In April 2024, the Department of Justice mandated that all state and local programs, including Penn State, must make their web and mobile applications accessible to individuals with disabilities by April 2026. This means our online course content must be fully accessible by then.
Join the Accessible Skills Challenge to master the essential skills needed to make your course content accessible and stay ahead of the curve!!
For 8 weeks, participants receive an email prompt asking them to perform a single accessibility task in their course. These tasks focus on core elements of content that can then be applied across the entire course. A badge will be provided for those who complete 6 of the 8 weekly tasks. Feel free to pick and choose which prompts you’d like to try! Alongside weekly prompts, you’ll receive resources to help complete tasks and answer FAQs. You will also have the opportunity to connect with other faculty in a dedicated Teams space.
The challenge will run from September 15 until November 9, 2025.
There are two levels of the challenge. Here are the skills covered in each level:
Level 1
- Canvas navigation
- Anthology Ally Course Accessibility Report
- Image alt text and long description
- Heading structure
- Links
- Lists
- Table Structure
- Audio description: Practice describing visual elements in your lecture
Register for the Fall 2025 Level 1 Accessible Skills Challenge!
Level 2
- Color Contrast
- PowerPoint Outline View
- PowerPoint Slide Titles
- PowerPoint Reading Order
- PDF OCR
- PDF auto tagging
- Video captioning
- Third-party tools
Register for the Fall 2025 Level 2 Accessible Skills Challenge!
Join in the experience and prepare your courses for next semester!!