Should You Delete Your Course Materials? A Better Alternative to the Nuclear Option

"Many faculty members are considering removing all slide presentations and images from their Canvas courses rather than jump through hoops."

This quote from a faculty member on Reddit isn't an isolated sentiment. Across universities, professors are facing an impossible choice:

1. Spend hundreds of hours remediating decades of course materials
2. Delete everything and start from scratch
3. Risk non-compliance and hope nobody notices

If you're considering option 2—the nuclear option—this article is for you.

Why Faculty Are Considering Deletion

Let's validate the frustration first. The accessibility compliance situation is genuinely difficult:

The Workload Is Overwhelming

Typical department content:

• 500-2,000 PDFs (lecture notes, syllabi, readings)
• 200-500 PowerPoint presentations
• 100-300 hours of video
• Thousands of images across all materials

Manual remediation time:

• PDFs: 30-60 minutes each
• PowerPoints: 15-30 minutes each
• Videos: 20-40 minutes per hour of content (caption editing)
• Images: 2-5 minutes each for alt text

Total estimate for one faculty member: 200-500 hours

That's 5-12 weeks of full-time work—on top of teaching, research, and service obligations.

There's No Compensation

From Reddit:

"There is no additional compensation for meeting the new guidelines. The administration expects faculty to remediate all materials as part of their normal duties."

Universities are mandating compliance without providing:

• Course releases
• Summer funding
• Graduate assistant support
• Meaningful tool budgets

Faculty are being asked to do hundreds of hours of uncompensated labor.

The Tools Don't Actually Fix Anything

"YuJa Panorama is varying levels of suck that won't actually fix the problem."

Most accessibility tools only identify issues. They don't remediate them. You get a report saying "This PDF has 47 accessibility errors" with no actual solutions.

That's like a doctor saying "You have 47 health problems" and walking out of the room.

Publisher Materials Are Someone Else's Problem

"There was a 20-chapter textbook and each chapter had its own publisher-provided PowerPoints that were NOT accessible and I refused."

Faculty didn't create these materials. Publishers did. But faculty are responsible for making them accessible—even though they can't modify the source files.

Why Deletion Feels Logical

Given all this, deletion makes a certain kind of sense:

Argument for deletion:

• Zero content = zero accessibility violations
• Fresh start with accessible-by-design materials
• No more legacy headaches
• Forces publishers to provide accessible alternatives

The appeal: If you can't fix the problem, eliminate it.

Why Deletion Is Actually a Terrible Idea

Here's why the nuclear option will backfire:

1. Students Suffer Immediately

Your course materials exist for a reason. They represent years of pedagogical refinement:

• Diagrams that explain complex concepts better than words
• Slides students rely on for exam prep
• Supplementary readings that deepen understanding
• Video explanations for difficult topics

Deleting them doesn't just affect students with disabilities. It hurts everyone.

2. You'll Recreate the Same Problem

Unless you've fundamentally changed how you create content, your new materials will have the same issues:

• Images without alt text
• PDFs without structure tags
• Videos without captions
• Low-contrast slides

You'll be back where you started—but with worse materials.

3. Compliance Doesn't Mean "No Content"

WCAG compliance doesn't require:

• Removing all images
• Eliminating videos
• Stripping visual design

It requires making those elements accessible. An image with good alt text is accessible. A video with accurate captions is accessible.

Deletion is over-compliance to the point of absurdity.

4. You Lose Years of Institutional Knowledge

Those PDFs and slides represent accumulated expertise:

• Edge cases students struggle with
• Explanations refined over semesters
• Examples that actually resonate
• Diagrams that took hours to create

Deleting them is like burning a library because some books have torn covers.

5. It Doesn't Solve the Legal Problem

If a student with a disability needs accessible materials, deleting content doesn't help. You'll need to provide something—and creating new accessible materials under time pressure is worse than remediating existing ones.

The Better Alternative: Triage and Automate

Instead of deletion, use a strategic approach:

Step 1: Triage by Impact

Not all content is equally important. Prioritize:

Priority 1 (Fix First):

• Current semester materials
• High-enrollment courses
• Content students actively use (exam prep, required readings)

Priority 2 (Fix This Year):

• Next semester's courses
• Materials you update regularly
• Core course content

Priority 3 (Fix or Archive):

• Courses you haven't taught in 2+ years
• Supplementary "nice to have" content
• Materials you plan to replace anyway

Priority 4 (Consider Deletion):

• Truly obsolete content (outdated information)
• Duplicate files
• Content you've already replaced

Step 2: Automate What You Can

What automation can handle (80% of issues):

• PDF OCR and structure tagging
• Alt text generation for common image types
• Caption cleanup and timing fixes
• Contrast adjustments in PowerPoints
• Reading order corrections

What requires human judgment (20% of issues):

• Complex diagram descriptions
• Discipline-specific terminology in captions
• Pedagogical decisions about content importance
• Publisher content negotiations

Aelira's approach:

• Scan entire directories in minutes
• AI generates fixes for automatable issues
• Humans review and approve
• Export compliant versions

Result: 200 hours of work becomes 20 hours of review.

Step 3: Fix As You Go

For Priority 2-3 content, adopt a "fix when touched" policy:

• Updating slides for spring? Add alt text while you're in there.
• Recording new lecture? Add proper captions.
• Revising a reading list? Check PDFs for accessibility.

This spreads remediation across time instead of requiring a massive one-time effort.

Step 4: Push Back on Publishers

For publisher content you can't modify:

1. Request accessible versions (many publishers have them for US/ADA compliance)
2. Document the request (shows good faith if audited)
3. Find open alternatives (OER, open textbooks)
4. Report to your disability services office (they can escalate)

You're not responsible for making third-party content accessible. But you are responsible for requesting accessible versions and documenting that effort.

What Your Administration Should Provide

If your university is mandating compliance without support, advocate for:

1. Centralized Tools

Department-wide or institution-wide licenses for remediation tools (like Aelira) are far cheaper than expecting each faculty member to handle it alone.

Math: 50 faculty × $200/year each = $10,000 for individual tools

vs. $999/month × 12 = $11,988 for department-wide unlimited access

The centralized option is barely more expensive and infinitely more efficient.

2. Student Worker Support

Train work-study students to:

• Run accessibility scans
• Add basic alt text
• Edit auto-captions
• Organize files for batch processing

Faculty review the output; students do the mechanical work.

3. Faculty Development Workshops

Not punishment for non-compliance—actual skill-building:

• How to create accessible content from the start
• How to use remediation tools efficiently
• Templates and checklists that save time

4. Realistic Timelines

Remediating 10 years of content in 3 months isn't realistic. A 2-year rolling remediation plan is.

The Mindset Shift

The accessibility "crisis" is really a process problem, not a content problem.

Old approach: Create content → Discover it's inaccessible → Panic → Consider deletion

New approach: Create content → Run automated scan → Apply automated fixes → Quick human review → Publish

With the right tools and processes, accessibility becomes a 10-minute step in your workflow, not a 200-hour nightmare.

Don't Delete. Triage.

Your course materials have value. Years of refinement, student feedback, pedagogical expertise—that doesn't deserve the recycle bin.

Instead of deleting:

1. Prioritize what matters most
2. Automate what can be automated
3. Review what needs human judgment
4. Fix as you go for lower-priority content
5. Push back on publishers and administration

The goal isn't perfect compliance on day one. It's a sustainable process that gets you there without burning out or burning everything down.

See how Aelira automates 80% of remediation work or join the pilot program for hands-on support with your department's content.