Beyond Accessibility Checkers: New AI-Powered Evaluation Tools for Faculty
Accessibility testing tools like the Course Accessibility Report are an essential part of preparing for the changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that take effect in April 2027. CSUN provides a variety of tools to help you evaluate the accessibility of your content, and we encourage you to use them throughout the development process.
Start with Automated Accessibility Checkers
- Canvas Course Accessibility Report
- WAVE toolbar for web pages and applications (plus additional tools and extensions for web evaluations)
- Check Accessibility in Microsoft Office
- Check for accessibility in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
Why Human Review Still Matters
Realistically, automated accessibility checkers identify only about one-third to one-half of accessibility barriers. To ensure that a document or Canvas page is truly accessible to students, human review is also necessary.
The Universal Design Center (UDC) has developed resources to help you evaluate accessibility issues that automated tools might miss. Our Course Accessibility Checklist outlines important criteria to review and includes links to additional guidance and resources.
The 8-Question Basic Accessibility Evaluation
Our 8-question Basic Accessibility Evaluation helps you efficiently identify common accessibility issues that automated checkers may miss. These eight areas are:
- Readability
- Searchable text
- Title (the door to your content)
- Link text descriptions
- Color
- Zooming or magnifying
- Navigating without a mouse (keyboard navigation)
- Video captions
AI-Assisted Accessibility Evaluation
Evaluating these eight questions has traditionally been a manual process, until now.
CSUN’s ChatGPT Edu helps bridge the gap between automated accessibility checkers and human review by automating many of these evaluations for web pages and files.
Introducing the Basic Accessibility Evaluation GPT
Introducing the Basic Accessibility Evaluation! This custom CSUN ChatGPT tool allows you to submit web pages or upload files for evaluation. It performs additional checks that complement automated accessibility tools and helps identify issues they may overlook.
Built within the CSU’s ChatGPT environment, it includes the safety, privacy, and data protection measures implemented across the CSU system.
Make Accessibility Part of Your Workflow
Spending just a few minutes on these additional checks can help create a more inclusive learning experience for all students while supporting ADA compliance efforts.