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Teaching & Learning Resources

COB Faculty Accessibility Training

Written by

Shannon Hauser

Published on

Expectations

As of April 24, 2026, all digital materials used in your teaching need to be compliant with the WCAG 2.1 AA standard for digital accessibility.  Digital accessibility is a legal requirement under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and a shared institutional responsibility at the University of Mary Washington.

Every faculty member plays a critical role in helping UMW meet its obligations under Title II. Faculty are responsible for ensuring that all digital content created, selected, or provided to students is accessible — regardless of who is enrolled in a given course. This includes, but is not limited to, course sites, syllabi, documents, videos, presentations, publisher resources (e.g., Wiley, McGraw-Hill), and discussion boards. Accessibility must be ensured at the start of and maintained throughout each term.

Meeting this expectation should not be viewed as a one-time compliance exercise. Accessible course design is an ongoing instructional responsibility and a permanent part of teaching and learning at UMW.

Digital Accessibility Essentials

The following is a list of essential concepts to know as well as links to the Teaching & Learning Resources guidies:

  • Headings: Headings provide structure so screen readers can parse your content more easily.
  • Alternative (Alt) Text: Alternative text creates a written description of important visual information.
  • Descriptive Links: Descriptive hyperlinks provide context for where a link will send a user.
  • Color & Contrast: Intentional color choices help more users understand your content.
  • Lists & Tables: Properly formatted lists and tables allow users to navigate your content.
  • Audio & Video: Captions and transcripts give users alternative ways to access your content.

Creating Accessibly with Microsoft

Start using the Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Office accessibility checkers as part of your workflow when creating new documents

Getting Started with Panorama

YuJa Panorama, a tool available in Canvas, offers a course‑level view of accessibility issues and helps surface where attention is most needed. It scans course materials and provides guidance on common issues tied to accessibility standards.

Getting Started with Panorama Guide

There are multiple ways to approach using Panorama. Consider:

  • Fixing the items Panorama flags as Severe or Major in your Course Report(red and yellow icons), or
  • Address one type of accessibility issue at a time (e.g. fix all missing alt text), or
  • Focusing on materials students use early and often

Limitations of Panorama

While Panorama scores are often closely related to meeting accessibility expectations, they are not perfect measures, as the nuances of accessibility mean that no current tool can assess compliance independently without human judgment. Panorama may sometimes flag issues that do not actually reflect a true accessibility barrier or miss context that matters. Panorama can also miss things as well, this happens most often with PDFs, as these tend to be the most difficult to judge something as compliant. So a good score in a PDF is sometimes not indicative of actual compliance. Panorama also can’t address videos or evaluate the accessibility of external tools that may be embedded inside of your Canvas course.

Get Support

Faculty resources around Digital Accessibility can be found on the Digital Accessibility page on the Teaching & Learning Resources website.

To get specific support around digital accessibility to meet ADA Title II compliance you can:

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