Three-Part Training Approach
Legal context, institutional obligations, and risk. Understanding why accessibility matters and what CMC's compliance requirements entail.
Hands-on technical skills for PDFs, Canvas course materials, email communications, social media, and web content.
Building empathy for users with disabilities who rely on accessible content to participate fully in academic and institutional life.
Upcoming Sessions
Digital Accessibility at CMC: Practical Implementation
Audience: All faculty and staff.
A follow-up session scheduled as fall semester approaches. Focuses on hands-on application and faculty-specific guidance on making course materials accessible. Includes substantial Q&A time. Building on the June session, attendees will leave with a concrete checklist for their own content and workflow.
Audience: All faculty and staff.
Accessible Content for New Faculty
Audience: New faculty only.
Integrated into the New Faculty Orientation program. Covers Canvas accessibility basics, how to use the Canvas Accessibility Checker to identify and fix issues in course materials, foundational document accessibility practices, and where to go for ongoing help throughout the academic year.
Included in orientation schedule — new faculty will receive details directly from the Dean of the Faculty’s Office.Self-Paced Resources
Four one-page references drawn from this site: an accessibility quick-start checklist, an alt text decision tree, a Canvas pre-publish checklist, and a colour contrast reference.
Open the quick references →Practical, example-driven tutorials from the group that writes WCAG. Covers page structure, menus, images, tables, and forms.
Visit W3C WAIThe authoritative, filterable checklist of every WCAG 2.1 success criterion with techniques and failures. Useful when you need to confirm a specific requirement.
Open the quick referenceMicrosoft's own training for creating accessible Word documents, Excel workbooks, PowerPoint decks, and Outlook email — the tools most CMC staff use daily.
Start the trainingGoogle's guidance for making Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms accessible, including the built-in accessibility checker.
Visit Google supportFree, comprehensive introduction to web accessibility from WebAIM — one of the leading organizations in the field. Covers principles, guidelines, and practical techniques.
Visit WebAIM.orgFaculty Pathway
New to accessibility requirements at CMC? Follow these five steps to get your courses into shape before the fall semester.
Attend or watch the August 17, 2026 training session.
Start with the legal and institutional context. Outside higher-education accessibility counsel will explain exactly what CMC is required to do and why it matters for your courses and materials.
Read the Canvas Accessibility Guide.
Review our step-by-step Canvas guide to understand what accessibility looks like in your LMS environment — alt text, heading structure, captioned video, and more.
Review your Canvas course with the Accessibility Checker — resolve issues before fall.
The Canvas Accessibility Checker scans your Pages and Assignments. Log into Canvas, open each Page or Assignment in the Rich Content Editor, run the checker, and work through anything it flags. ITS can help if you're unsure where to start.
Take the Faculty accessibility module when it becomes available.
This self-paced course walks through the most common faculty accessibility tasks in depth, with embedded exercises and resources you can return to any time.
Attend a CTL workshop on inclusive course design.
The Center for Teaching and Learning offers workshops that complement ITS training with pedagogical context and strategies for equitable course design.
For complex documents — scanned PDFs, legacy course packets, multimedia-heavy syllabi — submit a Help Desk ticket and our team will assist directly.
Staff Pathway
The right starting point depends on the content you create most often. Use this pathway to focus your learning where it will have the most immediate impact.
Identify your most common content type.
Is it Word documents? PDFs? Email communications? Web content? Social media? Knowing your primary format lets you target the right guide first.
Follow the guide for that content type.
Our Accessibility Resource Library has guides for PDFs, Word, email, images, and video — each with step-by-step instructions and screenshots.
Attend or watch the August 17, 2026 training session.
Building legal and institutional context will help you understand the "why" behind the practices you're implementing and communicate accessibility requirements to your team.
Complete the Staff accessibility module when it becomes available.
The self-paced staff track covers your workflow from end to end — creating, reviewing, publishing, and procuring accessible content and tools.
For individual help or to request a one-on-one accessibility consultation, email help@cmc.edu and reference "Digital Accessibility" in your subject line.
Need Hands-On Help?
Our Help Desk team can work with you one-on-one — remotely or in person — to remediate documents, review course materials, or answer any accessibility question.
Contact the Help Desk →