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
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