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Extra Points contributors are interviewing University of Minnesota instructors working to comply with the updated digital accessibility policy effective April 2026. These blog posts highlight the approach they take as they lean into the challenge of revising their course content to be digitally accessible.
This post highlights Dr. Olivia Crandell, Assistant Professor, Center for Learning Innovation, Rochester.
Interviewer: When did you first start hearing about digital accessibility?
Dr. Olivia Crandell (OC): I think I first heard a general announcement in the fall of 2024, likely in a campus-wide email. However, I didn't give it serious attention until it was actually brought up in a department faculty meeting. It's been about a year since I have had digital accessibility seriously on my radar.
Interviewer: What were your initial thoughts, feelings and concerns about the need to make your course materials accessible?
My initial thought was that this would be a lot of work, but I figured I could worry about it later. That thought changed when I started learning the 7 core skills and realizing just how monumental the task would be, particularly for certain elements. ~Dr. Olivia Crandell
OC: My biggest concern was the sheer volume of material, especially in a chemistry course where everything is imagery-based. We [teaching team] realized we would have to effectively touch and redo nearly every artifact and image across our entire course sequence—on every assignment, exam, PowerPoint, answer key, and video. Thinking about adding alt text and descriptive audio for all of those videos and images showed me just how truly inaccessible our current materials were by these new standards. We were talking about hundreds, even thousands of items to fix.
Interviewer: What were your expectations before you started getting into the process of making revisions vs. the reality of how things ended up going?
OC: My expectation was that I could rely heavily on accessibility checkers built into programs like PowerPoint, Word, and Canvas to quickly flag my missed items. However, I didn't account for how much of our course materials we build outside of those core platforms. Since we construct most of our chemistry material outside of these main tools. The Canvas checker is useless for most of our content, and third-party platforms that we rely on lack comprehensive accessibility checkers. This left me without a reliable way to verify that assignments are fully accessible.
The issue is compounded by the third-party tools we use. We use ChemDraw to create most of our images. We use a university-licensed third-party tool called Formative for activities. We like Formative because it's easy to take a screenshot of an image from ChemDraw and paste it directly into my PowerPoint or assignment. However, when I paste an image that way, Formative doesn't present an alt text option. A single activity for my class could have up to 40 images that need to be fixed. That has taken a lot of time.
I also rely on textbook publishers to ensure the accessibility of their accompanying homework programs, and I can't directly edit their material. I’m not able to go in and fix anything. I’m hoping that since this is a federal mandate that those publishers and third-party tools will begin to make larger strides towards digital accessibility.
Interviewer: Were there any big aha moments for you during the process?
OC: My biggest "aha" moment was actually not a positive one. I realized that just being compliant does not actually provide equal access.
Even if I add alt text to every image, which checks the compliance box, it doesn't achieve equal accessibility for visually impaired students in a STEM field. Our learning objectives often require the student to analyze the image itself, like a chemical reaction. If I were to state the chemical structure explicitly in the alt text, I would be compromising the learning objective.
What I've concluded is that sometimes the only compliant thing I can write is "image student needs to analyze." This checks the box, but it is not a stand-alone accommodation that provides equal access for that student. They will need extra accommodation on top of basic alt text to be able to meet the learning objectives for an activity. I'm constantly seeing this problem when it comes to analyzing graphs or complex images in my discipline.
Interviewer: How has your workflow changed when creating new course content? Have you integrated any new tools or processes?
OC: My workflow has changed significantly, particularly around how we handle file formats. We used to convert everything to PDFs because it prevented images, especially those made in ChemDraw, from scrambling when students opened them on various devices. I realized we must stop this since those PDFs are not accessible to a screen reader.
I am now building new content by being careful to embed alt text into Word or PowerPoint first, then ensuring I freeze it into a final format (like a PDF from Word) in a way that the accessibility features are saved. This takes a little longer, but once I get the hang of it, it becomes second nature.
The other biggest impact on my current workflow is that I am skimming back the amount of optional practice I offer for students. For example, if I have five variations of a question, I will only offer two because I don't have the time to create an accessible answer key for all five. Or I may skim down a 20-item practice down to 8 or 9 items because that’s all I have time to make accessible.
I feel bad about reducing student choices, but it's the only way I have time to make the required content accessible. And we are telling ourselves that as we get the essentials digitally accessible we can still go back to those items that we still have and make those accessible when we have more time. We can always add more back in when we have more time, but maybe we’ll find that less is more.
Interviewer: What tools or resources would you recommend to another faculty member who is getting started with digital accessibility?
OC: AI is often thought of as an enemy, but we can make it our friend in this situation. I find that AI can generate good transcripts for video. I also like to use AI for help in generating alt text for images. Instead of uploading every image I use, though, I found that I can upload one and get a good example of how to write strong STEM alt text and then I can take that example and tweak it for lots of images. The ODA gave us a list of AI resources for these types of things, and it has been helpful.Overall, though, I’m focusing my energy on fixing the things I can control instead of learning a new tool.
The other main tip I would recommend is to be very careful about relying on third-party platforms that lack comprehensive accessibility checkers, as this is the biggest obstacle in knowing if you've truly succeeded.
Authors/Contributors
- Rebecca George-Burrs, Academic Technologist, Academic Technology Support Services.
- Dr. Olivia Crandell, Assistant Professor, Center for Learning Innovation, Rochester Campus
We want to hear from you! To share your successes and challenges towards making your course site digitally accessible, please email atss@umn.edu.
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