Disability Services and Support
Teaching Students With Disabilities
General Text Content
The following are good practices for any content that you create within your course:
- Do not use color to convey meaning.
- Make sure content is clearly written and easy to read.
- Ensure that links make sense out of context.
- Every linke should make sense if read by itself.
- "Click here" and "more" should be avoided.
- Use predictable navigation.
- Minimize distractions. Avoid the following:
- Text highlighting.
- Text colors, default is best.
- Text fonts, other than the default
- Text sizing, other than generic headings, bold and italics.
Blackboard's core architecture provides an infrastructure that is accessible.
Most text entered within form boxes in Blackboard will be accessible as long as you use the basic tools for text boxes and form fields. By default, text entered will be readable by screen readers.
Caveat: Text that is copied from Word documents or from web sites often carries with it extra "code" that is NOT accessible. You should copy this text into a basic text editor to remove extraneous code prior to pasting into Blackboard's editor.
Caveat: Any documents that are uploaded into Blackboard or linked from your Blackboard course need to follow appropriate accessibilty guidelines as outlined for that document type.
Contact Us
Office of Disability Resources
Student Disability Services
Jen Prosceo, Director
Taylor Hall
585-276-5075
disability@rochester.edu
Lynnett Van Slyke
University Ombuds and Associate Vice Provost of Disability Compliance
36 Wallis Hall
585-275-9125
l.vanslyke@rochester.edu