Five core accessibility considerations for doctoral courses
Good accessibility of digital materials is essential for some students but helpful for all. This page provides five principles on how to enhance accessibility in doctoral courses, with point 1 and 4 being legal requirements.
At the end of the page you will find these five principles described in a short video.
1. Use correct heading structure in Canvas and in documents
- Use the built-in heading structure (in Canvas or in your word processing programme (e g styles in Microsoft Word).
- Set your headings before you add details or style.
- Be succinct and descriptive.
This will enable screen readers (such as JAWS or NVDA) to read out the headings in a correct order, giving the correct structure to the content.
2. Write links that are concise, descriptive and meaningful
- Use specific and descriptive language (not “click here”)
- Use different name for each link on the page.
Example of how to link to a film: Accessibility Basics, links - University of Minnesota - Kaltura MediaSpace (umn.edu)
Example of how to link to a webpage where you can learn how to identify and avoid publishing in questionable journals.
3. Use lists
Lists enhance student understanding by organising information into clear, bite-sized points. This helps students quickly identify key concepts and makes complex material easier to digest. By reducing cognitive load and improving readability, lists ensure that students can focus on learning the content, not deciphering long paragraphs.
4. Add video and audio captions or text alternatives
Film and sound must be made available to everyone. This means that you must ensure that your film is accessible if it is published in KI’s digital channels, such as ki.se. Users who are unable to access video recordings must have the possibility to access the content with the help of an alternative representation, for example through subtitles and visual description.
The law: Lagen om tillgänglighet till digital offentlig service stipulates that all videos published publicly after 23 September 2020 must be captioned. This means that videos you create for your courses must be captioned.
5. Add alternative text to images
Alternative text, or "alt text," can be read by assistive technologies, which helps more of your audience access your content. We recommend that you make sure to add alt texts to your images on your Canvas pages.