Introduction

Accessible content benefits everyone – not just those with a disability (visible or invisible). Accessible content is well organized, easy to navigate, and allows you to reach your students with a range of preferences and abilities. Whether our students attend in-class, online, or remote, we should strive to create accessible spaces and resources as the default, rather than adapting only when requested.

Accessibility standards for post-secondary institutions in Ontario are guided by the .Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act [New Tab]. The Ontario Human Rights Commission has provided several important documents to help navigate this legislation, including a roles and responsibilities fact sheet for accommodating students with disabilities [New Tab], and a report, The opportunity to succeed: Achieving barrier-free education for students with disabilities – Post-secondary education [New Tab].

“Educators at the post-secondary level are responsible for participating in the accommodation process (including the provision of specific accommodations), being knowledgeable about and sensitive to disability issues, and maintaining student confidentiality.”
– Ontario Human Rights Commission [New Tab]Accessibility standards should not impede the good teaching work that you already do, but rather enable everyone to benefit from a more inclusive and equitable learning environment. Resource creation and review is likely already part of your regular tasks when preparing to teach a course (whether for the first time or not). Accessibility considerations should not pose significant increases in workload – think of it as just adding a step in your workflow process of creating/reviewing/adapting resources. Creating content that is accessible from the beginning is easier than adapting it later, but the resources in this Accessibility Toolkit are meant to help you whether you are starting from scratch or working with existing materials. 

In this book you will find:

• Accessibility Checklist
• Accessible URLs and hyperlinks
• Accessible pictures and images
• Accessible documents
• Accessible presentations
• Accessible videos
• Accessible tables and graphs
• Text, colour and contrast
• Course navigation, readability and usability
• Blackboard Ally

You can work through this Accessibility Toolkit section by section, or you can select the section most relevant to your needs using the navigation menu.

Attribution and References

This Introduction was based on “Online Accessibility: Introduction and requirements [New Tab]” by the University of Lincoln, used under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The work was adapted to include information specific to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and to reflect the organization of this new OER.