Accessibility and Your Course

Studies have shown that about 20 percent of the population has some type of disability. Some of these disabilities (visual, hearing, mobility, cognitive, etc.) can affect people's ability to fully access web-based materials. You can go a long way towards making your class and web-based materials accessible to the majority of your audience by following the guidelines below. Making your materials more accessible not only benefits students with disabilities, it can help increase learning for all your students.

In addition to this being the "right" thing to do, Section 508 of the Federal Rehabilitation Act (federal law) and PCC Board Policy require universities and colleges to make course materials, including electronic and information technology, accessible to students regardless of their abilities or disabilities. This means PCC’s online, hybrid, and any other instructional materials used in D2L Brightspace must be Section 508 compliant.

To assist you in making reasonable accommodations for students in your D2L Brightspace class, we have created an Accessibility, Special Access, and Release Conditions User Guide and Web Accessibility Guidelines. 

Additionally, the PCC website features an Access and Disability Resources (ADR) web page.

Finally, as you come across resources you'd like to share, please let us know!  Here's one great resource shared by a faculty member that may be useful to you:

• Accessibility Workshop for Brooklyn College: Accessibility Do's and Don'ts

To help you further understand Section 508 as it relates to your online class and web-based materials, review the WebAIM Section 508 Checklist. This list is by no means all-inclusive, but is an excellent place to start. It's much easier to build accessibility into web-based materials from the beginning than trying to retrofit the materials later.

The following two free, easy-to-use tools will help you more easily assess your course materials for accessibility and are referred to in the checklist below. Please download one or both of these before proceeding with the checklist:

• WAVE WebAIM Browser Extensions for Chrome and Firefox

• Firefox Developer Tools: Accessibility Inspector Panel 

For more information, see the following websites for their excellent guidelines:

• WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind)

• Universal Design for Learning: The ACCESS Project at Colorado State University

• CAST Universal Design for Learning