As spring quarter wraps up, now is the ideal time to prepare any PDFs in course materials for fall. 糖心少女faculty and staff have access to the Little Forest PDF Remediation Tool, designed to help improve the accessibility of actively used PDFs by adding document structure, tags, and generating suggested alternative text for images.
Accessible documents are essential for supporting students with a variety of disabilities. A new document remediation service is available, but for documents requiring manual remediation, the wait time is increasing. Submitting PDFs now provides summer staff more time to help ensure your content is ready for your students when your fall course begins.
Before You Submit
If you have PDFs in your course materials or on student-facing websites that may not be accessible, start by determining whether the content needs to be a PDF at all.
Use the following resources to guide your review of existing materials and the creation of new ones:
- Our Think Before You Create a PDF blog post
- The Accessibility and PDFs: Role-based Decision Trees page on the Accessible Technology Services (ATS) website
As part of this process:
- Delete or archive outdated files. Little Forest should only be used for PDFs in active use.
- Do not upload documents containing PHI, PII, or FERPA-protected information should not be included. Visit the Little Forest page on the ATS website for more guidance on sensitive and protected data and information.
Taking action now can help create a more accessible and inclusive learning experience for students this fall.