Digital Accessibility at DACC

Please note: The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has extended the compliance deadline to April 26, 2027.

Read the announcement

• Students may contact the office of Disability Services
• For help with academic and instructional content, contact the Teaching & Learning Center
• For help with content posted to the DACC external website, contact ols@dacc.edu
• Employees: Need help with digital accessibility in your area? Contact ols@dacc.edu

Documents that must comply with the standard include:

• Course materials
• Digital documents created in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.
• Email messaged, including newsletters and e-blasts
• Social media posts
• Videos
• Websites and web portals, including DACC's external websites, Employee Portal (SharePoint), Campus Map, Academic Calendar, myDACC, Canvas, Catalog, Course Schedule (Colleague), etc.
• Exceptions: Archival material, documents that are generated for an individual person or account (ex. a billing statement), documents created before April 24, 2026 (as long as they are not required for participation in a DACC program).

Software that must comply includes:

• Browser based software or apps that are necessary to participate in a DACC program or service

You are responsible for ensuring compliance with the documents you make and the software you buy. While it is providing education, guidance and resources to the DACC community, the Web Accessibility Taskforce is not responsible for reviewing, testing or enforcing compliance for any documents or software at this time.

Overview of the WCAG 2.1 AA compliance and the new Justice Department rule (ADA.gov)

WCAG 2.1 AA standards (W3.org)

Justice Department rule on digital accessibility (FederalRegister.gov)

WebAIM's WCAG 2 Checklist

Start Designing for Accessibility (ILCCO)

Consult the following resources to learn more about creating an accessible source document.

Creating Accessible PDFs

If the document will be saved and offered as a PDF, steps must also be taken in Adobe Acrobat Pro or another software remediation platform to ensure accessibility.

Though there are some exceptions, using Microsoft products to create and distribute documents is generally a better practice than using PDF documents. If you do need to use a PDF, see our PDF Remediation Resources.

• Creating Accessible Documents (Online Learning Corsortium)
• Get Accessible Templates for Office (Microsoft)

Tips for Writing Alt Text

Alternative text, or alt text, is a description of images that is made available to screen-reader users. Its purpose is to help users with visial disabilities understand important information being conveyed in the imagery used in our digital communications. Alt text is embedded in the code of the document or web page and is not visible to most users.

Alt Text Basics

• Keep it short, anywhere from a few words to a sentence is usually fine.
• Describe the meaningful visuals of a page. Often this means who's in the image, what they're doing, and where they are.
• Avoid including "Photo of...." or "Image of..." in your alt text. Screen readers will automatically announce that it is an image.
• many apps autogenerate inaccurate alt text. Please review alt text for all images before publishing or sharing your document.
• You do not need to repeat information that can be gotten elsewhere in the document or post. For instance, for an image that contains the date of an upcoming event, the alt text does not need to include the date if the information is available in the main text of the document.

Some Nuances

• For images that are purely decorative, you can leave the alt text blank so the screen reader skips it. NOTE: many apps require alt text.
• If an image is functional, describe its purpose rather than it's visuals. For instance, use "Search" as opposed to "Magnifying glass icon"

CidiLabs Tidy Up

CidiLabs TidyUp is a tool that makes it simple and easy for instructors to clean their Canvas course. TidyUp scans the Canvas course for unused pages and unlinked files and removes them from the course.

Danville Area Community College has an enterprise license. Please access TidyUp through Danville Area Community Colleges Canvas by enabling it in the course navigation.

Note: TidyUp does not identify files that are being used in Question Banks.

For technical assistance or any questions, please contact ols@dacc.edu.

Additional Resources

• TidyUp Canvas Overview
• CidiLabs Support Center
• TidyUp User Guide
• Does TidyUp scan quiz questions for file usage?
• What does the lock icon next to a file mean?
• What do hidden and publish in TidyUp edit options do?

Best Practices to Manage Files with TidyUp

• Name files and folders with similar naming convention to identify files easily.
• If unused files will be used for any future courses, download all unused files by selecting the files then Download Selected before deleting from the current course.
• Since TidyUp does not scan Canvas Question Banks, deliberate naming convention and organization should be used. If there are files and images used within a question bank, add the files and images within a folder in Canvas Files. Name the folder and rename the files and images with a leading identifier, e.g., QB-image1.png or quest_bank_image1.png.
• If your course contains items used for supplemental or optional assignments that may not be linked in Canvas Modules or on a page, please rename the files using an leading identifier, e.g., supplemental_reading1.pdf or supp_topic1_nabakov.pdf.

CidiLabs UDOIT

CidiLabs UDOIT is a tool that makes it simple and easy for instructors to address accessibility issues in there course. UDOIT scans course content automatically, identifies accessibility issues, and guides users through fixes.

Danville Area Community College has an enterprise license. Please access UDOIT through Danville Area Community Colleges Canvas by enabling it in the course navigation.

For technical assistance or any questions, please contact ols@dacc.edu.

Additional Resources

• UDOIT Canvas Overview
• CidiLabs Support Center
• UDOIT User Guide
• Does UDOIT scan quiz questions?
• How do I convert a PDF Document to a Canvas Page in UDOIT?
• What WCAG guidelines does UDOIT check for?

Best Practices to Accessible Courses with UDOIT

• Run TidyUp first before using UDOIT
• Run Early and Often: Scan your course during development, before students access it, and after making major updates.
• Prioritize High-Impact Items: Focus on fixing errors in this order - missing alternative text for images, improper heading structures, and inaccessible tables.
• Use UFIXIT for Immediate Fixes: use the "UFIXIT" tab to directly edit and fix accessibility issues within the UDOIT interface without navigating away from the page.
• Use "Easiest to Fix" Filter: Start with the "Easiest to Fix" filter to gain confidence and make steady, manageable progress.
• Fix Content, Not Just Files: While UDOIT scans files (like PDFs), it is often more effective to convert content to Canvas Pages.

Suggested Course Road Maps

Reviewing existing courses

We recommend following the steps outlined below to help you improve the accessibility of your courses:

Run CidiLabs Tidy Up

TidyUp scans the Canvas course for unused pages and unlinked files and removes them from the course. You can access TidyUp through your course navigation menu on the left side of your course. If you do not see TidyUp available, you can enable it via your course settings under the navigation tab.

Run CidiLabs UDOIT

UDOIT scans the Canvas course for accessibility issues and guides users through fixing the issues. You can access UDOIT through your course navigation menu on the left side of your course. If you do not see UDOIT available, you can enable it via your course settings under the navigation tab.

Determine your priorities

If you have already developed materials for your course, we recommend choosing one of the options below as a starting point:

1. Start with your syllabus
   • Making your syllabus accessible is a great place to start on making your course more accessible as it is one of the first documents your students will be accessing and will get your familiar with document remediation process. Tools such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint have accessibility checkers in their software that will point out which sections of your document need remediation. Some common accessibility issues include incorrect text headers, color contrast issues, and missing alt text on images.
   • Helpful Resources:
     • Improving Microsoft Documents with Accessibility Checker
2. Run TidyUp to help with managing your course content
   • This tool will help with giving you an overview of all the content in your course in one place. Using this tool you will be given the following actions: editing the file or content, the ability to move the content, the ability to download the content, and the ability to delete the selected content as well. The goal of this tool is to show you content in your course that you may not be using or content that is outdated.
3. Use the UDOIT tool to help with your course accessibility
   • The UDOIT tool can help you determine a pathway to a more accessible course that works for you. The tool separates content into three groups, "High Impact," "Medium Impact" and "Low Impact." Things to remember:
     • Remediating content with the easiest issues to fix is a good way to quickly fix issues such as missing alt text on images.
     • Going after the lowest scoring content will have the most impact on raising your course's overall accessibility score.
     • It's a good idea to set a goal of raising your overall course accessibility by 10% per semester. The most important thing is to begin working accessibility into your course design process in a consistent, ongoing way.

Additional Considerations:

Resource Selection

Some scanned documents can be too difficult to read. Scanned documents with text cut off, smudges, faded writing, etc., may not be feasible to make into an accessible document. You should review your course resources to make sure that the resources provided are legible.

Use the Danville Area Community College Library Course Research Guides to find updated and legible resources and work with your content area librarian to locate accessible versions of any other recourses you may need.

Review Course Technologies

When utilizing course technologies, prioritize using native Canvas features like Canvas Discussions, Quizzes, and Modules, as they are accessible to students. While third-party external tools may offer additional features, they can create inaccessible experiences for some students, although some tools have or are being updated to include accessibility options.

Managing PDFs

Please follow our PDF workflow to making accessible PDFs:

1. Remove any unused PDFs from your course.
   • TidyUp is an excellent tool for doing this.
2. Reorganize your site.
   • For those documents that you'd like to keep but are for archival purposes only, you should move them to a folder clearly marked "Archived."
3. Reformat your PDF.
   • If your document was originally a Word or PowerPoint file, we recommend uploading that version instead of the PDF. You can upload read-only files to ensure the content remains the same. We recommend converting PDFs that could be webforms or module pages to webforms/html pages.
4. Remediate the remainder.

To learn more, contact the Web Accessibility Taskforce

Maggie Hoover
Dean of Instruction & Learning Resources
m.hoover@dacc.edu

Jung Ae Merrick
Assistant Director, Learning Technologies & Innovation
j.merrick2@dacc.edu

Teaching & Learning Center
tlc@dacc.edu