Creating accessible content

These guidelines have been developed to assist academics in preparing course materials for posting on Blackboard.

Blackboard is a web-browser-based delivery system, so it is important to remember that content posted on Blackboard is viewable within Blackboard.

Even though the majority of course materials may be Word, PDF, Excel or PowerPoint files, they are viewed in a web browser by Blackboard.

Many of the student population have some degree of impairment that can restrict the usefulness of their on-line course materials to varying degrees. Disabilities include (but aren't restricted to):

• Visual (blindness, low vision, colour-blindness),
• Hearing (deafness, hard-of-hearing),
• Mobility (inability to use hands, tremors, slow muscular movement),
• Cognitive impairments,
• Learning disabilities, reading disorders, attention deficit disorders.

Accessibility is not an isolated issue; it is one issue of many that should be considered in pursuing best practice in learning and teaching. How we deal with this important and growing issue will be one measure of how Swinburne is viewed as an institution in its teaching excellence.

This web site aims to comply with W3C standards, including XHTML 1.0 , CSS 2 , and conforms to W3C 's "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0", available at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505 , level Double-A.