A Continuation: Reviewing Your Course Site for Accessibility

June 30, 2025 | 5 Minute Read

This guest post is by Celine Greene, Senior Digital Teaching and Learning Strategist at the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Looking at a course site through the lens of the student (the user experience) should be a part of any course review. In my last blog post, I introduced the initial steps for reviewing and refreshing a class’s digital accessibility, an integral part in considering a positive user experience. Let’s start with a recap of the complete list.

Step-by-step

Prepare yourself. Review POUR Questions for a Digitally Accessible Classroom [PDF] and the Quick Check for Digital Accessibility [PDF].
Use this document to track your progress: Course Site Review: Accessibility Checklist [.docx].
Review your Online Library.
Review the CoursePlus tools that allow you to format text, insert images, and upload files. Pay special attention to those often-forgotten images in Quiz Generator assessments.
Review your CoursePlus lecture and other course pages.
Fix, or remediate, your course site’s accessibility.

Here, we go on to expand the steps after reviewing the Online Library.

Step 4: Reviewing the CoursePlus Tools

The CoursePlus learning management system (LMS) has many tools that allow content editors to format text, insert media, and even upload files outside of the Online Library. Each of these tools should be considered in your accessibility review.

Tools Allowing Formatted Text and Media Insertion

Whenever you use a rich text editor inside CoursePlus (see the screen clipping, below), you have the option to format your text’s size, color, and emphasis; insert hyperlinks; create tables; and embed media. This means you need to check for accessibility both in the tool and for any resources that are accessed through a hyperlink. Give special attention to contrast ratios (between text and a page background), meaningful hyperlinks, properly formatted lists and tables, and appropriate alt text for images. Do not “fake” the alt text with random text characters; make it a succinct, contextual description. If you find an accessibility failure in anything made by a rich text editor, you’re advised to fix it as soon as you find it. It will save you long-term frustration as these items are sometimes not easy to recall or specifically track down when you return.

This screen clipping of a portion of the the CoursePlus rich text editor shows some of the formatting tool icons.

Tools Allowing File Uploads

While they may not readily come to mind, there are CoursePlus tools beyond the Online Library that allow faculty to upload and share a file with students. For each of these tools, you must separately check the accessibility of any files being used. Similar to the Online Library’s uploaded items, if something fails the Quick Check for Digital Accessibility, then replace it with an accessible alternative, remediate it immediately (replacing the original item with the fixed version), delete it, or hide it from students until you’re able to return to do the remediation. And if you are waiting to do the remediation, make sure to add it to your list for later!

List of Tools to Check

Syllabus and Faculty pages
Quiz Generator (start with your question bank)
Discussion Forum (which allows both faculty and students to upload files)
PathFinder
Drop Box (which, depending on the setup, allows faculty to upload files)
Wikis

Step 5: Reviewing Lecture and Other CoursePlus Pages

The lectures and standard pages on a course site, usually linked directly to the Content (Schedule Builder) page, can include customizable sections that use a rich text editor. These are frequent candidates for accessibility failures with formatted text and media. You should also check for accessibility both on the page and for any resources that are accessed through a section’s hyperlinks. As described in the previous section for other CoursePlus tools, make sure to give special consideration to contrast ratios, hyperlinks, lists, tables, and alt text. If you find an accessibility failure in anything made by a rich text editor, you must fix it. If you decide to wait to remediate, make sure to add it to your list.

Step 6: Fixing the Identified Issues and Keeping New Ones Away

Once you’ve completed reviewing your course site for accessibility, you’re still not done. Next comes the task of remediating any remaining errors and, moving forward, avoiding any new barriers to accessibility.

Return to your list of identified issues! Some things are straightforward; for example, creating true structured, ordered lists in a rich text editor instead of just lines that each start with a number. Other things, such as remediating a PDF, can be daunting, so you may just find yourself creating a new resource instead of trying to fix the old one.

If you’re not sure how to create an accessible resource, please start with this page. Do your best to continue incorporating accessibility in all your documents and online interactions.

A Better Experience for Everyone

Digital accessibility is not just required on our course sites; it’s a very important component to students’ engagement and perseverance. However, there is more you can do beyond inspecting and fixing accessibility issues to eliminate unintentional barriers in your online classroom.

After you’ve reviewed the course site for accessibility, take time to consider what else goes into minimizing barriers in effective course site design. Examine your course site for clear and consistent navigation; meaningful organization; and readability. Consider Best Practices in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Best Practices in Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusions (JEDI). Review the Tips for Limiting Extraneous Cognitive Load in Online Classes [PDF] as one more step in creating and maintaining a place that invites all students to learn and gives everyone an equal opportunity for success.