Accessibility is a mindset and an ongoing process of planning, designing, and adapting our teaching around the needs of our students. The resources below will help you design learning environments and experiences that better serve all students. By thinking about accessibility and inclusion in the design phase, we reduce the need to retrofit courses and remediate materials, which may reduce requests for specific accommodations.
Policies
Syllabus disability access statement
Include the Disability Resources for Students (DRS) syllabus statement to provide notice of access for your course(s) and ensure students are connected to the resources available to implement academic accommodations.
- Tri Campus DRS disability access syllabus statement
Teaching practices
Accessible and inclusive learning environments are essential for meeting the needs of students with disabilities and, ultimately, better serve all students. The UW Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) offers instructors a number of different resources to help faculty as they set about creating inclusive, accessible learning experiences.
- Accessible Teaching Strategies webpage – Provides teaching strategies for both general and specific classroom situations to help make teaching accessible to students with physical, psychological, or learning disabilities.
- Inclusive Teaching Strategies webpage – Provides a host of resources for creating meaningful and accessible learning for all students, including students with disabilities, first-generation students, veteran students, and other groups of students.
- Designing for Inclusive Learning page – Provides an overview of Universal Design for Learning principles, which instructors can use to design learning environments that are accessible to the greatest extent possible.
Tutorials and tools
Canvas model courses
The UW course examples below demonstrate a wide range of evidence-based, online teaching practices using UW-supported teaching and learning tools.
Courses, tips, strategies
- Teaching Online 101 – This UW CTL course includes guidance on enhancing the accessibility of your online and hybrid teaching.
- DO-IT Universal Design of Instruction – Find additional resources, tips, and examples of accessible instruction.
- Accessibility 101 self-paced online course – A course from UW Bothell, covering fundamental topics of accessibility.
Accessible technologies
- Ally – The Ally tool integrates seamlessly with the UW’s Canvas learning management system to automatically check course content and files uploaded by instructors for accessibility issues. Use this tool to support you in making your Canvas courses accessible.
- UW accessible document conversion service – Service that provides document remediation. Please note the limitations of this service for producing accessible documents for DRS accommodations.
- Accessible technology training opportunities
- Making digital content accessible