Digital course content accessibility FAQ

All digital course content, which includes the following:

• Content you find or create:
  • Content created with the Canvas Rich Content Editor, such as announcements, pages, assignment and discussion prompts, quizzes, etc.
  • Digital documents and files, such as Word docs, PDFs, PowerPoint slide decks, etc.
• Tools you might use:
  • Third-party publisher content, such as McGraw Hill, Pearson, etc.
  • All content tools linked to Canvas, such as Panopto.

Instructors are expected to review and address accessibility in their courses using available tools such as Ally. Your academic unit may establish additional review processes or provide instructional design support, particularly during formal course certification or quality review. If your online course goes through Quality Course Review (QCR), an instructional designer may review your course site and materials for digital accessibility. Please refer to the process outlined below and check with your institution for specific guidelines:

Quality Course Review Information

• Mizzou Quality Course Review
• UMKC Quality Course Review
• Missouri S&T Quality Course Review
• UMSL Quality Course Review

It depends. Mizzou Online’s Quality Course Review requires that course materials be digitally accessible. However, until early 2025, this was only enforced for the first four weeks of course materials. If you participated in a QCR but did not check or address your course materials past the first four weeks, your course likely still has accessibility barriers. In addition, if you have added materials to your course since passing QCR, you will need to check those materials.

The ultimate consequence is that learners cannot fully participate in your course. Improving digital accessibility is a prerequisite to ensuring a quality learning experience for all students. 

From a risk management perspective, digital accessibility of course content is a civil right and a legal requirement, which becomes enforced in April 2026. When online course content does not comply with these new accessibility standards, the University is at greater risk of federal and state discrimination complaints and private lawsuits against the University.

We offer two checklists to guide you through evaluating your course materials:

• The Tools-based digital accessibility checklist is organized by tools and content types; for example, how to check your Microsoft documents.
• The Skills-based digital accessibility checklist is organized by skills; for example, ensuring that your images have alternative text.

Ideally, your course content should be 100% accessible and not present any potential barriers to students with disabilities. However, there are caveats to this expectation:

• Your goal is to eliminate accessibility barriers in your course materials. Ally provides accessibility scores to help guide your efforts, but these scores alone do not determine full accessibility.
• Use professional judgment alongside the results from Ally or other tools such as the Microsoft Accessibility Checker. For example, if a PDF you have fixed still shows a 98% score due to a minor contrast issue in a decorative element, the material may be functionally accessible, though updating the source file should be considered when feasible.
• Conversely, a high Ally score does not guarantee that all barriers have been removed, as automated tools cannot identify every issue (such as missing descriptions in background images). Use the Tools-based digital accessibility checklist to ensure you manually check issues available accessibility checkers do not address.
• Approach accessibility as a continuous improvement process — using tools, checklists and your expertise to ensure equitable access for all students.

You are not responsible for resolving accessibility barriers in third-party resources unless caused by the content you have created or uploaded. However, you are responsible for identifying and providing accessible alternatives to any materials that are posted online in Canvas that are not accessible.

Strategies include:

• Requesting accessible versions from the publisher or vendor.
• Working with your campus library to identify an accessible alternative to a book or article.
• Contacting UM Academic Technology for guidance on approved, accessible tools.

Note: This does not require that you provide all course content online; you may use hard copy textbooks if you choose, for example. However, once content is added to Canvas (or a website), it must be digitally accessible.

Addressing accessibility barriers in optional or supplemental materials is a lower priority than those in required materials. However, to ensure that all students have equal access and opportunity to engage with optional materials, these should also eventually meet the required accessibility standards.

If any students have access to the site, then yes, the site must be digitally accessible. It’s a good idea to ensure your development site is accessible in case it is copied to become an active course.

Ultimately, all of your active courses and course materials must be free of accessibility barriers. However, you can prioritize the order in which you address barriers:

• Courses that are required in your program should receive priority over electives.
• High-enrolling courses should receive priority over smaller courses.
• Know that courses with complex content, or just a lot of content, will take more time. A STEM course that includes a lot of PowerPoint presentations with graphs and equations will take more time to remediate than a social sciences class that includes a few Word handouts.

See  Making a plan for digital accessibility to help you strategize.

You can learn more about digital accessibility and how to address accessibility barriers in your course materials by starting with the resources available on our Digital accessibility webpage. You will find a brief overview of what digital accessibility means and why it matters, links to more detailed how-to guides and a planning workbook and checklists.

UM Academic Technology supports all four campuses in the University of Missouri System, offering training and support for Ally and TidyUP (which doesn’t directly support accessibility but streamlines the process of checking Canvas materials for accessibility).

The Mizzou Online Teaching webpage Making a plan for digital accessibility provides resources and checklists available to everyone.

For more information about resources available on your campus, contact your Course Content Accessibility Task Force:

• Danna Wren (Mizzou)
• Alexis Petri (UMKC)
• Susan Murray (Missouri S&T)
• Sarah Butler (UMSL)

The updates to Title II of the ADA require that all digital academic content be proactively accessible for all students. This includes content posted in Canvas or shared electronically in all courses, regardless of modality.

In addition to the requirements of the updated regulations, it's important to know that many students who would benefit from an accessible learning environment do not request accommodations for several possible reasons:

• Not all students have a diagnosis. They might not have connected their symptoms to something that can be diagnosed or treated. Getting a formal diagnosis can be expensive and time-consuming.
• Students who received accommodations in secondary school might not know they can still get them in college. They might have concerns about stigma or wish to prove they can succeed without them.
• Students might have experienced negative reactions from instructors, even outright refusal to comply with the accommodation letter.
• Disabilities can be sudden or temporary, and a student could become disabled during the semester.

No, the law does not require that all materials be digitized. It does require that materials that are offered digitally be accessible.

That said, according to the MU Disability Center, over 35% of accommodation requests are for access to recorded lectures, and 16% of requests are for access to electronic handouts. If you provide these proactively, “accommodation” is not needed for these students.

Providing electronic versions of content for your students also has potential benefits for learning. For example, you can caption recorded lectures, and students can view them at their own pace and based on their needs. Such videos allow students to pause, rewind, and read the content as needed. Files uploaded to Canvas, or created as Canvas pages, can be read aloud to the student or even converted to alternative formats. Providing students with choices in how they engage with the content meets critical goals of Universal Design for Learning (UDL).