Alan Pruitt

Essay 35: Automating Accessibility - Curriculum-as-Code & Continuous Integration

• 2 min read

When public higher education institutions faced the Department of Justice’s mandate for ADA Title II (WCAG 2.1/2.2 Level AA) compliance, traditional instructional design hit an operational wall. Manually auditing hundreds of Canvas pages, inspecting heading tags in rich text editors, and manually verifying image alt-text lengths across multi-section course fleets is unsustainable.

Sustainable accessibility requires a fundamental paradigm shift: Curriculum-as-Code.

The Shift-Left Accessibility Architecture

In software engineering, “Shift-Left” means catching defects early in the development lifecycle rather than in production. Applying this to course design transforms instructional assets into plain, version-controlled Markdown files audited by automated CI/CD pipelines before deployment.

+------------------+     +-------------------------------+     +-----------------------+
| Plain Markdown   | --> | GitHub Actions CI Pipeline    | --> | Production Canvas LMS |
| Course Shells    |     | (Heading & Alt-Text Linters)  |     | Deployment            |
+------------------+     +-------------------------------+     +-----------------------+

Core Audit Guardrails

Our custom Curriculum-as-Code Accessibility Linter enforces deterministic rules across the entire course fleet:

  1. Deterministic Heading Hierarchy (WCAG 1.3.1):

    • Canvas LMS reserves <h1> for page titles. All document content must begin at <h2>.
    • Strict sequential progression prevents skipping heading levels (e.g., jumping directly from <h2> to <h4>).
    • Mixed HTML (<h1-h6>) and Markdown (#{1,6}) headers are parsed seamlessly.

  2. Concise Image Alt-Text (WCAG 1.1.1):

    • All visual elements must include non-empty, descriptive alt text.
    • Restricts alt-text length to 120 characters or fewer to maintain efficient screen reader output without cognitive overload.

  3. Structural Delimiter Immunity:

    • Structural prompt fences (###, ### STRUCTURAL_DELIMITER) used in clinical AI prompt engineering are safely isolated, preventing false-positive heading skips.

Continuous Integration via GitHub Actions

By embedding the linter into .github/workflows/accessibility-audit.yml, every git push or pull request automatically validates 100% of course Markdown assets:

name: Curriculum-as-Code Accessibility Audit

on:
  push:
    branches: [ main ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main ]

jobs:
  accessibility-audit:
    name: WCAG 2.2 AA & ADA Title II Compliance Check
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: '3.11'
      - name: Run Accessibility Linter
        run: python3 scripts/curriculum_accessibility_linter.py .

Summary: Immutable Accessibility Baselines

Treating curriculum as code converts accessibility compliance from an administrative chore into a permanent, automated build baseline. When federal regulations or institutional standards update, automated scripts audit and refactor entire course fleets in seconds—guaranteeing universal access for every resident student.