Making Courses More Accessible Together

You’ve probably noticed accessibility has been getting a lot of attention lately—and for good reason. Organizations across higher education have been racing to meet the April 2026 WCAG 2.1 AA deadline. (And yes, that deadline has since been extended to April 2027, giving everyone a bit more breathing room!) We wanted to take a moment to share what our Instructional Design team has been up to behind the scenes to make sure OPLR courses meet these important standards. One of the benefits of working with OPLR is that our team can help support you in meeting these requirements.

The planning for all of this actually kicked off about a year ago. We’ve been working a semester ahead, which means when courses launch this year, they’re good to go. A small group from our team dove into the requirements to figure out the smartest approach. From there, we held information sessions for both our team and faculty, set up tracking boards to keep everything organized, and updated our documentation so this work continues well beyond the deadline.

We’ve also been making the most of the tools available to us in Canvas. TidyUp has been great for identifying which files and pages are actually being used, and the Course Accessibility Checker from UDOIT has helped us review pages and files for compliance.

None of this would have been possible without our faculty partners. We’ve been in constant communication—sharing project updates and course-specific details across all programs. Faculty input has been absolutely critical to making sure our changes actually work for both the course design and the student experience.

We won’t sugarcoat it—this has been a heavy lift, and we’ve hit a few bumps along the way. Two of our biggest ongoing challenges? PDFs and external videos. These are areas where we’re still exploring solutions that work for everyone—students, faculty, and course goals alike.

As we continue this work, we want to thank you for your partnership and patience. Accessibility isn’t just about meeting a deadline—it’s about creating a better learning experience for all students. If you have questions about accessibility in your courses or want to learn more about what we’re doing, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re all in this together, and we’re here to help.

This article was written by Kristine Pierick, a Senior Instructional Designer with OPLR. She leads the team’s accessibility group and has worked on the UW Independent Learning, Collaborative, and Flexible Option programs.