How to Make Course Materials Accessible (Without Becoming an Expert)

You've been told your course materials need to be "accessible" and "WCAG compliant." Maybe there's a deadline. Maybe a student requested accommodations. Maybe IT sent an email about compliance requirements.

Here's the good news: You don't need to become an accessibility expert to do this well.

This guide covers what actually matters—the 80/20 of accessibility that will get your materials compliant without consuming your research time, your weekends, or your sanity.

First, a Breath: You're Not Starting from Zero

Most faculty materials are already partially accessible. You're not building from nothing—you're fixing gaps.

If you:

• Type your lecture notes (rather than handwriting them)
• Use headings in your Word documents
• Include text in your slides (not just images)

...you're already ahead of where many materials start.

The goal isn't perfection. It's making your content usable by students with disabilities—particularly those using screen readers, magnification, or other assistive technology.

What You're Actually Responsible For

Let's be clear about scope. As faculty, you're typically responsible for:

• Your slides (PowerPoint, Google Slides)
• Your handouts (PDFs, Word documents)
• Your course materials (syllabi, assignment sheets)
• Your videos (lecture recordings, if you create them)
• Your images (diagrams, photos, charts you add)

You're usually not responsible for:

• Textbook accessibility (publisher's job, though you can request accessible versions)
• LMS platform accessibility (IT's job)
• Third-party tools (Zoom, publisher platforms—they handle their own compliance)

The 80/20 of Accessibility: What Actually Matters

Here's where to focus your time. These four areas catch 80% of accessibility issues:

1. PDF Structure (The Biggest Problem)

The issue: Untagged PDFs are unreadable by screen readers. The software can't tell headings from paragraphs, or reading order from random text boxes.

What to check:

• Does your PDF have "tags"? (In Adobe Acrobat: File → Properties → Description tab → check "Tagged PDF: Yes")
• Were headings created using actual heading styles (not just bold text)?
• Is the reading order logical?

How to fix:

• Export from Word/PowerPoint using "Save as PDF" (preserves structure)
• Avoid scanning documents to PDF (creates images, not text)
• If you have scanned PDFs, they need OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

Time required: 2-5 minutes per document if you're starting from Word/PowerPoint. Hours if you're working with scanned documents.

2. Alternative Text for Images

The issue: Screen readers can't interpret images. They need text descriptions to convey the content.

What to check:

• Do your images have alt text?
• Does the alt text actually describe what's important about the image?

How to write good alt text:

• For photos: Describe what's relevant to your content. "Graph showing sales increasing 40% from 2020 to 2024" is better than "chart" or "Figure 3."
• For decorative images: Mark as decorative (empty alt text) so screen readers skip them.
• For complex diagrams: Provide a longer description nearby or link to one.

Example:

• ❌ Bad: "image.png"
• ❌ Okay: "Graph"
• ✅ Good: "Bar chart comparing 2024 GDP growth: China 5.2%, US 2.5%, EU 0.8%"

Time required: 30 seconds to 2 minutes per image, depending on complexity.

3. Slide Readability

The issue: Slides with poor contrast, missing titles, or wrong reading order confuse assistive technology.

What to check:

• Does every slide have a unique title?
• Is the color contrast sufficient? (4.5:1 ratio for text)
• Is the reading order logical? (Check: View → Outline View in PowerPoint)

Common problems:

• Text on busy backgrounds (hard to read for everyone)
• "Continued" as a slide title (not descriptive)
• Text boxes placed out of reading order

Time required: 5-10 minutes to review a typical lecture deck.

4. Math and Equations (The Hard One)

The issue: LaTeX-generated PDFs often have equations as images. Screen readers announce "image" instead of "x equals negative b plus or minus..."

What to check:

• Are equations converted to MathML (accessible format)?
• Do equations have ARIA labels for screen readers?
• Can the equations be selected and copied as text?

Why this is hard:

This is genuinely difficult. LaTeX is ubiquitous in STEM, but most LaTeX-to-PDF workflows don't produce accessible output. Microsoft Equation Editor exists but is restrictive and slow.

Realistic options:

1. Use MathJax for web content (automatically accessible)
2. Provide equation descriptions manually (time-consuming)
3. Use tools that convert LaTeX to accessible formats (like Aelira)

Time required: Hours to days for a math-heavy course if done manually.

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Why "Just Fix It Manually" Doesn't Scale

Let's do the math on manual remediation:

Typical course materials:

• 30 lecture slides × 15 slides each = 450 slides
• 10 handouts × 5 pages each = 50 pages
• 20 images needing alt text
• 15 equations (if STEM)

Time per item (experienced user):

• Slide review: 1 minute per slide = 450 minutes (7.5 hours)
• PDF tagging: 10 minutes per page = 500 minutes (8.3 hours)
• Alt text: 2 minutes per image = 40 minutes
• Equations: 10 minutes each = 150 minutes (2.5 hours)

Total: ~18 hours per course

Now multiply by the number of courses you teach. Then consider you're not being paid extra for this. Then consider the deadline.

Detection vs. Remediation: Understanding Your Options

Here's something that confuses many faculty: most accessibility tools only detect problems—they don't fix them.

Detection tools (YuJa Panorama, Blackboard Ally, Microsoft Accessibility Checker):

• Scan your documents
• Generate reports listing issues
• Tell you "23 images missing alt text"
• You still have to fix everything manually

Remediation tools (what you actually need):

• Scan your documents
• Generate fixes you can use
• Provide alt text suggestions, structural corrections, equation conversions
• You review and approve the fixes

Tool Type	What It Does	Time to Fix 100 Issues
Detection only	Lists problems	10-20 hours (manual work)
Remediation	Generates fixes	1-2 hours (review time)

This is why many faculty feel frustrated—their institution bought a scanning tool but it doesn't actually help them fix anything.

A Practical Workflow for Your Materials

Here's a realistic approach that balances thoroughness with your actual time constraints:

Step 1: Start with New Materials (15 minutes)

For new content you're creating:

1. Use heading styles in Word/PowerPoint (not manual formatting)
2. Add alt text as you insert images
3. Use built-in accessibility checkers before saving
4. Export to PDF properly (File → Save As → PDF, not Print → PDF)

Investment: A few extra minutes while creating content. Much faster than retrofitting.

Step 2: Triage Existing Materials (30 minutes)

Not everything needs immediate remediation. Prioritize:

High priority:

• Current semester syllabi and assignments
• Materials students access repeatedly
• Documents with many images or complex layouts

Medium priority:

• Archived course materials
• Supplementary readings
• Historical handouts

Low priority:

• Materials you're planning to replace
• Content rarely accessed

Step 3: Use Automated Tools Where Possible

For the high-priority items:

1. Run an accessibility checker (Microsoft has one built in)
2. Fix what's easy (missing titles, simple alt text)
3. Use AI tools for the rest (alt text generation, PDF tagging, equation conversion)

The goal is to reduce the 18 hours to something manageable—ideally under 2 hours per course.

Step 4: Document Your Efforts

Keep records of what you've remediated. This protects you if questions arise:

• Date materials were checked
• Tools used
• Any issues that couldn't be automatically resolved
• Plans for remaining items

What About LaTeX? (For STEM Faculty)

This deserves special attention because it's genuinely unsolved by most tools.

The problem:

• 95%+ of mathematicians, physicists, and chemists use LaTeX
• LaTeX produces beautiful PDFs but they're often inaccessible
• Microsoft Equation Editor is not a realistic alternative for complex notation
• Manual conversion to MathML is prohibitively time-consuming

Your options:

1. Keep using LaTeX + accept the limitation

- Provide human-readable equation descriptions where critical

- Offer one-on-one explanations for students who need them

- Document that you've tried but the technology isn't there

1. Use accessible LaTeX workflows

- Some LaTeX packages produce better PDF output (e.g., tagpdf)

- Requires learning new tools and changing your workflow

- Still experimental and not widely supported

1. Use conversion tools

- Tools exist that convert LaTeX to accessible formats

- Quality varies significantly

- Can reduce multi-day tasks to minutes

For STEM faculty, this is often the biggest blocker to compliance. You're not alone, and the honest truth is that the accessibility community is still working on good solutions.

Getting Help at Your Institution

You likely have more support available than you realize:

Disability Services Office

• Can clarify what accommodations students need
• May provide remediation support for individual requests
• Knows the legal requirements

Accessibility/IT Office

• May have institutional licenses for accessibility tools
• Can advise on best practices
• Often handles LMS-level accessibility

Instructional Design Team

• Can help you redesign problematic materials
• May have templates that are already accessible
• Good for one-on-one consultations

Your Department

• Other faculty may have solved similar problems
• Shared solutions reduce everyone's workload
• Department-level tool purchases may be possible

Tools That Actually Help (Including Aelira)

Let's be honest about options:

Free built-in tools:

• Microsoft Accessibility Checker (Word, PowerPoint) — good for basic issues
• Adobe Acrobat Accessibility Checker — useful but requires Acrobat Pro
• Google Docs/Slides accessibility features — limited but improving

Institutional tools you might have:

• Blackboard Ally — detection + some automated fixes, no LaTeX support
• YuJa Panorama — detection focus, limited remediation

Specialized tools:

• Aelira — generates actual fixes for PDFs, slides, LaTeX; review before publishing
• SensusAccess — document conversion service
• MathType — equation editor with some accessibility features

We built Aelira specifically because existing tools weren't solving the remediation problem. It's free for individual faculty, and it handles the hard cases (LaTeX, complex PDFs, bulk processing).

Try the demo — upload a document and see what fixes it generates. No signup required.

The Mindset Shift: Good Enough Is Good Enough

Here's something the compliance documents don't tell you: perfect accessibility is impossible.

• Some students need content one way; others need it differently
• Technology limitations exist (LaTeX, proprietary formats)
• Time and resources are finite

The legal standard isn't perfection—it's reasonable accommodation. You're expected to:

• Make good-faith efforts
• Use available tools and resources
• Respond to specific accommodation requests
• Document what you've done

If you've made your materials substantially accessible using reasonable methods, you've done your job.

Summary: Your Action Items

1. This week: Run the built-in accessibility checker on one document. Fix what it flags.

1. This month: Review your current semester materials. Focus on syllabi and frequently-used documents.

1. Going forward: Build accessibility into your workflow. Add alt text as you insert images. Use heading styles. It takes 10% more time upfront and saves 90% later.

1. For the hard stuff: Use tools that generate fixes, not just reports. Your time is valuable—don't spend it on work that can be automated.

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This guide is part of our effort to help faculty navigate accessibility requirements without the stress. Have questions? Contact us or try the free demo to see how Aelira handles your specific materials.