A Guide to Accessibility (for Educators)

With the DoJ’s April 24, 2026 deadline approaching mandating all digital tools be accessible, every educator across the US (and Canada) is rushing to make their course materials accessible.

An Incomplete Guide to Accessibility (for Educators) is for instructors, professors, or TAs that need help approaching digital accessibility. In plain language, we’ll demonstrate how to update learning materials to meet compliance—without treading all over your painstakingly-planned pedagogy. It’s important to emphasize that accessibility is ultimately about breaking barriers for people with disabilities, and this guide will strive to keep that in mind.

Accessibility isn’t easy

It’s important not to downplay the work needed to ensure digital materials are well-designed for everyone, without discrimination.

But… accessibility really isn’t that hard, either.

While more complex solutions can be harder to implement, the basics of accessibility are fairly easy to understand and action on. Start there, and grow over time.

It’s a skill. It takes practice. But it’s not rocket science, or evaluating 100 student essays on the diction of Shakespeare, either. Every week, educators share ideas and concepts with students, which, with any luck, germinate into critical thinking skills. Teaching is a much harder thing; accessibility is simple by comparison.

As a digital product designer with over 20 years experience, I know the effort it takes to push accessibility forward. In 2020, Top Hat’s product and engineering team worked to make our platform more accessible for any student.

The goal of this guide is to help you navigate this work, too.

This guide is evolving

The “incomplete” title of this guide is intentional. Members of the Top Hat team will add to this guide over time, but accessibility standards change. In software, compliance drift can happen as companies make updates to their little corner of the web. The very browser you’re using to read these words has likely been updated dozens or hundreds of times since this guide was written.

Obligatory legal note (sorry): Please don’t mistake this guide as legal advice or counsel. Consider this work an incomplete and imperfect list of suggestions from our experience, nothing more.

We appreciate feedback

Both good and constructive feedback (what my cat’s therapist calls “bad” feedback) are encouraged. If you spot any gaps or errors in the guide, please let us know and we’ll remediate. Just send us an email to [email protected].

Chapter 1: Making Sense of Compliance

Awareness of the law is important, but don’t get lost

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the accessibility laws flying about. Federal, DOJ, State. How do they measure up against each other? What do you need to care about?

TLDR: WCAG 2.1 Level AA

WCAG 2.1 Level AA is the standard to follow. If you know what that alphabet salad means, you can probably skip this chapter.

It’s the W3C standard this guide (and Top Hat) uses.

A wave of legislation

Here is a list of accessibility policies from the US. I recommend glossing over it, unless you enjoy sifting through rats nests of legalese for reasons I won’t ask about:

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. Arizona (digital accessibility standards in statewide IT policy), Arkansas (Act 1227 of 1999), California (multiple government code sections), Colorado (House Bill 21-1110), Connecticut (Universal Website Accessibility Policy), Delaware (State Digital Accessibility Policy), Georgia (digital properties accessibility), Idaho (Web Publishing Guidelines), Illinois (Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act), Indiana (Code 4-13.1-3), Iowa (Website Accessibility Standard), Kansas (Information Technology Executive Council Policy), Maine (Digital Accessibility and Usability Policy), Maryland (Information Technology Nonvisual Access Regulatory Standards), Massachusetts (Enterprise Information Technology Accessibility Policy), Michigan (Digital Accessibility Standard), Minnesota (Digital Accessibility Standard), Missouri (RSMo. 161.935), Montana (state code 18-5-605), Nebraska (Accessibility Policy), Nevada (ADA Technology Accessibility Guidelines), New Hampshire (Web and Mobile Application Accessibility Standards), New Jersey (NJ A4856), New York (NYS-P08-005 and Senate Bill S3114A), Ohio (Administrative Policy, Website Ability), Oklahoma (Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Law), Pennsylvania (Information Technology Policy), Rhode Island (World Wide Web Consortium Priority 1 Checkpoints), Texas (Web Accessibility Standards and Administrative Code), Utah (accessibility standards for executive branch agencies), Virginia (Information Technology Access Act and Accessibility Standard), and Washington (USER-01 Accessibility Policy).

You might have noticed not all states are listed. Some states decided to spare us the headache of adding more to this list. Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—the big kahuna of federal legislation—still applies.

Real risk

If your legal department puckers up at the word accessibility, you should know it’s because the risk to your school is real. The ADA publishes “settlements” on its website, which is a public list where complainant(s) have filed discrimination suit(s) against a corporation and settled. A good chunk of them are against educational institutions (K-12, community colleges, and big institutions alike).

State and federal policy is not written for you

Its job is to provide the judicial system the right to pursue action against anyone caught discriminating, and to make you aware that they can (and might) do that. Less discrimination is good for everyone. We like that idea.

But knowing there are arcane words hanging above every slide deck and document you decide to share with your student body is scary. There’s pressure here to Do The Right Thing.™

Good news: There’s a simple way to meet state and federal legislation: WCAG. Protip: It’s pronounced wug-ka-guh.

WCAG: One Standard to Rule them All

Bad news: WCAG is written by engineers, but don’t hold that against it.

WCAG stands for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. It’s managed by the World Wide Web Consortium, otherwise known as “W3C,” which is a wizardly-sounding name, if you ask me. Most policies across the US and Canada list it as a standard to meet for digital accessibility (the only reason I’m not saying ALL policies is because I haven’t read them all, but I’m fairly certain everyone is just copying each other’s homework here).

Understanding the WCAG Alphabet Salad: Versions and Levels

There are levels to the WCAG standard, but it’s very simple to unpack.

Which WCAG version?

Because almost all legislation focuses on WCAG 2.1 Level AA, we’ve focused this guideline on that.

Why not WCAG 2.2?

WCAG 2.2 adds more consideration to its framework for mobile devices and form factors. Top Hat follows 2.2, because our product supports mobile apps.

This isn’t as applicable for educators, so we’re focusing on 2.1 for this guide.

What are WCAG levels?

Within each version of WCAG there are “levels” of compliance denoted by A, AA, and AAA. Level AA is where most software vendors and digital services will hang out.

There’s no extra credit for meeting AAA. Generally speaking, AA will be a better choice for delivering great learning materials to students. The scuttlebutt on the street (the youth are all aflutter about this) is that AAA is for banks and government institutions.

Note for Canadians

Canadians will be expected to adhere to the Accessible Canada Act (ACA). Ontario, British Columbia, and Newfoundland and Labrador have their own laws, too.

In most cases WCAG 2.1 Level AA will meet the letter of these laws, too.

This guide follows: WCAG 2.1, Level AA

This guide follows WCAG 2.1, Level AA standard, and so does Top Hat’s content and platform.

If your institution uses another level, or something other than WCAG, this guideline may not be useful to you.

It’s helpful to think of content and software together, but separate

In addition to ensuring the form and fit of the software you use is up to standard, educators have an obligation to make sure the content and materials of a course are compliant, too.

If the software presenting your slides can’t be navigated by a user using assistive technology? That’s a violation.

If the reading order of your slides isn’t correct? Violation.

If you use an image to convey information that doesn’t have alt-text or a long description? Violation (every physics instructor will be hit especially hard by that last one).

All of it needs to meet WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.

For your own sanity, it will be helpful to keep both software and content in mind when navigating accessibility.

Full disclosure: This article is published by Top Hat

The goal of this article isn’t to woo you into using Top Hat. Top Hat is an ed tech platform that has features to help make educational content accessible, but it’s important to us that this guide will be useful for as many educators as possible.

Throughout the chapters, where possible, we’ll provide accessible considerations for content both with and without use of the Top Hat platform. As you’ll see in this guide: where content is authored and shared with learners alters the choices you need to make to ensure your stuff works.