Document type

Making course materials accessible

Handbooks, reading lists, exported lecture slides, syllabi and exam timetables: why course PDFs fail accessibility, the rules that reach them, and the fixes.

Course materials come from many hands and many tools. A module handbook is written in a word processor by one academic, the slides are exported from presentation software by another, the reading list is copied out of a library system, and the exam timetable is a spreadsheet saved as PDF by a registry office. Each export decides what survives: headings typed as bold text become plain text, a slide that had alternative text and a set reading order can lose both, and a spreadsheet grid becomes positioned numbers. In the EU, the Web Accessibility Directive (EU) 2016/2102 covers the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies. Office files on those sites are excluded only if published before 23 September 2018 and not needed for active administrative processes, and content of extranets and intranets (sites open only to a closed group of people) is excluded only if published before 23 September 2019, until the site undergoes a substantial revision. Member states may exclude the sites of schools, kindergartens and nurseries, apart from content relating to essential online administrative functions. In the UK, the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 carry the same two exclusions and take that option for schools and nurseries. UK government guidance says most higher and further education providers are considered in scope of those Regulations because of their dependence on government funding, and advises providers unsure of their position to seek legal advice. Under the Equality Act 2010, schools and further and higher education institutions owe a duty to make reasonable adjustments, and section 20(6) says the steps can include making sure information is provided in an accessible format. Normfluss checks each PDF against PDF/UA-1 and the WCAG AA success criteria that apply to PDF, remediates it, and issues a signed evidence record stating which checks ran and what they found, with documents processed in the EU. The record documents conformance within a stated scope; whether an institution meets its legal duties is for the institution and its advisors to decide.

Where course materials typically fail accessibility

• Lecture slides exported to PDF lose their structure: each slide title stops being a heading, text boxes placed by hand are read in the order they were drawn, and images that had alternative text in the presentation arrive without it.
• Handbooks and syllabi use bold or enlarged text in place of real headings, so a student cannot move between assessment details, deadlines and contacts, and a long document has no bookmarks to navigate by.
• Exam timetables and teaching schedules are spreadsheets saved as PDF, with merged cells and no header cells, so a room or a time is announced without the module or date it belongs to; where colour marks a change or a venue, that meaning is lost entirely (WCAG 1.4.1).
• Reading lists copied from a catalogue or a reference manager carry web addresses as plain text or untagged links, and citations lose the list structure that tells one entry from the next.
• Scanned book chapters and articles made available for a module are photographs of pages with no text layer, often skewed or with notes in the margin, so there is nothing for a screen reader to read.
• Equations, graphs, diagrams and chemical structures are inserted as pictures with no text alternative, which leaves the substance of a science or mathematics handout unreadable to a student who cannot see it.
• Material for language courses mixes two or more languages on a page with only the default language set, so quotations and vocabulary are pronounced with the wrong rules (WCAG 3.1.2).
• Coursework cover sheets and extenuating circumstances forms are fillable PDFs whose fields have no labels, so a student hears 'edit text' with no clue what to type.

Remediation checklist

• Build accessibility into the source files and the export settings used by each department, since fixing a template or an export route fixes every handbook or slide set produced from it.
• Apply a real heading structure and bookmarks to handbooks and syllabi, and set the document title so a student with several files open can tell them apart (WCAG 2.4.2).
• Tag timetables as tables with row and column header cells, and state in text any meaning carried by colour.
• Tag reading lists as lists, and make every web address a working link with text that says where it goes.
• OCR scanned readings, check the recognised text against the page, then tag the headings and paragraphs so the chapter can be read in order.
• Write a text alternative for each diagram, graph and equation that states what a student needs to learn from it, and mark decorative slide backgrounds as artefacts.
• Set the primary language, and mark passages in other languages so each is read with the right pronunciation.
• Label every form field, then check the file against PDF/UA-1 and the WCAG AA success criteria that apply to PDF and keep the signed record, which gives the documents section of an accessibility statement something specific to rest on.