As myself, along with most other public university instructors continue to work to implement the digital accessibility requirements of the new ADA Title II rules (the deadline for which was extended to April 2027 for large institutions), accessibility checkers are a great resource. While our campus IT team has installed PopeTech, a valuable tool, into our Canvas LMS installation, there is still a need for accessibility checkers for other platforms. Microsoft’s built-in checker is also good. What about Google Docs etc., however? Such a tool is critical for me as I host my syllabi in Google Docs so that I can easily share it with various interested parties including:
- Students whose admission into the course is still in progress.
- Students who are curious about the course either because they are “shopping around” or because they are already enrolled and want to get a head start before the LMS page becomes available.
- Colleagues at other institutions who may be interested in my course.
After some searching I came across Inkable Docs which is an Add-on for Google Docs. I just tried it on my syllabus and was pleased with how well it worked. It identified most of the issues mentioned in the relevant Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 Level AA and had AI-assisted suggestions to fix them. I was able to use the tool to bring my syllabus up to standard in about 2hrs and this includes the time I need to update my syllabus each semester anyway (new dates etc.).
Of course, this is neither a paid endorsement, nor a guarantee that this will completely meet the requirements, but I still found it to be a good tool.