Digital Accessibility | How to make a Brightspace course digitally accessible
This article provides you with a set of tools to make your content digitally accessible in Brightspace.
How to make your content digitally accessible in Brightspace through HTML
In order to make your content digitally accessible to students with visual disabilities, please be sure to implement the following guidelines for the HTML pages
- Use hierarchical default structure:
Use each of the preset hierarchical style options (headings, paragraph, code, etc.) to differentiate your text. This will help students to clearly understand the structure of the content.
- Use default or recommended fonts:
- Make sure to have alternative text for images, links & graphs
Click on the image and click on the Image Options icon. In the Insert/edit Image tab, fill the Alternative description box with the description of the image, or tick the Image is decorative box. Then, click on Save.
This option will enable the digital reader to explain the content of the image to students with visual disabilities.
- Use modules and sub-modules to order topics in the course Content (maximum of 3 levels)
When creating sub-modules, please use a maximum of 3 levels of sub-models. A fourth sub-model (as displayed in the image) will be visualized at the same level as the third, which is confusing for students.
- Use sufficient contrast between text and background
Click on Select color to open the tab displayed below
Select the color for your text and check the bottom of the tab. A red X displayed shows you that the contrast is too low, therefore a student with visual disabilities might encounter difficulties in reading that part of the text. Please be sure to select colors with large contrast (that displays the green check icon)
- Click on the Accessibility check button to verify whether your content is digitally accessible to students with visual disabilities. A new Accessibility Checker tab will appear displaying information about issues with disability access. Please acknowledge and correct the Errors as indicated in the tab.
How to make your content digitally accessible in other tools
Here you can find guidelines, tips, and examples to make your content digitally accessible with the following tools.
Now you know how to make your content accessible to students with visual disabilities!