Digital Accessibility

Accessible Videos & Multimedia (Kaltura)

gnann — Wed, 14 May 2025 19:28:55 +0000

Accessible Videos & Multimedia (Kaltura) gnann Wed, 05/14/2025 - 14:28

This session covers best practices for captions, transcripts, audio descriptions, and more in videos and multimedia.

Online: ODA Zoom.

When

Tue, Jun 17 2025, 3 - 3:45am Google Outlook iCal

Wed, Jul 16 2025, 10 - 10:45am Google Outlook iCal

Location

Online and Oncampus

Event Type

Training

Department

Digital Accessibility

Accessible Documents & Presentations (Word, PDF, PPT)

gnann — Wed, 14 May 2025 19:27:38 +0000

Accessible Documents & Presentations (Word, PDF, PPT) gnann Wed, 05/14/2025 - 14:27

Discover easy ways to improve digital accessibility in your documents and presentations. Laptops encouraged for in-person participants.

Online: ODA Zoom.

On campus: BRK 416. In-person space limited to 15.

When

Tue, Jun 3 2025, 11am - 12pm Google Outlook iCal

Thu, Jun 5 2025, 11am - 12pm Google Outlook iCal

Tue, Jun 24 2025, 3 - 4pm Google Outlook iCal

Thu, Jun 26 2025, 3 - 4pm Google Outlook iCal

Wed, Jul 23 2025, 11am - 12pm Google Outlook iCal

Fri, Jul 25 2025, 11am - 12pm Google Outlook iCal

Location

Online and Oncampus

Event Type

Training

Department

Digital Accessibility

Digital Accessibility 101: The Top 8 Essentials

gnann — Wed, 14 May 2025 19:21:49 +0000

Digital Accessibility 101: The Top 8 Essentials gnann Wed, 05/14/2025 - 14:21

Learn the top eight accessibility issues to watch for when creating online and digital content.

Online: ODA Zoom.

When

Wed, Jun 11 2025, 10 - 10:45am Google Outlook iCal

Tue, Jul 8 2025, 3 - 3:45pm Google Outlook iCal

Location

Online and OnCampus

Event Type

Training

Department

Digital Accessibility

Navigating ADA Title II Changes at UIS

gnann — Wed, 14 May 2025 19:15:15 +0000

Navigating ADA Title II Changes at UIS gnann Wed, 05/14/2025 - 14:15

Join us for an overview of key ADA Title II updates and digital accessibility resources at UIS.

Online: ODA Zoom.

When

Mon, Jun 30 2025, 3 - 3:45pm Google Outlook iCal

Location

Online and OnCampus

Event Type

Training

Department

Digital Accessibility

Accessible Videos

careya2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:27:57 +0000

Accessible Videos careya2 Mon, 04/21/2025 - 12:27

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 require four pieces for a video to be considered accessible. In brief, those guidelines are:

Captions at 99%+ accuracy
Spoken audio descriptions of relevant materials in videos
Captioned audio descriptions of the spoken audio descriptions in videos
Transcript that includes video captions and audio description captions

In the page below, you’ll find resources and instructions to complete all these steps. To view a fully accessible video, check out this sample video with spoken and captioned audio descriptions with full transcript.

99% Accurate Captions

Creating accurate captions is a critical piece of creating an accessible video. A free resource from Cielo24 explains all you need to know about captions in their Captioning Compliance Checklist.

Captioning in Kaltura

If you have a video uploaded in Kaltura/My Media in Canvas, you can access the captions from the video's edit page in My Media. More information on how to correct captions can be found in the UIS Knowledge Base article on Closed Captions for Videos in Kaltura.

Other Captioning Tools

Creating Transcripts from an .srt File

Transcripts are a similarly crucial element of accessible video presentation. After you've created an accurate captions file, it's very easy to convert this into a transcript.

Upload your captions to Subtitle Tools
Ensure "Empty line between cues" is unchecked and click Extract text
Click the Download link to save your transcript

At this point, you have a functional .txt transcript file, but the text from each cue in the subtitle file will be on its own line. This could cause it to be difficult to read for some assistive technology. You can merge these into a single block of text with Word's find and replace features to make it more readable.

Download the text file and open it in Word
- You'll be met with a File Conversion dialog. Ensure that UTF-8 is selected.
Use Find and Replace (Ctrl + H) to remove the endlines by putting ^p in the Find field and either nothing or a single space in the Replace field.
- Often, files created through YouTube have spaces and/or non-breaking spaces at the end of each line, which will not be removed along with the endlines. To remove non-breaking spaces you can use ^s, and to remove instances of multiple spaces, you can simply put two spaces in the Find field and one space in the Replace field. Repeat as necessary.
Ensure that new speakers begin a new paragraph. (You can Ctrl + F for >> to quickly locate them.) If desired, break into paragraphs further.

Audio Descriptions with Captions

Audio descriptions are an audio track or transcripts that describe the visuals you see on a screen. You should create captions for the audio descriptions in the same way that you would provide them for the audio included with the video.

To understand what a difference audio descriptions can make for a student, please view these two frozen clips below.

Disney’s Frozen Scene with Subtitles and without Audio Description

Embed: Frozen - Trailer with Subtitles

Disney’s Frozen Scene with Subtitles and Audio Description

Embed: Frozen - Trailer with Audio Description

The simplest way to include audio descriptions is to build the audio descriptions into your video lectures from the beginning. For instance, if you are creating a Light Board video where you are drawing a graph on the board, simply explain what you are drawing as you are doing it. If you are narrating a PowerPoint lecture, describe what is on the screen. If text is all that is on your slide, make sure you speak all the text.

DigitalGov created an excellent resource that explains the different options for including audio tracks.

Resource type

videos

PDF Accessibility: The Tags Panel

careya2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:21:50 +0000

PDF Accessibility: The Tags Panel careya2 Mon, 04/21/2025 - 12:21

The Tags Panel displays the primary structure of the document. While the Order Panel provides tools to restructure what content is grouped together, how it is labeled, and when it is read, the Tags Panel gives more granular control over the latter two aspects. The order of the tags is the reading order of the document, moreso than that displayed by the Order Panel, and each tag serves a specific semantic purpose (besides grouping tags like <Part> and <Sect>). Some of the structures formed by these tags require strict adherence to that structure; more information about them can be found on the Complex Tag Structures page.

Some important functions of the Tags Panel are:

Dragging and dropping content and tags to change the structure
Right Click > New Tag
Editing a tag's properties by Right Click > Properties
- Type allows you to change what tag is used
- The Actual Text field can be used to correct poorly scanned text
- Alternate Text can be provided for figures and formulae.
Right Click > Copy Contents to Clipboard can be useful for identifying and correcting poorly scanned text

While it can get tedious for longer documents, the best way to check over the tags is simply to select the first one and use the arrow keys to go through each tag that's present and check that it is in the correct order and is properly representing the content. You may find that the document is structured with many section tags. These don't have any semantic purpose, so their presence is not problematic, but it if they make it difficult to traverse the tags, you can pull the content out and delete them.

Tagging paragraphs

Paragraphs often get split across columns or pages, resulting in a halting of the reading in the middle of the paragraph. Thus, these should be combined such that each visual paragraph is contained within a single paragraph tag. Sometimes, paragraphs contain other content such as inline math or footnote references that require their own tags. In these cases, break the text using the order panel so that it can sit around the inline content and include them all in order in one <P> tag (see below example).

In extreme situations, preserving visual paragraphs in tag form may require the repositioning of other elements in the reading order. In one PDF we remediated, there was a paragraph that spanned three pages because each page also contained a large graph. The graphs were adjusted to sit elsewhere in the tags panel, after the paragraphs in which they were referenced, and the paragraph was combined into a single tag.

Footnotes

Footnotes are a curious case, as their usual reading flow for a sighted user does not quite match the experience of a screen reader user or anyone else navigating the document by keyboard. There is no definite standard on where they should be placed in the reading order, whether at the end of the page or read after the paragraph in which they are referenced. The Digital Accessibility Remediation Team (DART) uses the latter positioning when remediating PDFs, as it lends itself to a more natural reading order.

The superscript that refers to the footnote should be tagged as <Reference>, and the footnote itself should be tagged as <Note>.

Correcting Inaccurate Text

For some documents, particularly scans, the text recognized by the OCR may not match the text in the document. In these instances, you can use the Actual Text field in the tag's properties to provide accurate text. This can also be used to correct other elements like hyphens that are inserted as a consequence of line wrapping. These hyphens should be tagged as a <span> element, and the Actual Text should contain a soft hyphen character (U+00AD) to denote it as a connective element rather than a textual element.

Article Citation

The following articles were used as examples. Modifications to the PDF structure were made for illustrative purposes.

Souleiman, Y. (2021). Convergences and numerical analysis of a contact problem with normal compliance and unilateral constraint. African Journal of Mathematics and Computer Science Research, 14(1), 13-23.

This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0

Resource type

documents

PDF Accessibility

careya2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 17:16:04 +0000

PDF Accessibility careya2 Mon, 04/21/2025 - 12:16

The PDF is a curious case for accessibility. On one hand, it has the potential to be a useful standard for both accessible reading and for printing. On the other, it is rarely utilized in an accessible manner and has many obscure issues and odd behaviors that can lead to problems.

As such, it is often much easier to make a Word document accessible than a PDF, so we encourage you to prioritize using Word documents, web pages, or Canvas pages over PDFs whenever appropriate. However, in a university context, readings such as articles and book chapters are often PDFs, so it's important to know how to convert an inaccessible PDF into an accessible one.

Utilize Course Reserves

When constructing your course, one resource that is invaluable for procuring accessible versions of readings is the Library's Course Reserves. Every PDF requested through this system is remediated by the Digital Accessibility Remediation Team (DART) to ensure that it complies with the relevant accessibility guidelines.

How PDF is Structured

Unlike Word, where the content and structure are one and the same, PDFs' content can be represented programmatically in a completely separate manner from the way it appears visually. A scanned book chapter may contain many pages of paragraphs, but may only be encoded as images in the PDF itself.

Accessibility in PDF revolves around matching the backend representation to the frontend content. To do this, PDF uses tags as semantic containers for its content, similar to how HTML is structured. These tags describe what kind of content they contain so that screen readers understand what is on the page. Their order also determines the order in which the contents are read by assistive technology or tabbed through if navigating with a keyboard. Thus, PDF remediation can be thought of as having two primary components, representation and reading order.

For proper representation, it's important to understand the main types of tags that are commonly found in PDFs. A selection of these are explained in the table below.

Tag(s)	Description
`<P>`	A paragraph tag, used for any body text
`<H1>`, `<H2>`, etc.	Headings of various levels, used to provide navigational structure to a document
`<Figure>`	An image, requires alternate text that describes its contents
`<Formula>`	Acts just like a figure, but conveys that it contains a formula.
`<Caption>`	Denotes text serving as a caption to a figure, table, etc.
`<Span>`	Inline text that differs from its surrounding text, has various uses
`<Part>`, `<Sect>`	Part and section tags are simply containers for organization of other tags
`<Note>`	Used to denote an endnote or footnote
`<Reference>`	A text citation that refers elsewhere in the document, like the superscripts referring to footnotes
`<Table>`, `<TR>`, `<TH>`, `<TD>`	Tags used for tables; see below
`<List>`, `<LI>`, `<Lbl>`, `<LBody>`	Tags used for lists; see Tables and Lists for more information

Remediation Process

Given PDF's complexity, there are likely a number of ways to approach making a document accessible, but over time we've found the following process to be the most thorough and straightforward.

Run the accessibility checker and, if needed, the Make Accessible tool.
Go through the document twice with the Order Panel.
- Initial tagging pass
- Reading order pass
Go through the Tags Panel to check for malformed structures and to combine tags if needed.
Add alternate text to images

Accessibility tools

Two important tools you'll need to use for checking PDF accessibility are the checker itself (part of the Accessibility tool) and the Make Accessible action in the Action Center tool. Both of these can be found under the Tools tab of Acrobat DC.

The accessibility checker will function much like those in Office, listing out common issues and highlighting them if they're clicked on. It also has a couple useful right click options, including Explain, which will pull up Adobe's help website to the description of the error, and Show in Tags Panel, which opens the Tags panel and selects the offending tag. When you run the checker, it will give you a dialog box of options. You can just leave the defaults applied and click Start Checking.

There will be two items that require a manual check in all documents. These are logical reading order, which is discussed on the Order Panel page, and color contrast. Color contrast will generally not be an issue given most readings are black and white, but in color documents, you may want to check that it is sufficient and edit the colors if needed with the Edit PDF tool.

Note: The Edit PDF tool should be used sparingly and early in the process, as it can cause issues with the PDF content potentially not being at parity with the tagged representation. It can also pose copyright issues if significant changes are made. Generally if these are made for the purpose of ensuring accessibility, this is acceptable, but changes that alter the primary content or for another purpose beyond accessibility may be copyright violations.

If the document you're using was prepared in a way that included tags, you may be able to move on to the Order Panel passes, but if you get an untagged PDF error (or if you run into significant issues with the existing tags) you'll need to run the Make Accessible action. This tool takes you through a series of dialog boxes to prepare the document for remediation.

A description dialog allows you to provide metadata about the document. The only necessary field is the Title, which will be read by a screen reader when the document is focused.
The Recognize Text box will appear. Ensure that the document language listed matches the document.
Acrobat will ask if you want to detect form fields. Unless your document is a fillable form, choose No, Skip this Step.
Ensure that the reading language listed matches the document as before.
If Acrobat recognizes any images in your document, it will allow you to enter alt text. It's common for the initial recognition to either catch additional elements that shouldn't be images or to ignore images that are present, so it is often better to just choose Save and Close, as you can return to this after you've checked over the structure.
It will run the accessibility checker as described above.

Note: Resolving all of the accessibility checker does NOT necessarily mean that your document is accessible. It only can check if certain prescribed structures are correct. It cannot check whether those structures are accurate depictions of the document's content. Thus, it is important to understand the remediation processes detailed on the following two pages.

Remediating the document

The use of the Order and Tags panels are significant topics by themselves, so they have their own pages dedicated to that information:

Using the Order Panel
Using the Tags Panel

Adding alternate text

There are two options for adding alt text to an image. The first is to right click any of the alt text errors in the accessibility checker and choose Fix, which will open a small dialog that allows you to jump between images and provide each of them alt text. The second is to right click the tag in the Tags Panel and open the properties menu. There, you will be able to add your alternate text in the respective field.

Remediation assistance

If you have any further questions about PDF, feel free to reach out to the Office of Digital Accessibility.

Resource type

documents

Alt Text

careya2 — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 16:29:54 +0000

Alt Text careya2 Mon, 04/21/2025 - 11:29

What is alt text?

Alternative text (alt text) is text that describes the content of an image that can be read by a screen reader. It's important to consider what elements of the image are important to include in context. A portrait photo of a historical figure may just need that figure's name as the alt text, while a piece of art may need its primary features denoted, and a diagram or graph may need its contents fully described.

What needs alt text?

All images that are used in an instructional or additive manner should be given alt text. Irrelevant images should be marked as decorative (or tagged as background/artifact in .pdf). While "decorative" is the main case in which an image should be ignored, other use cases may also necessitate an image being marked as decorative. An image may convey information, but it may be already stated elsewhere. If the image adds no additional perspective, that image should be marked as decorative. Another example may be an image that's repeated on every page. It may even have an informative role, but in that case the first occurrence should be given alt text, and the repeated instances should be decorative.

General alt text guidelines

Alt text should be as concise as possible while still fully describing the important parts of the image. Screen readers read it linearly, so unlike other text, the user cannot jump back to reread portions without reading the entire alt text again.
It should not include text like "image of", as that is already provided by the screen reader and would be redundant.
It should not include text that is in the caption or repeated elsewhere on the page.
It should not provide additional information that is not present in the image itself. For example, if you're alt texting a photo of the moon landing, you may describe the lander, the flag, and Buzz Aldrin, but you shouldn't include the date or that they launched on a Saturn V.
Include any text that's present in the image in your alt text, unless it's an unimportant background feature.

Strategies for image alt text in test questions

A faculty member asked about using alt text to describe some images in an online test. They had an underlying concern that the alt text they provided, in conjunction with the picture might unfairly assist students who did not need the alternative text. In the context of UIS, we suggested two ways we felt a student could view alt text. With slow internet speeds in some areas, a slow loading page might load the alt text before the image, or a student could inspect the page to view the alt text. We came up with two possible solutions to this issue.

Simplest option for the student: Create a second copy of the test with alt text added to the pictures, and hide the test. Provide a similar statement to the syllabus and make that test available for students who need the test. Currently, our institution uses Blackboard and this option would create some grade book issues when used.
A possibility: Add alt text to each image which might have a specific nomenclature such as q1image1, q1image2, q1image3…. Then create a word file that links the q1image1 to the alternative text. This file could be added to the online class and hidden. A statement in the syllabus could reflect that students who need alternative text can contact the instructor and the instructor can share that file with the students prior to the test.

Resources

Diagram Center Image Description Guidelines, a thorough collection of examples and best practices for different types of images.
NWEA Image Description Guidelines for Assessments (Box)
W3C alt text Decision Tree
W3C Non-text Content Criterion
Equatio is an equation editor with a variety of use cases that includes the ability to copy the spoken text of an equation, which you can use as alt text. As equations can occasionally get fairly complicated, be sure to check over the text for accuracy before using it. UIS has an institutional license for Equatio, so you can log in with your UIS account through Microsoft to access the full software after downloading. Download and access Equatio training resources.

Accessibility Guides

ppinn2 — Thu, 10 Apr 2025 19:58:24 +0000

Accessibility Guides ppinn2 Thu, 04/10/2025 - 14:58

Content creators, Instructors, Student Orgs, Students

Accessible Videos

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 require four pieces for a video to be considered accessible.

Content creators, Instructors, Student Orgs, Students

PDF Accessibility: The Tags Panel

The Tags Panel displays the primary structure of the document.

Content creators, Instructors, Student Orgs, Students

PDF Accessibility

The PDF is a curious case for accessibility.

Content creators, Instructors, Students

Alt Text

What is alt text? Alternative text (alt text) is text that describes the content of an image that can

Content creators, Instructors, Students

Microsoft Excel Checklist

Introduction Microsoft Excel includes features that can assist with creating more accessible spreadsheets.

Content creators, Instructors, Students

Microsoft Word Checklist

Microsoft Excel Checklist

jguls2 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 21:23:31 +0000

Microsoft Excel Checklist jguls2 Thu, 03/27/2025 - 16:23

Introduction

Microsoft Excel includes features that can assist with creating more accessible spreadsheets. This checklist provides guidance and resources to create accessible content in the Microsoft Excel desktop application.

Considerations

Use the Microsoft Accessibility Checker while you work.
Automated checkers identify most accessibility errors, but manual review is always recommended. For example, the MS Accessibility Checker may verify that alt-text is used, but does not verify that the text accurately describes the visual represented.
Office 365 is available for UIS faculty, staff, and students.

Provide Descriptive Text to Cell A1

Including a description about to how to navigate content in a worksheet will provide additional context for users.

How to Add Descriptive Text:

Select cell A1
Enter the descriptive text, providing information about the table such as locations of images, skipped spaces, and multiple tables.

Add a Table Header Name

The table header is located outside of the table. A table that is named and formatted correctly will provide understanding about the table.

How to Add a Table Header Name

Type a name for table in row located above the table.
Choose a style for table: Go to the Home tab, Styles pane, and then select a cell style.
Choose a built-in Header level 1 cell style.

Note: Cell style attributes can such as font type, color, indentation can be modified.

Modify a style: Select the cell style, and then select Modify.

Format the Data Table

Worksheets formatted as data tables provide structure of the cells within the table.

How to Format the Data Table

Select the cells in the table.
On the ribbon select the Insert tab and then select Table.
Verify the table range and check the box "My table has headers"
Select Ok.

Note: A table style will automatically be applied.

Choose a Table Style

A Table Style defines the boundary lines of the table and provides structure.

Select the table, on the ribbon select Table Design.
In Table Design, choose Table Style from the built-in options.

Note: A best practice is to use a table style that uses high contrasting colors.

Verify Table Style Options

Table style options include Header Row, First Column, Last Columns, Filter Button, Banded Rows, and Banded Columns. The Table Style options define the format and code from screen reader users.

Header Row: Check Header row if your table includes row headers.
Filter Button: Select the filter button to apply filter. Filters are a great way to provide easy navigation on content in a table.
Banded Rows and Columns: Select banded rows or columns to apply color to the row or columns in a table.

Name the Table

A table name is a unique identifier. The default table name is Table 1.

Type the name in the table name field.

Note: the name of the table has the following rules:

Start with a letter or underscore.
Does not contain spaces or characters that are not allowed.
Doesn’t conflict with an existing name in the workbook.

Rename Worksheets

The default name of a worksheet is Sheet 1. An accessible best practice is to rename the worksheet to add meaning to table(s) in the worksheet.

How to Rename a Worksheet

Select the sheet name "Sheet 1".
Right-click and select Rename.
Type a descriptive name for the worksheet.

Remove Blank Worksheets

Removing blank worksheets provides clarity for users.

How to Remove Blank Worksheets

Select the blank sheets.
Right-click the sheet and select Delete.

Add Metadata

Metadata includes data about the properties of the worksheet such as title and subject.

How to Add MetaData:

Select File and then select Info.
Select Properties and then select Advanced Properties.
Add information for the following fields: Title, Subject, and Keywords.
Select ok.

Define End of Worksheet

Define the end of the worksheet with the text “end of the worksheet” outside of the table. Including the phrase end of worksheet informs users that the table is complete.

Review with the Accessibility Checker

Improve accessibility by using the accessibility checker.

The accessibility checker categorizes content as errors, warnings, and tips.
Use the accessibility checker when creating, editing, and revising content.
Check all content manually to verify that the content is accessible.

Accessibility Review Checklist

Cell A1: Does cell A1 include descriptive text?
Table Header Name: Does the table include a heading level 1 name?
Table Styles: Does the table include a table style?
Rename Worksheets: Are the worksheets renamed?
Remove Blank Worksheets: Does the spreadsheet include any blank sheets?
Color Contrast: Are high contrast colors used in the table?
Alternative Text: Has alternative text been applied to charts, images, logos?
Define the end of a table: Is the end of the table defined?
Add Metadata: Has the title and author of the document been included?

How to Use the Accessibility Checker

Select, the Review tab and select Check Accessibility.
Next, the Accessibility Checker pane will open.
Review the errors and warnings that are provided and fix them accordingly.

Resource type

Spreadsheet