Accessibility

Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning & Leadership

Accessibility

Check out CETLL’s new guide, Make Your Course Content Accessible. This guide has specific instructions to support you to make different aspects of your content accessible.

In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued new ADA Title II regulations requiring public universities to ensure that actively used digital content is accessible. These regulations apply directly to course materials such as websites, documents, videos, media, and other web-based instructional resources housed in Brightspace and otherwise used in teaching.  These requirements take effect for New York State on April 27, 2026. 

At CETLL (Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Leadership), we recognize that accessibility is not simply a compliance requirement—it is part of a commitment to inclusive pedagogy. Ensuring that course content is accessible enhances student success, improves the usability of online materials, and supports learners with a wide variety of needs, regardless of disability or assistive technology use.  

Where to begin? 

According to Hunter College’s accessibility guidance, the most common barriers that prevent equal access include:

  • Missing or incorrect alternative text for images and figures 
  • Videos lacking captions or containing inaccurate auto‑captions
  • Insufficient color contrast between text and background
  • Scanned documents that have not been OCR‑converted to readable text
  • Untagged or auto‑tagged PDFs that screen readers cannot interpret properly  

We recommend you conduct a review of your syllabi, announcements, presentation slides, and required readings, videos, and other materials in your course to identify what revisions are needed. 

QC instructors can use the Ally Accessibility Tool to help assess and remediate accessibility issues in Brightspace. This tool provides: 

  • Accessibility gauges (green/yellow/red indicators) on individual course files
  • A Course Accessibility Report that gives an overall accessibility score
  • Specific, step‑by‑step guidance for fixing identified issues
  • Automatic alternative formats for students (e.g., audio, ePub, tagged PDFs)  

Make use of our new guide, Make Your Course Content Accessible. This guide has specific instructions to support you to make different aspects of your content accessible.