Accessibility Focused Review

The University of New Mexico is committed to making education accessible for all learners. To that end, the Center for Teaching and Learning is offering Accessibility Focused Reviews to help instructors identify and remediate inaccessible course materials and learn to create/curate accessible materials moving forward.

Why do I need a review if students can simply go to ARC?

While individual students can connect with ARC to seek specific accommodations, designing courses with accessibility in mind can speed up students’ access to materials and provide benefits to all students in the course. For example, accurate captioning benefits blind and low-vision students as well as multi-lingual students. Creating accessible course materials will also continue to be a benefit in your course semester after semester, while one-off adapted materials may reside with the student.

In alignment with the Accessibility Resource Center and our values, CTL’s approach to accessibility is grounded in equity and social justice. However, there is also legal justification for creating and maintaining accessible online courses.

What’s the process?

We’ll work with you using the checklist below to evaluate your course design and materials. After the review is complete, we’ll provide you with feedback as well as a remediation plan that outlines tasks that CTL will complete for you and tasks for which you will be responsible. The timeline for completion of these tasks will be estimated at this time, and we can work with you to align deadlines based on our shared resources. Once all tasks are completed, you will be assigned a certificate of completion in Learning Central. The certificate can be included in promotion or teaching dossier materials as an example of your skills in and commitment to accessible course design.

If you’re ready to get started, use the button below to request a review of your course.

 

Accessibility Focused Course Review Request Form

The Checklist 

  1. All images, graphics, tables, etc. have descriptions (alt text).
  2. All videos have accurate captions.
  3. All audio-only content has a full transcript.
  4. Tables are properly formatted, so that they can be read easily by a screen reader.
  5. Headings are used to organize content and make it easy to navigate.
  6. Contrasting colors and simple backgrounds are used in all materials. Text and graphics are meaningful when viewed without color.
  7. Descriptive hyperlinks are used instead of the URL alone or a hyperlinked “click here.”
  8. Links are provided to all applets, scripts and plugins needed to launch various technologies.
  9. All documents and presentations (example: Word, Excel, PowerPoints and PDFs) have been tested with an accessibility checker and corrections have been made.
  10. The accessibility of all external content and materials has been confirmed. The accessibility statements for any third-party tools have been reviewed and are present in the course

Download a MS Word version of the checklist