Accessible Design

Explore designing for accessibility by using clear headings, alt text, readable fonts, and meaningful links, and build a practical accessibility checklist aligned with scope and law.

Explore the W3C WAI standards and WCAG levels, and compare accessibility laws across countries to design inclusive materials compliant with timelines and legal scope.

Identify your accessibility timeline, align with local laws, and plan compliance in stages; Ontario's example shows 2012–present web material must meet level AA, new material level A.

Clarify how accessibility laws, user needs, and technical guidelines converge under WCAG 2.0 to ensure perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust web material.

Design accessible experiences by providing multiple information formats—text, audio, video, images—and clear headings, glossaries, and transcripts to support users with vision, reading, or hearing difficulties.

Explore how accessibility laws, user needs, and WCAG 2.0 guidelines shape an overview of accessibility with the four principles and levels A to AAA.

Accessible design outlines a six-step process to implement accessibility. Start with a checklist, create material with an accessibility mindset, and make section-by-section changes, then review, create a template, and repeat.

Use a practical accessibility checklist to ensure perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust design. Compare personal checklists with the W3C quick reference to cover navigation, typography, contrast, and images with tags.

Build accessible material by prioritizing audience and purpose, using the accessibility checklist to redesign, and providing alternatives if full accessibility isn’t possible for charts, maps, or videos.

Apply a top-down accessibility approach by reviewing structure and colors, tackle each section with a checklist, and verify guidance against the W3C WCAG 2.0 guidelines and relevant accessibility laws.

Review your material with fresh eyes from the audience perspective. Use accessibility checkers like Word's accessibility checker and Achecker, plus a screen reader, to test usability across devices.

Compare Achecker with other free online accessibility checkers by pasting a URL to receive feedback, and explore more tools via the Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool List.

Use the achecker accessibility tool to assess WCAG compliance by entering a URL. Identify known problems, and fix issues like resizing text and replacing italics with em or strong.

Explore using wave.webaim.org to audit a website with WebAIM and compare with Achecker, learn how to interpret errors, alerts, contrast, and structure to improve accessibility.

Compare web accessibility checkers like Achecker, WAVE, and AXE, explore W3C tools, color contrast, and the importance of combining automated checks with human review to create accessible web material.

Test documents with screen readers, verifying reading order and pronunciation using Webaim.org. Try free NVDA and other tools, read up first, and apply tips to improve accessible design.

Demonstrate NVDA screen reader usage to read and navigate a page. Apply an accessibility checklist, WCAG levels, and test text and images with Word, Achecker, and screen readers.

Create a reusable template for repeated material like logos, titles, headings, and formatting to save time, and reuse accessible templates from Word, PowerPoint, or online sources.

Repeat the six-step, systematic process for accessibility: review and create with checklists, then review and test, then use templates and repeat to stay proactive.

Explore common accessibility requirements across documents and media, using a general checklist and material-specific tweaks for web pages, navigation, headings, fonts, images, audio, video, captions, and alt text.

Review a sample portfolio with the Achecker accessibility tool, apply wcag 2.0 level aa criteria, and identify fixes for alt text, headings, language attributes, and obsolete flash.

Review web pages for accessibility with WAVE, identify issues like empty headings, skipped heading levels, redundant links, and color contrast, and learn practical fixes and ARIA considerations.

Explore an accessibility checklist for Word documents, using proper structure, page breaks, and heading levels with a navigation pane to support screen readers. Verify the document with the Word checker.

Evaluate and enhance document accessibility by setting proper heading levels, identifying decorative images, creating accurate alt text, and using Word's accessibility checker.

Assess and improve slide accessibility using a comprehensive PowerPoint checklist, including master slides, slide titles, outline view, readable fonts, alt text, captions, and accessible audio or video options.

Fix PowerPoint slides for accessibility by adding alt text, slide titles, and correct reading order to support screen readers and equal experience.

Explore an accessible checklist for Excel spreadsheets, focusing on simple tables with titles and captions, headers, charts, colors with labels, avoiding merged cells, and accessible equations.

Access Excel workbook with the built-in accessibility checker, fix missing alternative text for charts, unmerge cells, and rename default sheets to clear, ensuring screen reader-friendly, workbook-wide accessibility.

Explore how to apply the accessibility checklist in Excel to format tables, add headers, adjust widths, add chart titles, add data labels, and verify color contrast with the accessibility checker.

Explore free resources to stay current with accessibility, including WCAG changes, official and educational sites, accessibility training, and organized modules on getting started, the process, and documents.

Discover free module 2 resources on accessibility laws, timelines for compliance, and practical requirements like alt text and proper links, plus wcag guidance from Canada, US, and UK.

Explore Module 3’s six-step process for accessible design, including checklist-driven material creation, section-by-section changes, testing, and templating, with key resources like WCAG 2, Achecker, and color contrast tools.

Explore free resources for module 4 design by document, including Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, and Web pages, plus caption guidelines and markup languages for charts and maps.

Develop an accessible design mindset by designing for many people and ensuring equal experience. Follow laws and guidelines, use a process with checklists, and leverage free resources.

Explore bonus material on accessibility design, identify common mistakes and practical solutions, learn to ask for help, design proactively with everyone in mind, and plan next steps for future courses.