Accessibility Resources

ICYMI: Watch the recording from the ADAI Info Team’s Lunch & Learn: Access Granted: Making Docs, Data, and Design Work for Everyone (October 2025)

General education & resources

• UW Accessible Technology: Everything you need to know about accessibility at the UW

• UW Disability Office: Can help you book ASL interpreters, live captioners, answer accessibility questions

• Deque University online courses in accessibility: Excellent set of online courses that teach you everything you need to know about accessibility. Broken into chapters; easy to use as a quick reference. Find training on Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, videos, graphics, and more! FREE for UW folks!

• Accessibility User Stories: How do different people with different disabilities use the web? Read some stories and get a better sense of what things to keep in mind when creating an accessible document!

Data visualization

• An intro to designing accessible data visualizations

• Chartability: A set of seven questions/heuristics to check whenever you’re making a data visualization (chart, graph, etc.)

• Mastering Alt Text for Images and Charts

Closed captions (videos)

Use YouTube to host your video

• YouTube will create automatic captions which you can edit right in the platform
• You can also import your own captions and it will automatically set all the timings for you

For creating your own captions (to then upload to YouTube):

• Save Zoom events to the Cloud and you can access the Zoom transcript (edit it for accuracy before adding to your video!)
• Submit your audio or video file to Rev.com for human transcription (highly accurate, but $2/minute)

For non-YouTube videos

Use video editing software that supports caption creation (Adobe Premier, Filmora, e.g.).

Open captions (videos for social media)

• Open captions are the ones that are embedded in the video itself and can’t be turned on or off. These are best for short videos shared on social media
• Many social media video platforms include in-app tools for this (Instagram, TikTok, e.g.)
• Can also use video editing software (Adobe Premier, Filmora, etc.)

Social media

• Accessible Social: Everything you need to know!

Writing good alt text

• Section 508: Purpose of Alternative Text

• WebAIM.org: Alternative Text

• American Foundation for the Blind: Writing Effective Image Descriptions or “Alt Text”

Writing in Plain Language

• Hemingway app: For testing grade level
• Plain Language Guide Series (Digital.gov)

Accessibility Testing Tools & Guidelines

• Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools List (W3C) – Comprehensive directory of a range of different tools for testing software, websites, and documents for accessibility

• Free screen readers
  • NVDA (Windows)
  • VoiceOver (Mac)

• Color contrast checker
  • Accessible colors: Includes suggestions for making your colors compliant

• Web content testing
  • UW websites: Request DubBot access
  • Non UW sites: Wave(WebAim)