Here it Comes: ILIAS Training Room with Preview

The University of Education in Freiburg is currently working on an ILIAS training room in order to support instructors in the creation of accessible learning materials and the design of an accessible learning environment on ILIAS, the open source learning management software. This training rooms allow instructors to work through different learning modules that cover the creation of accessible documents, accessible course rooms on ILIAS, and accessible digital exams on ILIAS. The training room will be released with a CC license at the end of June. You will be notified on this website when the training room is available.

Since, we do not want you to wait until the release, here is a little preview and guide on how you can already make a Word document more accessible.

Style Sheets

Use style sheets to mark headings as such. Headings that have only been marked in bold, underlined or italics are not perceived as headings by assistive technologies (e.g. screen readers), which prevents communication of the document structure.
Styles can be found in a Word document in the Home tab > Styles.

Table of Contents

With the help of the used style sheets, you can create a table of contents. This is used for better navigation and overview. Use the References tab > Table of Contents > Custom Table of Contents to create the table of contents and select the appropriate style sheets or headings.

Alternate text

Illustrations or graphics are often used for better comprehensibility and for additional information. However, without alternate text, illustrations cannot be rendered by assistive technologies, denying visually impaired readers the illustrations and consequently the information. To add an alternate text to an image, right-click on the image > Format Image > Layout and Properties > Alternate Text.
The input field opens on the right side in which you can enter the alternate text or mark the image as decorative.

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There are many more points on how you can design an accessible word document. All this and more, you will find in the ILIAS training room (coming soon).