As you prepare for the new semester, keep accessibility in mind! Creating course materials that are accessible in a variety of formats is helpful to all students in your classes, including those with disabilities. Use this checklist as a reference while preparing your courses, and feel free to reach out to OIT for more details at (303) 735-4357 (5-HELP from a campus phone) or help@colorado.edu.
Need-to-Do’s:
- Use the accessible syllabus template to ensure that all students, including those who use assistive technology, will be able to access the information in your syllabus.
- If you have a D2L course, make sure your HTML course content contains appropriate headings. To learn more, see our accessible content structure page.
- For any digital software or service that students are required to use in your course, please determine the accessibility status of the software. For software supported by the Office of Information Technology, please check the Accessibility Current Status page. To determine the accessibility status of any additional software, please contact the Compliance Review Office at ICTCompliance@colorado.edu.
If the software is not accessible or has not been reviewed for accessibility, please provide notice to students using the syllabus statement below.
Syllabus Statement:
This course requires the use of [insert name & description of tool], which is currently not accessible to users using assistive technology or has not yet been reviewed fully for accessibility. If you use assistive technology to access the course material, please contact your faculty member and Disability Services at 303-492-8671 or by email at dsinfo@colorado.edu as soon as possible to discuss other effective means for providing equal alternate access.
- If you receive an accommodation request from a student in your course for a captioning accommodation, notify the captioning service using the online captioning request form.
Go Above and Beyond For Your Students:
- Consult the Universal Design Checklist for Educators for guidance on designing and authoring accessible digital content such as PowerPoints, PDFs, and Word Documents.
- Review the best practices for supporting Universal Design teaching practices.
- Review the accessibility of your D2L course content using the Accessibility Checker.
- Review the guidelines for creating accessible course content in D2L.
- Consider captioning any video content you use in your courses. Email captioning@colorado.edu for a consultation or to schedule captioning training, or review our YouTube captioning tutorials to caption on your own.
For additional resources related to accessibility and universal design for teaching and learning, please go to the Accessible Technology page. There, you can also learn more about CU Boulder’s Accessibility Policy.
If you would like to learn more or have questions about campus accessibility resources, please contact the IT Service Center at help@colorado.edu or call 303-735-4357 (5-HELP from a campus phone).
