teaching onlinecreating accessible content

overview

Accessibility is all about breaking down the basic barriers to learning for students with disabilities. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework that was designed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) that assumes these barriers to learning are in the design of the learning environment, not the student. Based on brain science and evidence-based educational practices, when you design your course following accessibility guidelines and the UDL framework, you proactively break down these barriers to meet the needs of all learners. In this module, you will learn about the guidelines that allow students with disabilities to engage in equitable online learning experiences.

Learning Objectives

In this learning module, you will learn how to:

use properly formatted headings to structure the page,
format lists as lists,
write meaningful link text,
create tables with column and/or row headers,
use sufficient color contrast,
don't use color alone to convey meaning,
provide alternative text descriptions for images,
caption video,
transcribe audio, and
avoid requiring inaccessible software applications.

By the end of this module, we hope you will be able to create content that that can be easily read by assistive devices.

Instructions

In this module, read through the course materials and then take the self-assessment.

Readings

Why accessibility?
What are basic assistive technologies?
Why Universal Design?
How do I make my online course accessibility?
How is the Canvas LMS Accessible?

practice

Self-Assessment: Accessibility

Learning Activities: Create an accessible content page