Student Accessibility Resources & Digital Accessibility
How to make your student-facing academic and GVSU content accessible for students and aligned with WCAG 2.1.
Who Should Use This Page
- Faculty and staff who create or manage electronic course content.
- People who publish or approve information online, for GVSU student use.
- Anyone responsible for providing students with digital information.
Your Accessibility Responsibilities
Plan
Create and Update
Check
- How will you respond to student requests for digital access?
- How will you create accessible digital materials?
- How will you fix inaccessible material?
- How will you remove, replace, or archive inaccessible digital material?
- Create content with apps that have accessibility checkers (Microsoft 365, Acrobat Adobe Pro, Blackboard Ally, etc.)
- Use accessibility checkers to fix inaccessible documents.
- Work with your library liaison and your department to find accessible replacements of inaccessible content.
- Manually review material with the GVSU Digital Accessibility Checklist.
- Use available accessibility checkers
- Use the tab key to test if you can navigate your document without a mouse
- View your document on multiple devices, and multiple web browsers.
Checklist for Accessible Content
Quick Checklist
- Color Contrast: place dark text on light backgrounds and light text on dark backgrounds.
- Text: Text should be written and formatted in a way that is easy to read and understand.
- Headings: Use Headings properly and in a logical order that facilitates comprehension of the content.
- Images: Use images responsibly and provide text alternatives when required to convey meaning.
- Multimedia: Provide captions for videos and transcripts for audio files.
SAR Provides
- Consults with faculty to support creating, fixing, and finding accessible course content.
- Reviews of sample course documents for accessibility.
- Textbook assistance to students, helping them find and read accessible texts.
- Provides Assistive Technology Training for students.
Examples: How Some People with Disabilities Use Technology
![How Some People with Disabilities Use Technology [Open Captioned Video] [6:02 min]](data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAYAAAAfFcSJAAAADUlEQVR42mN8//bDfwAJbAPNtD8SNQAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==)
Questions for SAR?
If you have questions about creating accessible content for GV students or would like help creating accessible materials, let us know!
Page last modified January 8, 2026