Hands typing on a laptop keyboard

Accessibility is always important, but it might be even more so in an entirely online or a hybrid course. Ensuring students have access to everything they need to succeed is absolutely doable!

Universal Design for Learning (UDL):

UDL is a framework that helps to maximize learning and remove barriers for everyone involved. The idea is to build the accessibility into your course rather than having to provide an accommodation later. There are three key principles:

  • Give learners multiple means of acquiring information.
    • A physical and an online textbook; a video and a transcription 
  • Provide multiple options for learners to demonstrate what they’ve learned.
    • A paper or a video; a presentation or a podcast
  • Provide multiple types of student engagement.
    • Synchronous or asynchronous; in-person or online; google docs or discussion posts

Some ideas on getting started with UDL:

  • Make sure your syllabus clearly states what’s required of students.
  • At the beginning of class, provide an outline of a class period’s activities or the information in a lecture.
  • Summarize points throughout a lecture or discussion and tie them to learning outcomes, readings, and student ideas.
  • Offer a variety of assessment options for students, such as textual, audio, and video.
  • Include a variety of activities in a class session:
    • In-person class: lecture, group work, individual work.
    • Synchronous virtual class: breakout rooms on Zoom, pauses in the lecture for free writing, use of the chat function.
    • Asynchronous recorded lectures: ask students to pause the video to participate in an activity such as free writing, adding to a collaborative google doc, or referencing the textbook or reading.

Accessible design for course documents:

General ideas:

  • Provide digital copies of all hard copy materials.
  • Make sure the text is changeable as well; provide a word doc instead of a PDF so students can enlarge text if they need to.
  • Provide access to digital materials before a class period.
  • Be sure the text is searchable, so don’t save a scan as an image.
  • Always include captions on videos. Kaltura, Zoom, and YouTube all provide automatic captions, but you should edit them to make sure they’re correct.

Fonts:

  • Choose a common font and limit the number of fonts on your website, LMS, syllabus, and assignment sheets.
  • Aim to choose fonts that clearly differentiate letters that tend to look similar
    • For example, in a font like Arial, “I” [capital letter i] vs “l” [lowercase letter L] look the exact same; similarly, b [lowercase letter B] and p [lowercase letter P] are mirror images of each other, which can cause confusion for some readers.
  • Kernings, which adjust the space between letters, are important. Otherwise, “modern” may look like “modem”
  • Limit use of italics, bold, and ALL CAPS, which many screen readers don’t work well with.
    • However, bold is a better option than italics.
  • Don’t underline items that are not links.

Colors:

  • Use high contrast colors.
  • Use solid-color backgrounds instead of patterns or busy images.
  • Aim for black instead of grays.
    • Generally, avoid yellow, green, orange, pink, and red text as they’re hard to read; the best colors are black, burnt orange, and very dark gray.
  • Make sure links are both underlined and a different color.

Layout:

  • Utilize built-in organizational tools in Word documents, Google Docs, Powerpoints, and your LMS pages.
    • Headings, subheadings, and paragraphs will help to differentiate types of information visually.
    • In addition, use descriptive section headings.
  • Make sure each page on your website or LMS follows the same layout/organizational strategy to prevent confusion.
  • Break up long chunks of text and paragraphs to ensure students maintain attention. White space is your friend!
  • Check to make sure your website or LMS is visually understandable on any type of device your students might use: computers, tablets, and phones.
  • Use numbered lists when the items in the list need to follow a sequential order; use bullet points otherwise.
  • Align to the left instead of centering or justifying text.
  • Embed hyperlinks in descriptive text (i.e. watch “a video about thesis statements” instead of “click here”).

Free Online Accessibility Checkers: