ADA Compliancy

ADA Standards Accessible Design A good resource for creating ADA accessible documents is located on the Bellevue College DRC web site.

All A&H  syllabi are posted on-line on the Arts & Humanities web site for the public to view. Even though you may know that none of your students use screen readers, there is no way to tell if anyone visiting our web site is using one.  Some of your students, or visitors to the site may be color blind or have other visual issues.

A FEW THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND TO MAKE YOUR SYLLABUS MORE ADA COMPLIANT

  • Underlining, bolding, Italics should be used sparingly or not at all.
  • Use a font that is easily read such as Arial or MS Sans Serif, stay away from fancy fonts.
  • Color should not be used to emphasize something because of the issues with colorblindness – especially red.
  • For screen readers to work properly the headings should be one font size away from the content.  So if a heading is 14 font, the content should be 12 font.
  • Do not use textboxes, screen readers view them as nothing is inside of them.
  • Be careful about tables, if not set up properly, the information the screen reader may not be able to read the content as written.  Read the info on the DRC web site to set up a table properly.
  • Add alternate text for Images, or remove them altogether.

Webaim.com logo**Jim Dicus is the Instructional Designer from eLearning, he shared with me that color is not bad, only that using color to emphasize something affects those with color blindness.  A reference he shared with me is from Webaim.  If you visit the site, you will be able to get a little deeper into colorblindness and visual issues.

As Seda Markarova and I (Janis) receive all syllabi for posting, we do scan through them.  If one of us sees incorrect office locations, or out of date links, we do our best to notify instructors so they can change the info on their end.  It is highly encouraged to post your syllabus in your CANVAS class site.  All that is needed is for you to mark your syllabus public, then send us the link.  Any changes to your syllabus can be easily done in CANVAS and there is no need to send  a Word, or PDF file.