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Disability Inclusion · Practitioner
Build documents, slides, videos, forms and lessons that work with a keyboard, a screen reader and captions, then prove it with a test you can run yourself.
45–55 minutes · 4 lessons · Voluntary learning
Give a screen-reader user the same map of your document that a sighted reader gets at a glance.
Make sure meaning survives without color and every action can be done without a mouse.
Plan captions, transcripts and audio description, build slides on real layouts, and make forms that tell people what they need to do.
Write for adults without talking down, test your content the way a keyboard user meets it, and record what you changed and why.
Choose one document, slide deck, form or lesson you own that staff or the public rely on. Remediate it using this course, run the keyboard-only test, and write the rationale. Keep both with the file.
Almost everything a public agency says to its staff and the public now arrives as a document, a slide, a video, a form or a lesson. If those things cannot be read by a screen reader, operated by a keyboard or followed without sound, the agency has said nothing to the people who needed to hear it most. This course teaches the practical craft: meaningful headings, alt text that does a job, links that say where they go, contrast and color that do not carry meaning alone, keyboard operability, captions and transcripts, slides and forms built on real structure, and plain language that respects adults. You will finish by running a keyboard-only test and writing an accessibility rationale for something you have remediated.
Real headings. Links that say where they go. Alt text that does a job. Meaning without color. Everything by keyboard. Captions edited, transcript posted.
Catch the most common barriers in your own content before it reaches staff or the public, and leave a record of what you checked.
Run the keyboard-only test on the next thing you publish and keep the rationale with the file.
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
Introduction to how people with disabilities use digital content and the principles behind the web accessibility guidelines.
Guidance on informative, decorative, functional and complex images, and how to write text alternatives for each.
Practical tips on headings, link text, alt text and plain writing for content authors.
Federal how-to guidance for accessible documents, presentations, PDFs, forms and video.
Federal plain-language guidelines and examples for public communication.
The federal standards for information and communication technology that Section 508 and comparable state standards draw on.