How to Make Course Materials Accessible (Without Becoming an Expert)
A practical starting point for faculty: use structured source files, check saved exports, review generated changes and work with your institution’s accessibility team.
Making course materials accessible is easier when it is part of how you create them. You do not need to solve every technical problem alone: use your institution's accessibility, disability services and instructional-design teams to agree the scope and get help with difficult material.
This guide is a starting point, not a complete conformance checklist. A short list of improvements or a percentage of fixed issues cannot establish that the applicable requirements have been met.
Start with the source document
Use semantic heading styles, meaningful link text and structured lists rather than visual formatting alone. Give tables an appropriate header structure and avoid using tables purely for layout where a simpler approach works.
Use the application's accessibility checker, then inspect the saved export. A source document with good structure can lose important information during conversion. An untagged PDF may expose some text while failing to communicate the intended semantics or reading order; selectable text alone is not proof of accessibility.
For scanned material, OCR is one step. Check recognition accuracy and the document's resulting structure rather than treating searchable text as a complete fix.
Describe images for their teaching purpose
Identify the information the student needs from the actual image. Simple images may need a brief description; complex charts and diagrams may need a longer explanation or a structured data alternative.
Check generated descriptions against the source and your lesson. Do not add plausible numbers, trends or process names that the image does not establish. Mark genuinely decorative images appropriately so they do not create unnecessary reading.
Check slides and mathematics
Review slide titles, reading order, text contrast and meaningful content hidden behind images or layout choices. Use the application's accessibility-specific controls rather than assuming its visual outline represents the assistive-technology reading sequence.
For mathematics, preserve the source and evaluate the actual exported representation. MathML, accessible web rendering and tagged PDF workflows are possible approaches, depending on the tools and target environment. Test meaningful expressions with the assistive technologies the institution needs to support. Choosing a renderer does not automatically establish accessible output.
Plan the backlog with support
Inventory current teaching material, frequently reused files and individual access requests. Ask the responsible team how obligations apply to archived and third-party content; material is not automatically exempt because it is old or provided by a publisher.
Use a representative sample to estimate work. Include review, correction and manual remediation in the staff-time estimate. Avoid treating an illustrative cost model as a measured saving or a promise that every course can be finished in two hours.
Use automation within its boundaries
Aelira Core is beta. Supported workflows can apply eligible partial fixes and produce review artifacts. Some inputs need manual work or cannot produce a downloadable remediated file. Review recorded outcomes and the actual saved output before accepting a change.
When comparing tools, ask vendors to demonstrate the formats and operations you need on authorized representative material. Confirm product version, licence entitlements, review requirements, failure cases and staff time. Broad claims about what every competitor can or cannot do are a poor substitute for that evaluation.
Record unresolved work
Retain the source, saved candidate, processor version, checks and reviewer decisions. Assign remaining barriers to an owner and work with disability services on appropriate interim access where needed.
Applicable duties depend on the institution, content and jurisdiction. Good-faith effort and documentation support the process; they do not replace a technical requirement or establish a universal “substantially accessible” legal threshold.
Aelira Team
•Accessibility EngineersThe Aelira team is building beta accessibility tools for higher education. Institutions can evaluate selected checks and partial fixes on their own files, with human review required before publication.
Related Articles
How to Create Accessible Data Tables in Google Sheets
Organize Google Sheets data with clear headers, simple ranges and meaningful labels. Test the actual spreadsheet and exported versions rather than assuming frozen headers provide semantics.
How to Write Accessible Alt Text for Academic Images
Describe the information and teaching purpose of academic figures. Use longer descriptions or evaluated mathematical alternatives where a short description is insufficient.
Making Google Slides Accessible: A Step-by-Step Faculty Guide
Use meaningful slide structure and alternatives in Google Slides, then test reading order, media, sharing and exported files in the actual student environment.