ACCESSIBILITY

Keeping Universal Design in Mind for All Students and Course Elements 

Why it's important

You may have heard the term ‘accessibility’ in passing from university administrators or remember someone from the Office of Disabilities mentioning ‘universal design’ without giving much thought as to how it relates to you as an instructor. W3C notes that accessibility means that any tools and technologies one uses are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. Making learning content accessible means that those with auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech or visual impairments (permanent or temporary) can access, perceive, navigate and ultimately participate in their studies. For instructors, this means proactively participating in the process of making the educational materials you give students as accessible as possible. 

The Law & Ethics of Inclusion

From a compliance standpoint, all public or private schools that receive federal funding are required under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act to make their programs accessible to students. Failing to make reasonable accommodations for students online can be an actionable offense resulting in substantive lawsuits against universities. As online and blended courses continue to proliferate, this trend has become even more pronounced.


Legalities aside, we also believe that making online education accessible is an ethical imperative that’s bolstered by universal design principles, that is, the best practices used to design learning environments so that they can be accessed, interpreted and utilized to the greatest extent possible by all students regardless of their ability or disability. 

One of the most significant perks of an online course developed with universal design in mind is that it permits students with a diverse range of learning barriers (any element in a person’s learning environment that, through their absence or presence, limit functioning and create disability) to participate alongside their peers. However, if you don’t keep up with accessibility for all of your course materials, you might end up unintentionally excluding students from accessing materials that are crucial for their success. For instance, you or an instructional designer you worked with might have spent a good amount of time making sure that each of the course content pages in Canvas, our native Learning Management System, were accessible. But what about other documents and files in the course (Word Docs, PPTs, PDFs, etc.)? If you’ve never had a look, or aren’t sure where to start, we’ve provided some basic tips and tricks below that will help you take your first steps in remediating your documents. 

Getting Started with Remediation

There simply isn’t enough space here for all the remedial situations you’ll encounter. So we wanted to focus on some of the most frequently encountered issues in courses: Canvas page accessibility and commonly used documents: Microsoft products (Word, PPTs) and Adobe PDFs. Most likely, you use these documents in conjunction with Canvas to produce readings, tables, lecture notes, work aids, video transcriptions, technical instruction sheets, etc. If you weren’t already aware, Canvas, Microsoft and Adobe have built-in accessibility checkers in their tool sets. If you’ve never checked your own documents before, you might be surprised by the amount of inaccessible materials present. Below are a few quick instructional guides for how to check for accessibility, and how to fix some of the most common accessibility issues in docs.

How to Check Your Canvas Course for Accessibility 

How to Use Accessibility Checkers for Microsoft Docs and Adobe PDFs

How to Fix Common Accessibility Issues in Microsoft Docs and Adobe PDFs

Pro-Tip Takeaways