Accessibility

The learners whom we aim to serve are diverse. Some aspects of diversity we can see and hear, but most we cannot. Creating a digitally inclusive classroom starts with considering the learning experience for learners from different cultural backgrounds, technical ability, language proficiencies, ages, sexes, races, genders, experience, and the list goes on. Although it’s a good empathetic exercise to put yourself in the mindset of your potential students, it’s impossible to know or predict all of their needs. Below are a few tips and tactics to create an inclusive learning experience, regardless of all of the ways your students may be diverse.

Tips and Tactics

• Assume students have a wide range of technology skills and provide options for gaining the technology skills needed for course participation.

• Present content in multiple ways (e.g., in a combination of text, video, audio, and/or image format).

• Address a wide range of language skills as you write content (e.g., use simple and direct language, spell out acronyms, define terms, and avoid/define jargon).

• Consider get-to-know you surveys and virtual icebreakers at the beginning of class. It’s important that students know you care about them as individuals, and this helps build a supportive digital community.

• When designing, developing, or selecting case studies and examples assure a diversity of thought and context.

• Select a diverse array of images and visuals to use in course materials so learners can see themselves and others represented.

• If you plan on using discussion, model the sort of feedback and responses you expect students to give. There will likely be a vast array of social communication styles.

Your students will likely have families, live in different time zones, and some may be caring for elderly or sick dependents. A 2018 report conducted by Learning House and Alsatian Market Research found that nearly 67 percent of students now use mobile devices to complete some online coursework. Given the array of different life circumstances and ways in which students are accessing content, here are a few tips and tactics we can employ to help your students be successful.

Tips and Tactics

• Make instructions and expectations clear for activities, projects, and assigned readings.

• Consider clustering practice opportunities within a week, instead of spreading them out in between more passive learning exercises such as watching recorded video. Although it may be idea to slow learners down to reflect and apply what they are learning, busy learners in online programs tend to want to passively consume content (reading, video, etc.) and then cluster practice at a dedicated time and space. Seek to strike the right balance within your course, depending on what you know about your students and your course content.

• Consider alternatives to video, such as an audio format that can be listened to like a podcast while on the go.

• Offer outlines and other scaffolding tools to help students learn.

The research is clear: students do not have learning styles, but they do have preferences for how they interact with content. Flexible digital learning environments where students are responsible for directing their own learning cultivate a positive attitude towards the learning experience and those who create it. The outcomes and content included in your course should be the primary driver of delivery choice, modality and, content sequencing. However, there are ways to honor student preference without compromising content delivery.

Tips and Tactics

• Provide opportunities for students to make choices in how they complete assignments and demonstrate learning. For example, a final project could be a presentation, an essay, or a website, all of which may meet the same learning outcome.

• Explain and display your content in multiple complementary ways. For example, students tend to learn better from graphics with narrations than from animations with on-screen text because processing an animation and reading onscreen text dramatically increase cognitive load.

• Encourage students to self-regulate and self-direct their learning towards their interests and abilities. This may include: allowing them to choose from a list of articles on a variety of topics or providing an auto-graded leveling test at the beginning of the asynchronous content and the opportunity to skip ahead or explore on their own should they score well.

• Provide options for communicating and collaborating that are accessible to individuals with a variety of abilities.

• Make examples and assignments relevant to learners with a wide variety of interests and backgrounds.

There are several steps that can be taken in order to make slides more accessible for students who will be using screen readers:

1. Use pre-set slide layout templates.

   • Using these templates correctly will ensure that the PowerPoint files have correctly-structured headings and lists, proper reading order, etc. The correct use of slide layouts is probably the most significant thing we can do to ensure that content is accessible to screen readers.

   • Setting the reading order or using the template with pre-set layouts allows screen reading software to read the information in a logical order.

2. Use bullets (not hyphens or shapes) for listed information.

3. Spell out general abbreviations, and spell out acronyms the first time they are introduced.

4. Minimize use of decorative graphics (clipart); graphics should help the learner understand or organize the material.

5. Give each slide a unique title.

6. Make some wise choices in terms of font, color, and contrast.

   • Font should be large enough for legibility (12 pt or larger)

   • Ensure color alone is not used to distinguish concepts or data; use texture (or other visual cues, such as change in shape or a text label) in graphs, instead of color, to highlight points of interest

   • Keep overall contrast in your presentation high

   • Patterns and images behind text make it more difficult to read

   • Create tables with editable text; do not present tables as images

   • These fonts are recommended for legibility:

     1. Verdana, Georgia, Helvetica/Arial, Tahoma

   • Links should be properly formatted; use language that describes where the link goes. For example, rather than "click here," use descriptive text for links, such as "explore our social programs."

7. Provide good semantic structure.

   • Headers are a simple way to give semantic structure.

8. Include alt text/image descriptions.

   • Students with visual or cognitive impairments use screen readers which read their coursework out loud (or render in Braille through assistive technology), but screen readers cannot interpret/discern the content, context, or function of an image. So, text must be provided that describes every image which conveys relevant visual information (images that are purely decorative—those that do not present important content and are used for layout or other non-informative purposes—do not need description).

9. Find alternate ways to communicate the key visual content that needs to be conveyed to the student.

   • Complex images such as graphs, charts, and diagrams will require longer descriptions or need to be provided in a different format. In order to effectively communicate the visual content, the image description should be a full text equivalent of the data or information provided in the image (for instance, a line graph that represents the price of a stock over time might be: “The price of the stock rises from $45 in January of 2015 to over $76 in June of 2015 with a significant drop of 30% during the month of March”).

   • Descriptive text should be inserted into the image description field within the slide.

1. Provide captioning and transcripts with video.

2. Be vigilant of narration during filming. Professor should describe actions and all relevant visual information. Descriptive narration for annotations, lightboards, on-screen demos, etc.

3. To be accessible any 3rd party or YouTube videos must have captions.

4. If necessary, annotated slides or slides where content is handwritten during filming should be provided as a downloadable file with appropriate, additional alt-text.

1. If presenting or lecturing with new materials (slides) in live sessions, share materials ahead of time with students, and make sure to use accessible formatting if necessary (e.g. alt-text, well-formatted documents).

2. If screen sharing will be required in live session, instructor should be prepared to use accessible presenting strategies providing detailed narration of visual information, e.g. "I'm circling the triangle that says 'data' because...").

Below, please find examples of typical content accessibility challenges and possible solutions.

Issue: Downloaded course materials, including syllabi, readings, and PowerPoint decks are not properly structured and formatted or are PDFs of photocopies--all of which will prevent screen reader software from accessing them easily (or at all).

• • Solution: All documents should be created with proper semantic structure and formatted for accessibility (for example, PDFs should be tagged). Whenever possible, provide a version of the document in Word, text, or HTML (all of which are easily accessed by screen readers).

  • Note: For readings from online textbooks, faculty may want to consult with their school’s Office of Disability Services to check that these materials are accessible and obtain accessible versions if they’re not.

Issue: Photos, graphs, diagrams, and illustrations on webpages and in slide decks do not include text alternatives (screen readers are unable to access images or discern their content or context).

• • Solution: Provide a textual alternative or, in the case of data in charts and graphs, present the information in an accessible table.

Issue: Equations are presented as image files (which are inaccessible to screen readers).

• • Solution: Create equations using MathType (an add-on for Microsoft Word); export them in MathML or LaTeX; and deliver them via simple HTML files (that can be created using Sublime or another source code editor).

Issue: Students are expected to access linked content outside the platform, which may or may not be caption/transcribed, contain alt text, or have other unknown and unaddressed barriers to access.

• • Solution: Consider obtaining the rights to use the content within your course or finding comparable alternate content that can be incorporated into your coursework.

Issue: Video response or live demonstration assignments may be difficult for students who are blind or visually impaired to accomplish without assistance.

• • Solution: Consider offering alternate means of completing the assignment (providing a written or recorded audio track of one’s response), unless there are pedagogical reasons for not doing so (the coursework includes role-playing as a therapist or making a formal business presentation to the class, etc.).

Issue: Non-lecture videos (e.g., clips from news reports, TV shows, documentaries, movies, videotaped workshop panels, etc.) contain visual information that is not conveyed in the narration or dialogue, such as setting, characters, facial expressions, body language, action, costume, the identification of a speaker, on-screen text, graphs or charts.

• • Solution: Provide a version of the video containing audio description.

Issue: You have questions about color contrast, ratio, or color blindness.

• • Solution:

    • Color Contrast Checker: https://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html#fg=33FF33,bg=333333

    • Contrast Ratio Checker: https://contrast-ratio.com/

    • How to Design for Color Blindness: https://usabilla.com/blog/how-to-design-for-color-blindness/