Digital and instructional accessibility ensures all members of the Kent State community can engage fully with technology, course materials, and classroom experiences. Our Equal Access Learning hub offers guidance and resources to help faculty and staff reduce barriers, meet legal standards, and design with inclusion in mind.
When adding documents to your course, use accessible formats such as Word, tagged PDFs, or PowerPoint. For Word documents, use heading styles, alt text for images, and proper tables and lists. For PDFs, make sure the text is selectable, headings are tagged, and the reading order is correct; avoid scanned pages such as book copies or printed handouts. In PowerPoint, use built-in slide layouts, add alt text to images, and ensure the reading order matches the visual content. Inside all documents, format images, links, tables, and other elements properly to maintain accessibility.
For video and audio media in your course, be sure to include captions for all videos and provide written transcripts for audio files. For videos without audio, be sure to add a description of the content. Here at Kent State, we can use Kaltura Reach to add captions to our videos. These are auto-captioned and can be edited for accuracy. Ensure that all media can be paused, stopped, or muted by students and avoid autoplay when possible.
Links are an important part of accessibility and navigation. Make sure your link text is descriptive so students know exactly where it will take them. For example, type ‘Read the full course syllabus’ instead of just ‘click here.’ Whenever possible, provide more than one way to reach important content, like including a link in both the Modules and the course navigation menu. This helps all students find what they need quickly and easily.
Tables are a great way to present data clearly, but they shouldn’t be used just to organize or format a page. When you do use a table, include row and column headers so students, and screen readers, can understand the information. Adding captions can help explain what the table shows. Keeping tables simple and straightforward makes them easier for everyone to read and navigate.
Heading styles are built-in formatting tools (like H1, H2, H3) in Canvas and other editors such as Microsoft Word that create structure for a page. Unlike simply making text bold or larger, heading styles tag content so screen readers can recognize and navigate it, allowing students with disabilities to jump between sections easily. They also keep your course organized and visually consistent, showing the relationship between main topics and subtopics.
Color can make your course more engaging, but it’s important to use it thoughtfully. Make sure there’s strong contrast between text and background so everyone can read it easily. Avoid using color alone to convey meaning, like highlighting vocabulary in red without any other cue, and use bold, underline, or icons in addition. This helps ensure all students can access and understand your content.
Images can make your course more engaging, but they need to be accessible. Always add alternative text, or alt text, for any image that conveys important information. Alt text is a short, written description that screen readers can read aloud, helping students who are blind or have low vision understand the image. Images can make your course more engaging, but they need to be accessible. Always add alternative text, or alt text, for any image that conveys important information.
Discover the vibrant, creative and inclusive community we have here at the School of Theatre and Dance! You’ll start with a tour of our Center for the Performing Arts, followed by program sessions and specialized classes that give you a hands-on experience. We’ll take a break for lunch, then dive back in with workshops and extended learning options. The day wraps up with a Q&A session where you can get your questions answered by our faculty and student ambassadors.
Prospective students are invited to attend a matinee performance of "Something Rotten!"
