Rainbow hand graphics reaching toward speech bubbles with various accessibility-related icons in them.

Accessibility Guides & Resources

Use the links to access a variety of information related to making digital content meet accessibility standards.

EFSC Training and Workshops

EFSC hosts training sessions, workshops, open labs and webinars that address a multitude of topics, including accessibility. New opportunities are routinely added to our schedule, so be sure to check the “News You Can Use” daily email for upcoming workshop information or visit the Training Calendar for a list of current offerings.

Canvas - Learning Management System (LMS)

Ally is a new tool that enables faculty to easily identify accessibility issues in their Canvas content as well as uploaded files . Visit the Accessible Content page in the myCETL course in Canvas to learn more about accessibility checker tools in Canvas courses. The Canvas Community Accessibility Group is also a helpful place to ask questions, learn about new features, and access resources.

Microsoft Office (Word and PowerPoint)

Creating documents with accessibility as a fundamental requirement from the beginning is a much more efficient strategy than remediating accessibility issues after the document is complete.

Microsoft Word is currently the most widely-used word processing software on the market and is commonly used to create PDF and HTML files. The following comprehensive guides provide best practices and instructions for implementing accessibility standards including alternate text, hyperlink structure, color contrast, use of headings and styles, and formatting tables and lists.

Make your Word documents accessible: Step-by-step instructions from Microsoft for Word 2013 and 2016 on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Online.

Microsoft Word: Creating Accessible Documents: Informative online article from the non-profit web accessibility organization WebAIM that includes explanations of standards and instructions for implementation using Word 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2016 for Windows and Mac.

Microsoft PowerPoint is one of the most popular tools for creating slide show presentations. While many of the same features are available in all Microsoft Office products, PowerPoint tends to be the most difficult program to work with from an accessibility standpoint. A good rule of thumb to follow when creating PowerPoint presentations is to utilize the design templates and slide layouts already created rather than developing your own, if possible. The following guides will assist you in creating and formatting accessible PowerPoint presentations.

Make your PowerPoint presentations accessible: Step-by-step instructions from Microsoft for PowerPoint 2013 and 2016 on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, and Online

PowerPoint Accessibility: Informative article from the non-profit web accessibility organization WebAIM that includes explanations of standards and instructions for implementation using PowerPoint 2010 or earlier.

Remediating Existing Microsoft Office Documents

While it may be more time consuming, you can still evaluate documents for accessibility after they have been created and retroactively remediate errors using the Microsoft Office built-in Accessibility Checker. To access this tool in Microsoft Office products go to File > Info > Check for issues > Accessibility Checker. This will open the Accessibility Checker task pane on the right side of your window showing results that identify accessibility errors, warnings and tips. Below the results frame, additional information for each issue is provided including why it is important to fix the problem and suggestions for the fix.

Adobe Acrobat DC – PDF files

PDF files are most often originally created in another program, such as Microsoft Word, and converted to a PDF after completion. The accessibility of PDFs is reliant on the accessibility of the original document; therefore, when creating a file that will be converted to a PDF, implement the accessibility techniques specified for the originating program, then save the document as a “tagged” PDF. The non-profit web accessibility organization WebAIM has developed a step-by-step guide to assist users in Converting Documents to PDFs.

Adobe Acrobat DC has built in accessibility checking tools – the Accessibility Checker and the Make Accessible Action Wizard. These tools will walk users through the steps required to make a PDF accessible and provide suggestions or automatic fixes for remediating accessibility issues. View Adobe's guide to using their Accessibility Checker Tools.

PDFs that have been created by scanning a physical document are saved by default as an image. The easiest way to tell if a PDF is reading as an image or text is to attempt to highlight, copy and paste the text into another document. If you are unable to highlight and copy text line by line, it is reading as an image and this format is not accessible. Adobe Acrobat DC has built-in optical character recognition (OCR) which will automatically scan documents and convert text into an editable, searchable and readable format. You can access Adobe’s OCR by selecting either “Edit PDF” or “Enhance PDF” from the Tool menu. Once the OCR process begins, you will see a blue status bar in the bottom right corner of your screen. Please note: for a multiple page document, you must manually scroll through each page to allow the OCR to process each one individually. Once this process is complete, be sure to save your document using a new file name.