ARC Accessibility Checklist

This applies to documents, Canvas, and any web content that you might link to for students. By ensuring that your content is readable, you are meeting both accessibility and universal design principles, increasing the usability of your content.

• Used headers and lists to organize content.
  • If you aren’t sure how to do that, visit our support pages:
    • Microsoft Office
    • Google Apps
    • Canvas
• Chunk information into manageable sizes.
• Build “white space” into your content.
  • Avoid crowding information together.
• Use font size no smaller than 12 point.
• Avoid long paragraphs.

• All images require alternate text:
  • no longer than 125 characters.
  • do not reference “picture of” or “image of” in alt-text description.
  • use proper punctuation and grammar in alt-text description.
• Complex images (such as graphs, charts, infographics, art) may require long descriptions.
• Alternate formats for data sets, such as tables, is recommended whenever possible.
• If you need help, visit our Accessibility: Images, Graphs, and Charts page.

• All videos should have accurate closed captions that:
  • are 99% accurate, reflecting the speaker’s exact words with correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
  • appear at the same time the words are spoken and not display too fast for viewers to read.
  • include relevant background information (e.g. music description).
  • display from the start of the video to the end.
  • not block important content and be a readable font size.
• If you need help with captioning, visit our Accessibility: Captioning page.

• Do not use the URL for a hyperlink.
• Avoid using “click here.”
• Use a descriptive title (often the title of the page you are linking to).

• Use darker font on lighter backgrounds; or lighter font on darker backgrounds.
  • Use a color contrast checker to ensure accessibility.
• Avoid the following color contrasts:
  • Red and Green
  • Green and Brown
  • Blue and Purple
  • Blue and Grey
  • Blue and Yellow
  • Green and Blue
  • Green and Grey
  • Green and Black
  • Light Green and Yellow
• Use more than color to convey important information:
  • color + shape
  • color + number
  • color + pattern or line styles
  • color + text
• If you need help using color effectively, visit our Accessibility: Color and Contrast page.

Even when you put accessibility into the design and review of your course content, it’s important to utilize available accessibility checkers, for a second review.

• Accessibility Checkers in Canvas
• Microsoft Office Accessibility Checker
• Grackle Docs Accessibility Checker for Google Apps (University of Hawaii)
  • Follow the same steps for logging in as described, except use your Los Rios login.
• Color Contrast Analyzer (WebAIM)
  • This tool is best used when creating content, since the accessibility checkers will also analyze for color contrast errors.
• Wave Browser Extension
  • This is highly recommended for evaluating web/HTML based content that you’ve created or that you are using for your students.