Accessibility+ calculates an accessibility score for course content based on WCAG and ISO standards, issue severity, and the types of content in a course. Scores help instructors and institutions understand the accessibility health of their content and track improvements over time.
This topic explains how Accessibility+ evaluates individual assets, calculates course-level scores, and produces institution-level accessibility scores.
Important: This feature is part of the D2L Accessibility+ for Brightspace add-on solution that must be purchased separately. For more information, contact your D2L Client Sales Executive or Account Manager.
Issue Severity
Accessibility+ applies different point values to issues based on WCAG and ISO conformance levels, reflecting the relative importance and impact of each issue:
- Critical severity is assigned 4 points
- High severity is assigned 3 points
- Medium severity is assigned 2 points
- Low severity is assigned 1 point
This weighting ensures that issues with the highest learner impact affect the score more heavily.
How Individual Assets Are Scored
Each content asset in a course—such as an HTML file, PDF, Word document, PowerPoint, video, audio file, link, or other supported resource—is evaluated for accessibility issues.
For every asset, Accessibility+ looks at:
- Test Fails: the number of automated accessibility checks that fail
- Occurrences: the number of times each type of issue appears
- Issue Severity: Critical, High, Medium or Low
- Asset Weight: the relative weight of the asset (currently all assets = 1)
Accessibility+ calculates a score per asset by combining:
- The number of issues
- Their severity weighting
- Their frequency (occurrences)
- The asset’s assigned weight
Currently, all content types are weighted equally, so each asset contributes the same baseline weight to the course score.
Icon Indicators
The icon and its color will vary depending on how many accessibility issues are found in the resource.
Grey: Accessibility score not available
0–49% Red: Poor / Failing - indicates significant accessibility issues
50–74% Yellow: Needs improvement / moderate issues
75–100% Green: Good / Excellent - indicates the content is largely accessible
How Course Scores Are Calculated
Once each asset has a score, Accessibility+ rolls these values up into a single course-level accessibility score.
A Course Weight may be applied to each course, but currently all courses are weighted to 1, meaning each course contributes equally to institution-level scoring.
Example from the scoring model:
- Course 1: Score = 0.354, Weight = 1
- Course 2: Score = 0.540, Weight = 1
The weighted average produces the institution-level score.