January 13, 2026: Open Agenda [6 topics discussed]

Jessie Choate: how can faculty make sure slides/notes are accessible?

• Keith Hays: PDFs are ok, as long as they’ve been made accessible. Sharing source documents (PPT, Doc, etc.) is a better approach when possible.
  • Jessie: how do we make sure our PDFs are accessible?
  • Keith: PDFs need to be appropriately tagged, which is a complex process. An accessible source document will output a PDF which is (mostly) accessible
  • Dena Strong: easier to make slides accessible than PDFs
• Some helpful resources:
  • CITL: Make Your Course Accessible
  • CITL: Quick Start Accessibility Workshops
• Dena: another approach: create your presentation as a website with linked pages, e.g. using Publish.Illinois.Edu (PIE)
• Michael McKelvey: sharing files in proprietary formats (e.g. Office documents) used to be a barrier, but nowadays many people have access to MS products and Google Drive will display them for you.
  • Leslie Sherman: all U of I faculty, staff, students have access to MS Office.
• Leslie: some faculty are concerned about sharing source documents due to ability to easily copy the information in them; can they “lock” files?
  • Keith: yes, but if you do it the wrong way it caused problems. Text documents are generally ok, but forms are a problem.
• Brenden West: DRES has SensusAccess for converting documents if someone wants an alternative format (have only tested a little myself but seemed to work well)
  • Keith: SensusAccess does not preserve document format, so it should not be relied upon to create accessible primary documents. Further, it does not work very well for files containing tables and cannot provide alt text description for images or math formulas.
  • Dena: And it also does a pretty terrible job of converting PDF to other things, for those of us for whom a "standard accessible" PDF is not actually personally accessible.
  • Brenden: was thinking of it from the standpoint of posting an accessible primary document (such as Word) and then a user/student deciding that they wanted it in some other format (such as PDF) by choice. Advantages: no particular software needed for the conversion, plus a way to avoid posting multiple formats.
  • Keith: sure, if the original posted document is accessible and a student wants a different format, then SensusAccess could be useful in that scenario.

Liz Shallenberger: Should top-level navigation items be links or just drop-down links?

• Liz: in the Header Menu 1.2, some parent navigation items are links to pages (with a separate arrow to expand the submenu), while others only expand/collapse their submenu. Should we standardize on one, and is it a problem that both are used together?
• Courtney Fleeger: original intent was not to combine both approaches in a single menu; may just be in the demo to show what’s possible.
• Keith: the reason to have the split button was to allow for top-level links with child menus to function on mobile/touch interfaces. There was no practical way to do it without this. The practice of creating a link to a landing page that is the same as the top level text is confusing to menu users.
• Dena: WordPress expects each navigation menu item to be a link, so it requires extra work to implement the non-link option.
• Leslie: in recent College of Education redesign, decided not to make those top-level items links; more of a usability issue than an accessibility issue.
• There seems to be a need for both approaches across campus; can't mandate everyone uses a single approach, so need to support both.
• Michael: recommend using only one approach in demo, add note about not mixing the patterns.

Making PowerPoint text boxes accessible?

• Priyanka Pradeep: in PowerPoint, how do I make the text boxes with content that are already created accessible without having to completely re-do all my slides?
• Dena: run the native PowerPoint accessibility checker. It'll handle that really well.
• Main thing with manually created text boxes is to make sure the reading order is correct.
• Keith: if you use shapes that have text in them, you will need to add alt text matching the text in the shape, so don’t us shapes for more than a concise sentence or two.
• Keith: there is now parity between Mac & Windows version of PowerPoint - they both now have a Reading Order panel, in Accessibility section of ribbon (to get Accessibility menu item to show up, need to run Accessibility Companion in Review section of ribbon, or in menu at bottom of window). Note about the accessibility item at the bottom of the window: when you open the document, it defaults to “Accessibility: Good to Go” even though it hasn’t actually checked anything yet. Need to run the accessibility checker to get useful information.

Matthew Schneier: Payment Processing website

• Matthew: Self assessment Q&A - 4 questions with answers hidden initially. “Reveal the answers” button shows the answers with aria-live=”polite” set on answer <span> elements
• Keith:
  • Put all test questions in a container wrapping all the questions, give it an ID
  • On button, put aria-controls=”CONTAINERID”
• Dena: initial impulse was to click into field and type in answer. Maybe use an accordion instead? Make question the title of accordion, put answer in expanded/collapsed region.
• Dena: also recommend checking color contrast of buttons.
• Leslie: System Office has a color palette guide, which might be useful.

Keith: when did accordion pattern change to essentially a series of unconnected disclosure regions?

• Mark: not sure, will have to investigate… looks like APG's accordion example has worked the same way since at least February 2024.
• Here is a version of the original accordion widget example that I wrote. The difference between this and a series of collapsible regions is the use of the arrow key navigation between the toggle buttons. There was no composite widget role, and I can’t remember how it worked with a screen reader.

How to handle headings in document tabs in Google Docs

• Michael: Does anyone have guidance for proper heading structure within document tabs in Google Docs?
  • Should there still be only one H1 in the entire Google doc, at the beginning of the first tab? And then would each subsequent tab start with an H2? What about subtabs? Would they start at a lower heading level, like H3? I'm not sure that would always make sense relative to the heading structure of the parent tab...
  • Alternatively, is each tab its own document, so should each tab start with H1? Again, what about subtabs? Is the tab list almost like a website's navigation menu? Each page on a website starts with H1, regardless of its nesting in the navigation menu - is that the right paradigm for document tabs?
  • Or does it depend on how someone is using tabs? I've seen tabs used to essentially combine multiple documents into a single doc for navigation convenience, in which case starting each tab with H1 might make sense. On the other hand, sometimes the tabs seem to act more like main sections within the doc, in which case starting with an H2 might make the most sense for all tabs after the first one.
• Meenal Dobariya: I treat tabs as just anchor links to a single document.
• Dena: might make sense to think of a Google Doc with multiple tabs as similar to a journal with multiple articles - each article in a journal should start with an H1; it's ok to break the usual pattern here of one H1 per document, when there's a good reason to do so and it's done thoughtfully.
• There does not seem to be a known best practice for this yet, since document tabs have essentially changed the paradigm of what a "document" is in Google Docs. Keith will investigate further. For now, we think starting each tab with an H1 is probably the most reasonable approach.