Digital accessibility means ensuring that anyone can access and interact with the course materials you share online.  This includes providing alternative texts for images and captions for video; using proper formatting when adding content to pages in Canvas; and checking that digitized articles and book chapters are accessible to screen readers. For more information, see this Canvas course accessibility checklist, which covers the seven pillars of digital accessibility.

Making sure digital materials are accessible benefits everyone. This is especially important as over 20 percent of students have a disability, yet the majority of those students do not receive official accommodations from their university. As an instructor you play an essential role in ensuring all students can access course content without difficulty. 

Digital content at the University, such as Brown websites and Canvas course materials, must meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 Level AA standards before being shared with students. This also aligns with federal civil rights laws. 

The University has made a number of resources and tools available to support you.

Accessibility Resources

Accessibility Tools

• Pope Tech, an accessibility checker, is now available in Canvas. You can use Pope Tech to scan courses for accessibility errors. The tool also guides you through the remediation of those errors, generating reports that show the total errors and the progress made in remediating them.
• Sensus Access is an alternative formats tool that anyone at Brown can use to assist with document accessibility. You can upload the inaccessible document to the tool and select how you would like it converted. Sensus Access offers the option to export tagged PDFs, Word documents, rich text format, CSV, among other file types. You can also convert a file to a MP3, ebook, or braille.

Do you have additional questions about digital accessibility? Then please reach out to dld@brown.edu.
 

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