Why Improving Accessibility Benefits All Students
In the midst of the semester's closing and faculty taking stock, an accessibility expert provides tips for making learning materials more accessible for all.
The end of the semester is often the best time for faculty and administrators to plan for future courses. With both evaluations in hand and memories fresh, it is an ideal opportunity to examine which materials students found engaging and which aspects of the course fell flat. It’s also an opportune time to consider ways to make course content more inclusive and accessible to all students.
“Just because you don’t have any students in your courses now who need different formats–that you’re aware of–doesn’t mean your next group of students isn’t going to have those needs,” says Amy DiMola, Senior Accessibility Strategist at Anthology, an education technology company that collaborates with and assists institutions in leveraging data to create more inclusive learning environments through accessible digital course content.
“We know faculty are passionate about what they’re teaching and want students to engage with the material,” she says. By considering students' different needs now when the material is fresh, faculty can ensure more students are fully participating with future courses and save themselves time, she adds. DiMola, who joined Anthology in 2021, has worked in disability services at both private and public universities. She now supports institutions when they introduce Anthology’s Ally tool to faculty. “Putting content in a more accessible format in the planning stages gives students more opportunities to engage with the materials right away.”
A Greater Need for Accessibility
As universities embrace more nontraditional learners, faculty are more often teaching working parents, busy professionals and people who may struggle with a variety of challenges, including chronic fatigue syndrome, long-COVID, or limited technological options.
Further, some students may begin their studies without a disability, only to find that status change within the course of a semester. “Disability is one of the few identity categories that someone can join at any time,” DiMola notes.
Resources Recommended by Amy DiMola,
Senior Accessibility Strategist at Anthology
To ensure that courses are accessible to all students, DiMola offers four easy adjustments faculty and administrators can implement while reviewing and updating their materials:
1. Add alternative text to images
Adding text or an image description allows more people to engage with the content, DiMola says, noting that it even lets students search by image. It’s also useful for students who may have poor Internet connections, as many browsers will still display the text even if they can’t load images efficiently. In addition, students using assistive technology can read the text. “Without that, some students may miss out on critical information,” she says.
2. Use styles to add headings to documents
Whether faculty use Word, Google docs or another word processing application, using the headings feature adds specific background coding that allows students to use the navigation pane so they can move more easily through longer documents like syllabi. “For students using assistive technology, this allows them to jump from heading to heading, rather than going line by line and can make a huge difference,” DiMola says.
3. Ensure proper color contrast
Color contrast analyzers like Color Safe can help faculty ensure that the tones they use for text and background are not difficult to differentiate. Proper contrast helps with glare, low vision and even older monitors.
4. Find digital alternatives to scanned PDFs
Faculty often scan book chapters, journal articles and other content and turn them into PDFs. While that is an easy way to create a piece of content, the documents themselves can be inaccessible. “The computer will engage with them like they’re images,” DiMola says, “And even assistive technology won’t be able to read them.” She suggests faculty partner with a librarian to find versions that are already digitized to replace any scanned PDFs.
Tools to Aid the Transition
Faculty and administrators can access a variety of tools when working to make their courses more accessible. Anthology Ally helps identify potential access issues, making the process of fixing them much smoother, DiMola says. A digital solution, it can help keep faculty from combing through courses manually to identify problems. “Because the tool identifies issues, it allows you to work proactively, rather than reactively,” she says.
For further reading, DiMola suggests the Inclusive Instructional Design blog, which provides a number of resources that cover a wide range of topics. For those specifically looking for help with alternative text, she recommends the Diagram Center.
Reframing the Issue
Instead of thinking of accessibility as an issue for a discrete group of students, DiMola recommends a broader view. She cites curb cuts as an example. These small ramps on street curbs were originally developed for people with wheelchairs. “But they’re helpful for nearly all of us–if you have a suitcase, a bicycle or a stroller, they've improved the walking around process for everyone,” she says.
The digital realm is similar. Apps created to read text messages were originally created for those with low vision, but people with perfect vision find them useful as well–saving time and improving safety. “By actively designing courses for more people from the outset, your students with disabilities are going to have an easier time accessing content, she says. “Further, it will allow more of your students to engage and even get passionate about the material.”
This custom content is sponsored by Anthology and developed by Inside Higher Ed's sponsored content team. The editorial staff of Inside Higher Ed had no role in its creation.