How to Make Online Course Materials Accessible: A 2026 Checklist

A student emails you the night before an exam. Their screen reader reads your lecture slides as “image, image, image,” and the video you posted has no captions. They are not asking for a favor. They are asking for the same course everyone else is taking.

Most accessibility problems in online courses come from a short list of habits: scanned PDFs, videos without captions, text styled to look like headings, and links that say “click here.” Fix those and you solve the large majority of complaints before they happen.

This checklist walks through each type of course material, explains what the updated ADA web rule for public schools and colleges requires and when, and gives you an order of work that fits a busy semester.

What the ADA Title II web rule means for course content

In April 2024, the US Department of Justice published a rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. It requires state and local government entities, which include public K-12 districts, community colleges and public universities, to make their web content and mobile apps meet WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

The original deadlines were April 2026 for larger entities and April 2027 for smaller ones. On April 20, 2026, the DOJ published an interim final rule pushing both back by 1 year:

The DOJ has said it plans further review, so check ADA.gov before you set internal dates. The technical standard itself did not change.

2 points matter most for instructors:

• There is no general exception for course content inside a learning management system. The rule lists 5 exceptions: archived content, preexisting documents, certain third-party content, individualized password-protected documents and preexisting social media posts. A syllabus or lecture video in Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle or Brightspace is not on that list.
• The “preexisting documents” exception is narrow. PDFs and slide decks posted before the compliance date are generally exempt only if nobody still uses them to take part in a service. A reading that students need this term does not qualify.

Private colleges are not covered by Title II, but they generally have obligations under Title III of the ADA and, if they take federal funds, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Many already use WCAG 2.1 AA as their internal target.

This is not legal advice. Your institution’s accessibility or disability services office can tell you which rules apply to your courses.

Key takeaway: Even with the extended deadlines, the clock is running. Anything you create from now on should meet WCAG 2.1 AA, so you are only remediating old material, not adding to the pile.

Checklist: video and audio

Video is where most courses fall short, and it is also where you can make fast progress.

• Caption every prerecorded video (WCAG 1.2.2). Auto-captions from YouTube, Zoom, Panopto, Kaltura or Microsoft Stream are a starting point, not a finished product. Edit names, technical terms and numbers.
• Provide a transcript for audio-only content such as podcasts and recorded interviews (WCAG 1.2.1).
• Describe what matters visually (WCAG 1.2.5). If you say “as you can see here” and point at a graph, a blind student misses the point. The easiest fix is to narrate as you go: “Revenue doubles between 2020 and 2022.”
• Caption live sessions (WCAG 1.2.4). Most video meeting tools now offer live captions. For a student with an approved accommodation, your disability office may arrange human captioning (CART).
• Avoid flashing content more than 3 times per second.
• Use a player that works with a keyboard. Students should be able to play, pause and turn captions on without a mouse.

Checklist: pages, documents and headings

Structure is what lets a screen reader user skim your page the way a sighted student skims with their eyes.

• Use real headings. In your LMS editor, Word or Google Docs, apply Heading 1, Heading 2 and so on from the styles menu. Bold, larger text is not a heading to assistive technology (WCAG 1.3.1 and 2.4.6).
• Keep heading levels in order. One main title, then H2 sections, then H3 subsections. Do not skip levels for visual effect.
• Use built-in list tools for bullets and numbered steps instead of typing dashes.
• Write descriptive links. “Week 3 reading: Smith, Chapter 4 (PDF)” works. “Click here” does not (WCAG 2.4.4).
• Set the document language so screen readers pronounce text correctly (WCAG 3.1.1).
• Give tables header rows and use them for data only, not page layout.
• Do not rely on color alone. “Required items are in red” fails for colorblind students. Add a word or symbol too.
• Check contrast. Normal text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, and large text at least 3:1 (WCAG 1.4.3). Light gray on white often fails.
• Let text resize. Content should still work when zoomed to 200% (WCAG 1.4.4) and reflow on a phone without sideways scrolling (WCAG 1.4.10).

For a deeper technical list aimed at web developers, see our WCAG 2.2 web accessibility checklist.

Checklist: images, charts and alt text

• Write alt text for every meaningful image (WCAG 1.1.1). Describe the purpose, not just the pixels. “Bar chart showing enrollment rising from 200 to 450 students between 2019 and 2024” beats “chart.”
• Mark decorative images as decorative so screen readers skip them. Most LMS editors and Office apps have a checkbox for this.
• Put the data behind complex charts in a table or a short paragraph next to the image.
• Avoid images of text. A screenshot of a paragraph cannot be resized, searched or read aloud reliably. Paste the text instead.
• Describe math properly. Use your LMS equation editor or MathML-capable tools rather than pasting equation images.

Checklist: PDFs and slide decks

PDFs cause more accessibility complaints than any other file type, mostly because many are scans.

• Never post a scanned page as-is. A scan is a picture of text. Run OCR at minimum, or better, find a digital original from the publisher or library.
• Fix problems in the source file first. Adobe’s own guidance is to make most fixes in the original Word, PowerPoint or InDesign document, then export.
• Export as a tagged PDF. Tags tell assistive technology what is a heading, list, table or image. Word and PowerPoint create tags when you use their built-in styles and the correct export option.
• Run a checker. Acrobat Pro’s Accessibility Check tests PDFs against WCAG and PDF/UA criteria. Microsoft Office and Google Workspace have built-in checkers for documents and slides. Treat every checker as a first pass, because none catches everything.
• Check reading order in slides. Use layouts with built-in title placeholders and give every slide a unique title.
• Offer an HTML version when you can. A page built in your LMS editor is usually easier to make accessible than a PDF, and it works better on phones.

Checklist: quizzes, interactive tools and third-party content

• Turn on per-student accommodations in your LMS for extra time and extra attempts, rather than reopening quizzes by hand.
• Make every activity keyboard-operable (WCAG 2.1.1). Try your drag-and-drop exercises using only Tab, Enter and the arrow keys.
• Check publisher platforms and plug-ins. Ask vendors for an Accessibility Conformance Report, often based on the VPAT template, before adopting a tool. The rule’s third-party exception does not cover content that a school’s vendors or contractors provide.
• Label form fields in surveys and assignments so screen readers announce what each box is for.
• Watch out for proctoring tools that block screen readers or magnifiers. If you use them, know how accommodations work; our guide to how online proctored exams work explains the common setups.

Where to start this semester

You do not need to rebuild everything at once. Work in this order:

1. Fix what students touch first. The course home page, syllabus, and the first 2 weeks of materials.
2. Caption your videos, starting with the ones that are required viewing.
3. Replace scanned PDFs with digital or tagged versions, starting with required readings.
4. Run your LMS accessibility checker on every page. Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle and Brightspace all offer built-in or add-on checkers.
5. Test 1 module with a keyboard and a screen reader. NVDA is free on Windows, and VoiceOver is built into Macs and iPhones. Our guide to how blind and low-vision students use screen readers and braille displays explains what those students experience.
6. Build accessibility into new work. Use templates with proper headings, write alt text as you add images, and edit captions when you upload.
7. Write down what is left. A simple remediation list with dates helps your institution show good-faith progress.

If you are building a course to sell rather than teach inside a school, the same steps apply. Accessible materials also help students with dyslexia or ADHD; see our guides to assistive technology for dyslexia and tech tools for students with ADHD.

Conclusion

An accessible online course is mostly a set of habits: real headings, edited captions, meaningful alt text, tagged PDFs and descriptive links. The ADA Title II deadlines for public schools and colleges are now April 2027 and April 2028, which buys time but not an exemption. Start with the materials every student opens in week 1, fix new content as you create it, and work back through older files from there.

Sources

• ADA.gov: Fact sheet on the Title II web and mobile app accessibility rule — who is covered, WCAG 2.1 AA standard, exceptions, compliance dates as extended by the April 2026 interim final rule
• W3C: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 — success criteria for captions, alt text, headings, contrast ratios, resize and reflow
• Adobe: Create and verify PDF accessibility (Acrobat Pro) — Accessibility Check tool and fixing issues in source files