Planning for Accessibility

Webster University

Knowledge Center

Planning for Accessibility

As you start your planning, it's a good idea to think about accessibility right from the start. The goal of accessibility is to ensure that all of your students are able to access your course content. This is an important consideration both in terms of student equity and in terms of supporting your students' overall success in your course.

What do we mean when we talk about "accessibility"?

  • Accessibility within the context of remote learning means that all of our students, including our students with disabilities, are able to access what they need for their education. We want all of our students to benefit from the resources, content, collaboration, feedback, and support we provide them as instructors, so we take into account a wide variety of needs as we prepare to teach.
  • Because of the important work of the Disability Rights Movement, there are now laws and regulations (such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA) that prohibit discrimination based on disability, and as well as social expectations that encourage people and institutions to design environments allowing people with disabilities to fully participate. Our online environments should also be designed in this way, with the goal of full access and participation by all.
  • Many of the strategies we use to make our course material accessible to students with disabilities (such as captioning our videos, for instance) benefit all of our students, and this idea is at the core of a movement called University Design for Learning (UDL). UDL is an approach that provides flexibility for students to learn in ways that work for them. This approach offers multiple ways for students to access content and multiple ways for them to interact and engage with it. For more information about this framework, check out this Knowledge Center Page on Universal Design for Learning.

What are some of the most impactful things I can do to make my course accessible to all my students?

What are some of the benefits of thinking about accessibility right now?

  • By thinking about accessibility as you plan your course, you'll likely choose to incorporate content that already has accessible features (such as a video that's already captioned, or a document that's readable by a screen reader). This will save you time in the long run since you won't have to make changes to as much of your content.
  • You'll have fewer changes to make on the fly when you receive an accommodation letter. If you build these practices into your courses, you may not have to hustle as much during busy parts of the term to make sure your students with disabilities are able to access the materials for your course.
  • All students benefit from the changes we make when we adopt a universal design approach, or even when we make small changes to enhance the accessibility for our courses. Consider the following examples:
    • You start captioning short mini-lecture videos you create yourself. A busy student is able to watch these videos with the sound off in the same room as their family and benefit from the content. Another student speaks English as a second language and the captions make your videos even more clear for them. Yet another wants to go back and review specific parts of your lectures, and they use the captioning to find the appropriate spot.
    • You find web-based content to replace some older PDFs that were scanned from journals years ago. A blind student in your class is able to read the text using a screen reader extension they have on their browser. Another student does much of their reading on their phone, and the web-based content is sized appropriately for them to read, while the PDF had been difficult to navigate.
    • You record the classes you hold in Webex or Zoom and post links for the sessions the day after. One student uses the recording to review part of your lecture that was on a challenging concept for them. Another student couldn't make it to the live session because they were caring for a sick family member, but they have this recording as a backup to get caught up. Another is a health care worker who has been pulling long shifts and they were exhausted by the time they came to your remote class. They use the recording to review the content they don't remember the next day.

If you're encountering these principles for the first time, it can feel overwhelming as you think about the many materials within your course and how you'd like to enhance them to make them accessible. Our advice is to choose one or two things that are manageable, and start there. Perhaps you start with making your documents accessible this term, and next term you work on video captioning and an accessibility statement, and then even later on, you add image descriptions. When you're trying to make changes, it's best to pick something that really is doable and that you can fit into your workflow.

If you have students who need accommodations to be successful in your class, you may need to fast-track some of this work, focusing specifically on the accommodations that will provide an equitable experience for these students.

Accessibility in Canvas

WorldClassRoom (Canvas) is designed with accessibility in mind. However, instructors are responsible for ensuring that the content created and shared in Canvas also meets accessibility standards. This includes, but is not limited:

  • HTML
  • Files like Microsoft Word and PDF
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Data tables
  • Graphics like maps and charts

If you need assistance improving accessibility of your content, review the following guide: Creating Accessible Documents

If a student with a disability encounters an unexpected barrier in Canvas and you are unable to resolve it, please send an email to the Academic Resource Center for assistance.

Canvas Check Accessibility Tool

Use the Canvas Check Accessibility tool (Links to an external site.) in the rich content editor to identify and fix any accessibility issues, including:

  • Headings out of sequence
  • Missing alternative text
  • Low Color Contrast
  • Missing table captions and header rows

Extra Time on Quizzes and Exams

One of the most frequent requests for accommodation is for the provision of extra time on quizzes and exams. Please review the Canvas Guide on how to make this modification to a quiz for a student.

Providing extra time on quizzes and exams (Links to an external site.)

Resources