a student's accommodations. If this is the case, you will also receive a letter of accommodation from the ODA. 

The checklist below provides a few basic considerations for accessibility. However, we encourage you to visit CLEAR's Accessibility page for a wealth of great information. 

You may also contact ODA's Digital Accessibility Specialist, Keeley Glogau, at Keeley.Glogau@unt.edu or 940-565-4323. 

Course Accessibility Checklist

  • Any audio only, video only, or audio-video files must have captions or a transcript. Please note that YouTube videos often have inaccurate captions and must be checked for accuracy. 
  • Audio descriptions must also be included or a descriptive transcript included. When a non-visual learner watches a video, they must be able to understand what is going on as well. 
  • Any image must have a text description (alternative text/alt-text). Alternative text provides a textual alternative to non-text content in web pages and documents.
  • All websites and applications must be accessible utilizing only a keyboard. (Screen-reader users typically do not use a mouse.) 
  • Course pages should be formatted in a similar way to make it easy to navigate. 
  • Headings should be utilized.
  • When creating a list or table within the document, please utilize the list and table feature within the program, such as clicking the list button instead of creating your own list through the use of dashes or asterisks. 
  • All text should have appropriate color contrast. 
  • PDFs are often not accessible to all forms of assistive technology, especially screen readers. Important information within the PDF must not be contained within an image and the document must have been converted through optical character recognition (OCR) before it is able to be read. For more information on making PDFs accessible, please visit: https://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/converting
  • If converting a PPT file to a PDF, please also include a link to the PPT file for accessibility.
  • If using a third-party platform, please contact our office or CLEAR to discuss the accessibility of the online product which your course will be using. Many of these are not accessible. 
  • If recording a video to provide instruction or supplementary assistance, please be very descriptive. For example, please do not say "over here" and then point to a specific place. This is not helpful to non-visual learners. Instead you might say, "please click the X in the upper left corner of the screen." 
  • If utilizing LockDown browser, please note that it is incompatible with many forms of assistive technology, such as screen magnification software, most screenreaders, and text-to-speech software. Therefore, alternative accommodations will need to be arranged to facilitate the test administration as well as maintain test integrity. A commonly utilized option is using Zoom to proctor the exam one-on-one remotely. 
  • When linking to another page or document, please utilize a hyperlink with descriptive text. For example, please do not say "Click here!". This is not descriptive. Additionally, please do not list out the long hyperlink unless otherwise needed. A screen-reader will read each letter in the hyperlink. 
  • If you will be holding a class or instructional session via Zoom, please record it to the Cloud. This will allow students with disabilities to watch it again if needed to capture all of the information. It will also allow students who are d/Deaf or Hard of Hearing to have access to captions.

Please contact Keeley Glogau at Keeley.Glogau@unt.edu for any questions or concerns.
You may also contact Dr. Tania Heap, Senior Director of Learning Research and Accessibility with CLEAR at Tania.Heap@unt.edu.