As UQ staff, it is important for your learning resources and work documents to be easy for their intended audience (your students or fellow staff) to access and use. Discover our Create accessible content guide and Awareness of digital accessibility course to learn about accessibility and to help you incorporate accessible practice into the materials you create. .
Accessibility is important
Accessibility benefits everyone. Accessibility isn't just about altering existing things to help a specific group of people; it's about changing how we do things on a structural level to remove barriers that could affect anyone.
Accessibility is not just about disability. Universal design is the idea of designing with everyone in mind. There are a lot of things in our daily lives which have been designed for specific groups of people which have a wider application than their originally intended purpose.
It is about ensuring all our students can easily access and understand your content to make their learning experience the best it can possibly be.
Guide: Create accessible content
Use our Create accessible content guide documents and teaching materials more accessible using to make your Microsoft Word and tagged PDF. Get information and tips on:
- Accessibility checkers
- Colour and language
- Media and images
- PDFs
- Printing and scanning
- Spacing, structure, tables and text (fonts).
Course: Awareness of digital accessibility
Complete our Awareness of digital accessibility course (UQ staff login required). The module takes about an hour to complete.
It will help you develop an understanding of:
- what accessibility means
- the key elements for Universal design principles
- how to use SensusAccess, software to convert documents into alternative formats
- accessibility checkers - inbuilt tools in Microsoft Word and PDF.
After completing the course, you will have an awareness of:
- how accessibility is measured
- accessibility standards
- legislative frameworks which support people with a disability
- inclusivity and barriers faced by clients using screen readers
- inclusive education and what it can lead to.
There are opportunities to provide feedback to us via both the guide and the course.
Support for clients with disabilities outlines other ways the Library helps with access to resources, collections and spaces.