As part of Georgia Tech's commitment to ensuring that all students can access and engage with course content, we are working to improve the accessibility of digital course materials. Accessible materials benefit all learners by making content easier to navigate, understand, and use.
Instructors and teaching assistants are responsible for ensuring that instructional materials and resources for their courses are accessible to all students. Accessibility improvements can be made over time, and instructors should work toward ensuring digital course materials are accessible for Fall 2026 and Spring 2027 courses.
While the U.S. Department of Justice recently extended the Title II web and digital accessibility compliance deadline to April 26, 2027, the design of accessible content takes time, especially for courses with extensive digital materials. Faculty and staff are encouraged to begin this work now and take advantage of the tools and resources that will be introduced in the coming semester.
Instructor and Faculty Responsibilities:
- Ensuring PDF, word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation course documents are accessible.
- When applicable, ensuring publisher resources conform to WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
- Ensuring course videos are accurately captioned and transcribed; and, when necessary, audio described to support students who are blind/low vision.
- If you offer synchronus, online courses, use accessible communications platforms like Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
Resources and Workshops
- Helpful resources designed to aid in creating accessible course material at the Center for Teaching and Learning’s (CTL) CTL Course Accessibility Hub and Office of Information Technology’s (OIT)’s Resources to Support Accessibility in Canvas.
- Canvas Accessibility Checklist: a practical resource developed in CTL to help you quickly assess and improve accessibility across text, hyperlinks, images and alt-text, documents, tables, multimedia, and course structure.
- Canvas Commons Accessible Course Template: developed collaboratively by CTL and DLT, available on Canvas Commons. To find the template, log into Canvas and then search in Canvas Commons.
- Regularly scheduled training sessions featuring demos on Title II, Ally, Canvas templates, accessible documents, images, video, and audio. See Training page for upcoming sessions.
- Monthly Accessibility Sprints and Roundtables covering accessible documents, images, PDFs in LaTeX, audio/video, UDL strategies, Canvas navigation and structure, and more. You can find all events listed on the CTL Events page.
Center for Inclusive Design & Innovation (CIDI) Services
CIDI is another campus unit available to help you prepare your instructional materials for upcoming semesters. CIDI offers advanced evaluation and remediation services for documents, media, videos, and complex instructional materials (i.e. STEM, specialized formats, and high-volume content) to help you meet Title II of ADA requirements.
CIDI offers a comprehensive suite of accessibility services to help:
- Train departments on digital accessibility, complementing services offered by CTL, OIT, and others.
- Assist OIT and other campus partners with evaluating new accessibility tools that could help Georgia Tech meet Title II of ADA requirements.
- Make learning materials accessible including documents (i.e., PDF, DOC, HTML, EPUB, PowerPoint, Alt Text generation), textbooks and Braille learning materials (print/digital, tactile graphics).
- Make live or recorded classes accessible through captioning and described media services.
- Coordinate with Office of Disability Services (ODS) who provides guidance to faculty on supporting students with disabilities.
If you have questions or need support, please contact the CIDI Support team at cidi-support@design.gatech.edu or call our campus line at 404-894-8000. Additionally, you can book a consultation with CIDI to have a more in-depth conversation about our services and how we can assist you in determining the best next steps based on your course material and instructional needs, as well as the resources required.
Georgia Tech Library Resources
The Library is currently working on updating services and resources to provide timely remediation of materials and to support long-term accessibility efforts across its collection. For more information, please see the Library's Accessibility Webpage.
Academic and Instructional Materials Accessibility Plan
The Office of the Provost outlines expectations, support resources, and a phased approach to improving accessibility in course materials and instructional content.
Provide Feedback or Share Existing Resources
To share your feedback or notify our team of existing, helpful resources for accessibility and instruction, please complete our instructor feedback form.
Need Help?
Contact the Office of the Provost: provostsoffice@gatech.edu
Contact CTL: CTLHelp@gatech.edu