Essentials of Accessibility for Faculty and Staff

Are you ready to learn how to make your digital images, videos, documents, and course files accessible? Essentials of Accessibility for Faculty and Staff is a free, self-paced, online course that will teach you the basics of digital accessibility and accessibility best practices for several key applications that UW-Green Bay employees may use in their daily work.

The training covers:

  • Compliance with accepted standards for digital accessibility in higher education.
  • Common accessibility issues in digital or web-based content and how to address them.
  • Technical steps and processes for creating accessible images, videos, documents (Microsoft Word and PDF), slides (Microsoft PowerPoint), spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel), and Canvas courses.
  • Practical approaches for remediating digital accessibility issues in a variety of use cases.

Prerequisites: None

When: The course is open to all UWGB employees for self-enrollment. The course will remain open indefinitely, and there is no deadline for completion.

Course Format

Essentials of Accessibility for Faculty and Staff is an online, self-paced training course administered through Canvas. The course structure is flexible, permitting you to choose your own learning path. Once you finish the intro module, you can complete any of the application-specific modules or just use the course as an ongoing resource. Participants will not be obligated to complete all modules and may participate at whichever level fits their interest and capacity.

Badges

an array of eight badges pointing to a badge that says "Essentials of Accessibility"

Participants will earn a digital badge for completing each of the eight main modules, and a special additional badge if they choose to complete the whole course! You can include digital badges in your email signature or embed them in online portfolios or resumes as evidence of your commitment to professional development.

Questions?

If you have any questions about this course, please contact CATL (CATL@uwgb.edu).

Session Recordings: “Teaching Today’s UWGB Students” Spring 2025 Event Series

Did you miss a session? Don’t worry, this blog post includes recordings from CATL’s Spring 2025 programming series, “Teaching Today’s UWGB Students,” for you to watch and engage with.

Want even more resources? Join the “Teaching Today’s UWGB Students” Canvas course to explore even more materials related to the topic of each event in series.

Insights from Secondary School Educators on Our Current & Future Students  (Feb. 17, 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.)

Educators from across Northeast Wisconsin shared their insights on the challenges and innovative solutions shaping today’s students in this engaging panel hosted by CATL and Student Access and Success. Gain valuable perspectives and strategies to better support the success of current and future students at UW-Green Bay by watching the recording.

The recording is available to UW-Green Bay faculty and staff. To access it, click the button below, log in with your UWGB credentials, and start viewing.

Growing Your Mindset (March 7, 9 – 10 a.m.)

Dr. Amy Kabrhel and Dr. Steven Anschutz, who wrote his dissertation on this topic, explored the concept of Growing Your Mindset in this session. CATL also shared practical strategies for integrating a growth mindset into your teaching. Watch the recording below to gain valuable insights on the topic and growth mindset techniques to support student learning.

The recording is available to UW-Green Bay faculty and staff. To access it, click the button below, log in with your UWGB credentials, and start viewing.

Teaching with Transparency (April 4, 9 – 10 a.m.)

Former Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars Co-Director, UW–River Falls Founding CETL Director, and published author Dr. Cyndi Kernahan, along with CATL Director Kris Vespia, joined us for a live online discussion on “Teaching with Transparency” and how it can facilitate student engagement and learning.

The recording is available to UW-Green Bay faculty and staff. To access it, click the button below, log in with your UWGB credentials, and start viewing.

Digital Accessibility Tip: Adding Captions to Instructional Videos

Looking to expand your knowledge of digital accessibility and learn quick strategies that you can easily integrate into your workflow? CATL’s blog post series on digital accessibility catalogues some helpful tips and tricks we’ve shared in our Teach Tuesday e-newsletter!

In this tip, we’ll discuss how to add machine-generated captions to your videos and edit captions in Kaltura (My Media).

Adding Machine-Generated Captions to Kaltura Videos

Adding machine-generated (automatic) captions to your own instructional videos is as simple as uploading them to your Kaltura (My Media) library. Kaltura will automatically create and apply machine-generated captions to new video entries, making your videos more accessible to all students.

Note: If you use any Kaltura videos that pre-date Dec. 1, 2021, you will have to manually request machine-generated captions, which takes just a couple clicks.

Editing Closed Captions for Kaltura Videos

Machine-generated captions can go a long way in terms of media accessibility, but they are not perfect. That is why it is important to review and correct automatic captions to ensure that there are not significant errors that would hinder a student’s understanding of the video content. Kaltura has a built-in captioning editor that you can use to correct the captions on your Kaltura (My Media) videos. Watch the short video below to learn how to use the caption editor in less than four minutes.

If you use videos in your course that are hosted by a platform other than Kaltura, CATL encourages you to check to see if these videos have captions. YouTube videos created in the last few years usually have auto-generated captions labelled “English (Auto).” Many companies and organizations that publish YouTube content will add professional (edited) English captions with proper capitalization and punctuation, which are usually just labelled “English.” Try to stick with media sources that offer professional captions whenever possible.

Looking for More Tips?

Explore even more quick tips in our Digital Accessibility Tips post, where you’ll find a growing list of strategies to help make your course materials more accessible.

Further Accessibility Training

Ready to dive deeper into digital accessibility? Essentials of Accessibility for Faculty and Staff is a free, self-paced, online course that will teach you the basics of digital accessibility and accessibility best practices for several key applications that UW-Green Bay employees may use in their daily work. We encourage you to self-enroll in the course to learn practical approaches for remediating digital accessibility issues in a variety of use cases and applications.

Connect with CATL

You are not alone in your accessibility journey! While CATL cannot advise on the legal specifications of Title II, instructors are always welcome to schedule a consultation with us or stop by our office (CL 405) to discuss the accessibility of your teaching materials.

Digital Accessibility Tip: Creating Functional and Meaningful Links

Looking to expand your knowledge of digital accessibility and learn quick strategies that you can easily integrate into your workflow? CATL’s blog post series on digital accessibility catalogues some helpful tips and tricks we’ve shared in our Teach Tuesday e-newsletter!

In this tip, we’ll discuss how to detect and remediate broken links and how to write useful, meaningful link text

Checking for Broken Links in Canvas

  • The Canvas link validator can quickly scan your course for potential broken links, including links to unpublished or deleted content, links to resources in another Canvas course, and links to external webpages that are returning “page not found” errors.
  • After updating the broken links identified by the validator, use the “Restart Link Validation” button to run a scan again.
  • Consider using the link validator at least once before the start of each semester and whenever you make substantial content changes to a course.
  • To learn more about remediating broken links, see this CATL resource on avoiding broken links in Canvas.

Creating Meaningful Links

  • Providing meaningful text for links helps users understand what to expect when they click a link. It clearly conveys the destination or action of the link and also makes it easier for users who rely on assistive technology to navigate between links.
  • Unfortunately, people too often simply paste a website URL at the end of a sentence when creating a document or web resource. Screen readers will read out URLs letter-by-letter, including hyphens, slashes, and other characters, which is why using long or complicated URLs should be avoided as link text.
  • For links with long URLs, use a concise description of the resource or page as the link text instead. (ex: UW-Green Bay Mission Statement).
  • Short URLs, such as a site home page, can also be used as link text (ex: uwgb.edu).
  • Another common error is using vague phrases like “click here” as link text. Link text should instead be informative, descriptive, and make sense out of context.
  • In most applications, you can create a hyperlink with meaningful text simply by highlighting the text you want to add a link to and selecting the “insert link” option from a toolbar or the right-click context menu.
  • To learn more about these concepts and see examples, visit the WebAim guide on links and hypertext.

Looking for More Tips?

Explore even more quick tips in our Digital Accessibility Tips post, where you’ll find a growing list of strategies to help make your course materials more accessible.

Further Accessibility Training

Ready to dive deeper into digital accessibility? Essentials of Accessibility for Faculty and Staff is a free, self-paced, online course that will teach you the basics of digital accessibility and accessibility best practices for several key applications that UW-Green Bay employees may use in their daily work. We encourage you to self-enroll in the course to learn practical approaches for remediating digital accessibility issues in a variety of use cases and applications.

Connect with CATL

You are not alone in your accessibility journey! While CATL cannot advise on the legal specifications of Title II, instructors are always welcome to schedule a consultation with us or stop by our office (CL 405) to discuss the accessibility of your teaching materials.

Teaching Strategy Spotlight – Debate on High Capacity Wells

Portrait image of a person, Rebecca Abler

Rebecca Abler, Manitowoc Campus, Natural and Applied Sciences Department

About the Professor

Rebecca Abler is a Wisconsin native with a degree in Biology from UW-Oshkosh. She graduated with a PhD in 2004 and then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at UW- Madison. She became a faculty member in 2005 in Manitowoc and is now a member of the Natural and Applied Sciences Department.

Strategy

Image of a circular digital badge with a trophy in the center. Text reads UW-Green Bay Canvas Gallery People's Choice Award.Utilizing Canvas discussion boards as interactive debate platforms for real world, immediate problems. This strategy was one of two awarded the People’s Choice award for the Canvas Gallery.

UWGB Canvas Gallery: A Virtual Exhibition of Teaching. Haven’t checked out the gallery yet? Self-enroll in the Canvas course and see all the projects.

Representative Assignment

Debate on High-Capacity Wells

Description

This assignment is a Canvas Discussion Board where students either take sides in a debate on a real-world topic or vote as an audience member. Students rotate the role they take in each different discussion. They get to apply knowledge from their course to a real-world situation.

Modality and context

Face-to-face or online. Developed for an introductory Environmental Science course.

Purpose

This activity was originally created for face-to-face classes. Students seemed to be more engaged during field trips to streams and natural areas and issues connected to the real world. The instructor wanted to use that “reality” to engage even online students, and so the panel discussions were born, focused on real-world activities.

Assignment Details

In the first example of the debate, students are provided with the topic of High-Capacity Wells. They are given their roles, which could be part of the Farm Bureau, the Central Sands Lake Association or the Legislature who will vote on the proposal. The two sides are given a date to propose opening arguments, the audience is then given a date to pose questions, the two groups are given more time to answer the questions, and then the legislature votes. All students are given source material to prepare for their task in the role-playing. The tasks are laid out in a way that makes sense for this real-world activity and gives the students an opportunity to delve into the issues that are impacting their world.

Applying This Idea to Your Classroom

Canvas discussion boards are a tool that everyone has access to. Turning an idea of interest that is applicable to your area into a debate on a discussion board is generally possible in most subject areas. Give it a try with your students and see how it goes!