How Do I Make Course Materials Accessible in Australia?

To make course materials accessible in Australia, you must ensure all learning content — lecture slides, PDFs, videos, assessments, and LMS pages — meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at a minimum Level AA standard, as required under the Disability Standards for Education 2005 (DSE 2005) and the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA). This is not optional. Australian universities have a legal obligation to provide equitable access to education for students with disability, and course materials are a core part of that obligation.

This guide walks through what the law requires, what counts as course materials, and practical steps you can take right now to improve accessibility across your teaching.

What the Law Requires

The DSE 2005, made under the DDA, set out legally binding standards for education providers across Australia. Part 5 specifically addresses curriculum development, accreditation, and delivery — which includes all materials you provide to students as part of their learning.

Under the Standards, universities must make "reasonable adjustments" so that students with disability can participate in education on the same basis as other students. In practice, this means your course materials need to be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust — the four principles underpinning WCAG 2.1.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has made clear that digital content falls within scope. If a student cannot access your lecture slides because they are image-only PDFs with no text layer, or your videos lack captions, your institution is exposed to a complaint under the DDA. Several Australian universities have already faced formal complaints related to inaccessible course content.

For a broader look at how these requirements apply across your institution, see our guide on Australian university accessibility requirements.

What Counts as Course Materials

Course materials include everything a student needs to engage with your unit of study. This is broader than many academics realise:

• Lecture slides (PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote)
• Readings and handouts (PDFs, Word documents, scanned articles)
• Recorded lectures and videos (hosted or embedded)
• Tutorial worksheets and problem sets
• Assessment tasks, rubrics, and marking guides
• LMS pages and announcements (Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle)
• External links and third-party resources you direct students to
• Excel spreadsheets and data files used in teaching

If a student is expected to use it, it needs to be accessible.

Practical Steps for Faculty

1. Start With Your Documents

PDFs are the single most common accessibility barrier in Australian higher education. Scanned documents without OCR, slides exported without structure, and legacy readings uploaded years ago are frequent offenders.

For every document you share, check the basics:

• Use real headings in your authoring tool (Heading 1, Heading 2) rather than bold text styled to look like headings.
• Add alt text to all images, charts, and diagrams that convey information. Decorative images should be marked as such.
• Ensure reading order is logical. Screen readers follow the document structure, not the visual layout.
• Use sufficient colour contrast — a minimum ratio of 4.5:1 for body text.
• Never rely on colour alone to convey meaning (e.g., "the items in red are required").

For detailed guidance on fixing PDFs specifically, see how to make a PDF accessible. If you are looking for a faster workflow across document types, our guide on the easiest way to create accessible documents covers practical approaches.

2. Add Captions and Transcripts to Video

Under the DSE 2005, video content used in teaching must have captions. This applies to recorded lectures, embedded YouTube videos, and any media you produce or curate.

• Auto-generated captions (e.g., from Zoom or YouTube) are a starting point but are not sufficient on their own. They must be reviewed and corrected, particularly for discipline-specific terminology.
• Provide transcripts for audio-only content such as podcasts or recorded interviews.
• Describe visual content that is essential to understanding. If you say "as you can see on this diagram" in a lecture, a student who cannot see the diagram is excluded.

Most Australian universities have media teams or captioning services. Check with your learning and teaching unit for institutional support.

3. Make Your LMS Pages Accessible

Your LMS — whether Canvas, Blackboard, or Moodle — is where students interact with your materials daily. The pages you build there need the same attention as any other document.

• Use the built-in heading and list tools in the LMS editor rather than manually formatting text.
• Add alt text to images uploaded to LMS pages.
• Write meaningful link text. Avoid "click here" — instead, write "download the Week 3 tutorial worksheet."
• Use tables for data only, not for layout. Ensure tables have header rows defined.
• Check the built-in accessibility checker if your LMS offers one. Canvas has Ally, Blackboard has a similar tool, and Moodle supports accessibility plugins.

4. Design Assessments for Access

Accessible assessment is about flexibility and clarity, not lowering standards.

• Provide assessment tasks in accessible digital formats, not just as scanned PDFs.
• Allow sufficient time and consider flexible submission formats where appropriate.
• Write clear, unambiguous instructions. Students using assistive technology cannot rely on visual cues or implied context.
• Ensure online quizzes and exams are compatible with screen readers. Test with keyboard-only navigation before publishing.
• Offer alternative formats proactively rather than waiting for individual accommodation requests. This reduces the burden on students and disability services alike.

Where to Get Institutional Support

You do not have to do this alone. Australian universities typically have several teams that can help:

• Disability services / equity and diversity units — can advise on reasonable adjustments and common barriers
• Learning designers / educational technologists — can help you redesign materials and LMS pages
• Library and copyright teams — can assist with sourcing accessible versions of readings
• IT accessibility teams — can advise on procurement and platform compliance
• Media and captioning services — can produce or correct captions for video content

If your institution lacks dedicated accessibility support, start with your Associate Dean (Education) or equivalent. Accessibility is an institutional obligation, not an individual one, and resourcing conversations matter.

Moving Forward

Making course materials accessible is not a one-time project — it is an ongoing part of good teaching practice. The most effective approach is to build accessibility into your workflow from the start rather than retrofitting materials at the end of semester.

Start with your most-used materials: the unit outline, Week 1 slides, and your first assessment task. Fix those, learn the patterns, and apply them going forward. Each semester, bring older materials up to standard as you revise them.

For teams managing large volumes of documents, Aelira's document accessibility platform can scan and remediate PDFs, slides, and other formats automatically — helping Australian universities meet DSE 2005 requirements without placing the entire burden on individual academics. If you are looking for a way to scale accessibility across a department or faculty, it is worth exploring.