The three central principles of UDL are:

1. Provide multiple means of engagement
   • Give choice and promote autonomy.
   • Ensure that learning is relevant and contextualized.
   • Support communication and collaboration.
   • Encourage self-reliance, reflection and personal assessment.
2. Provide multiple means of representation
   • Use a variety of media to deliver content.
   • Offer options to change how content is displayed.
   • Be explicit with instructions and offer clarification.
   • Provide context to support new concepts.
3. Provide multiple means of action and expression
   • Employ multiple tools and media for communication.
   • Facilitate planning and goal setting for learning opportunities.
   • Organize course content and workload.

• Make content relevant.
• Select flexible curriculum.
• Provide cognitive supports
• Provide multiple ways to learn
• Deliver instructions clearly and in multiple ways.
• Use large visual and tactile aids.
• Make each teaching method accessible to all students

Headings and subheadings should to be identified as such using the built-in heading features of the authoring tool. Headings should form an outline of the page content (Heading 1 for the main heading, Heading 2 for the first level of sub-headings, Heading 3 for the next level of sub-headings, etc.). This enables screen reader users to understand how the page is organized, and to quickly navigate to content of interest. Most screen readers have features that enable users to jump quickly between headings with a single key-stroke.

Any content that is organized as a list should be created using the list controls that are provided in document authoring software. Most authoring tools provide one or more controls for adding unordered lists (with bullets) and ordered lists (with numbers). When lists are explicitly created as lists, this helps screen readers to understand how the content is organized. When screen reader users enter a list, their screen reader informs them that they’re on a list and may also inform them of how many items are in the list, which can be very helpful information when deciding whether to continue reading.

Links presented in an electronic document should convey clear and accurate information about the destination. Most authoring tools allow the creator to assign a hyperlink to text.

For documents that will be circulated as print material, use a URL shortening service to create a customized and meaningful link name.

Users who are unable to see images depend on content authors to supplement their images with alternate text, which is often abbreviated “alt text”. The purpose of alt text is to communicate the content of an image to people who can’t see it. When screen readers encounter an image with alt text, they typically announce the image then read the alt text. Most authoring tools provide a means of adding alternate text to images, usually in a dialog that appears when an image is added, or later within an image properties dialog. Also, images that require a more lengthy description, such as charts and graphs, may require additional steps beyond adding alt text.

View document guidelines

Tables in documents are useful for communicating relationships between data, especially when those relationships can be best expressed in a matrix of rows and columns. Tables should not be used to control layout.

If your data is best presented in a table, try to keep the table simple. It the table is complex, consider whether you could divide it into multiple smaller tables with a heading above each. A key to making data tables accessible to screen reader users is to clearly identify column and row headers.

Visit Microsoft website for more information about creating Accessible Tables.

Leading screen reader software is multilingual, and can read content in English, Spanish, French, and a wide variety of other languages. In order to ensure that screen readers will read a document using the appropriate language profile, the language of the document must be identified.

You should also identify the language of any content written in a language other than the document’s default language. With this information, supporting screen readers will switch between language profiles as needed on the fly.

In Office, select Tools > Language from the application menu to define the default language. To define a different language for part of the document, select each foreign language individually, then select Tools > Language to define the language for each.

Adobe Acrobat Pro

The PDFs I use in my course are not scanned images so they can be accessible by screen readers.

Using the Acrobat Pro DC Accessibility Checker

Creating accessible PDFs from Microsoft

WebAIM’s tutorial on PDF Accessibility makes for an excellent accompaniment to the current checklist.

Microsoft Office Documents

• When I create digital documents I use a Clear Sans Serif (Arial, Calibri, Verdana) font no smaller than 12pt.
• Before I upload my PowerPoint, Excel, or Word documents I run the Microsoft Accessibility Checker to ensure there are no accessibility errors.
• Images and graphics in the documents I upload to the LMS have alternative tags in place for screen readers.

Using the Microsoft Accessibility Checker