universal-design-center

Document Accessibility for Student Employees

New for 2022-2023! Emphasis on course materials and academic papers.

Word, PowerPoint, and Acrobat icons

In 2021-22, the Universal Design Center (UDC) conducted a pilot with select departments to train their student employees in making documents accessible. The pilot was a success, so for 2022-23 we are pleased to offer this program to all CSUN departments.

Goals for this program include:

  • Increase the availability of accessible documents at CSUN. 
  • Provide a cost-effective, scalable option for departments to get assistance with inaccessible document files. 
  • Introduce student employees to accessibility as an aspect of diversity, equity and inclusion.
  • Train student employees in the skills of both evaluating and remediating multiple file formats.  

Upon completion, student employees will be able to create, evaluate and, if needed, fix Word, PowerPoint and PDF documents.

The Summer training will be held from July to early August 2023 and takes 20 hours (maximum) to complete. An important component will be WebAIM's Accessible Document Training, offered courtesy of Information Technology. This on-demand (asynchronous) component of the training should take less than 12 hours. In parallel, the cohort will meet — in person — with the UDC team for five Friday afternoons, for a total of 7.5 hours.

24 seats remaining. Minimum cohort size: 10 student employees.

Summer 2023 Schedule

Supervisors' Orientation - June 2023

Training Schedule
WeekMeet-upTopicModuleAssessment
1July 12, 10am to 11:30amIntroduction1. Document Contentnone
2July 19, 10am to 11:30amDescriptive Text2. Document Structurenone
3July 26, 10am to 11:30amEvaluating documents (Word)3. Evaluating Accessibility & Creating PDFsEvaluating a document
4Aug. 2, 10am to 11:30amEvaluating documents (PDF)4. Optimizing PDFs in AcrobatEvaluating a document OR Fixing a document
5Aug. 9, 10am to 11:30amConclusionnoneFixing a document

Software/Tools

Required

Available for Windows and Mac

Screen Readers

Recommended

Windows only

Available for Windows and Mac

 

2023-2024

For more information about joining a future cohort, please contact the Universal Design Center at udc@csun.edu.