Universal Design for Learning

As described in Chapter 3, you can design your course to be accessible through the way(s) in which you present that content, applying the guidelines of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), “a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.”^[1]

UDL states that you can improve education for all learners by designing multiple ways of engaging with your course’s content. There are various ways to implement UDL in your teaching:

1. Represent ideas from different angles and in different media types to accommodate the diverse needs of learners.
2. Provide support for students to express their understanding of concepts in different ways.
3. Allow students to engage in different ways by providing a variety of assignment types.^[2]

As the BC Campus OER Accessibility Toolkit (2015) explains, UDL principles can be applied to accessibility as well as learning. The toolkit provides the following examples for instructors:^[3]

• Design resources that can be accessed by learners in a variety of ways. If there is a text component, provide the ability to enlarge the font size or change the text color.
• Design multiple ways for learners to engage with information and demonstrate their knowledge.
• Identify activities that require specific sensory or physical capability and for which it might be difficult to accommodate the accessibility needs of learners (e.g., color matching activities).

As an educator, thinking about UDL as a process tied to the creation, sharing, and use of course content is essential. How can you get started?  Think about one small step you might implement each semester.

Digital Accessibility: Image & Text Readability

Whenever you are presenting content to students, it’s important to check whether the text in your course content is recognizable to a computer as text. For PDFs, accurate optical character recognition (OCR) is often required to make the text understandable. Screen-readers require this information to accurately relay text back to students.

In April 2024, a new rule was added to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for Title II institutions setting the minimum standards for digital content conformance of all web content, including text, images, sound, videos, and documents. All digital course materials need to meet accessibility standards. The best practices listed in the sections below will support you in this process.

Use heading levels (h1, h2, h3)

Text-based content should always have a clear and logical structure. Using headings and other structural elements to organize your resource can make it easier for all learners to access and understand the material. Many editing tools support table of contents (TOC) generation based on where these section markers are placed. This can help students navigate to a specific chapter or section of a text, especially if the digital version of the resource has its TOC hyperlinked to each section within the text.

Individuals using screen readers can also more easily navigate the sections of your content when headings levels have been applied consistently.

From the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Use true lists

While they may “look” similar to bulleted lists, using asterisks or icons to create a visual list of items can confuse a screen reader that is expecting to encounter structured content. Whenever listing items, use the true list features of your content editor, such as bullet points or numbered lists.

Provide alt text & captions

No matter the subject of an image used in your content, you need to offer descriptive text. A screen reader will look for a contextual description of an image to share with readers, which should live in the text surrounding the image (title or caption) or as alternative (“alt”) text. This is one of the most commonly overlooked aspects of accessibility for instructional content, but most text editors include tools for adding alt text to images.

When adding alt text to an image, be sure to clearly and succinctly describe the most important elements for the student to know. Do not include extraneous detail. In some cases, you do not need to add alt text at all, as in the case of purely decorative images.

From the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Video and audio content needs descriptive text as well, but these usually take the form of captions or, in the case of podcast recordings, transcripts. You can easily add captions to videos using Canvas’ Arc tool or by using YouTube’s built-in editor tools. For more help with this process, see The Captioning Project at UVA, or reach out to an instructional designer near you.

Use descriptive link text

Ensure that all web pages and links have titles that describe a topic or purpose. The purpose of the link can be determined by the text alone. That is, you don’t need to include additional information justifying the use of the link. You want the link to be meaningful in context. For example, do not use generic text such as “click here” or “read more” unless the purpose of the link can be determined by meaning in the surrounding content.

From the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Use Accessible Fonts & Colors

Content should be readable for those with disabilities related to color as well. Some best practices for ensuring that fonts and colors are accessible are described below:

• Use dyslexic-friendly fonts, such as Arial, Century Gothic, Open Sans, and Verdana. Your institution might recommend certain fonts for digital and print materials. These recommended fonts are usually chosen for ease of use and accessibility and may be a good fit for your needs as well.
• Make sure there is a clear contrast between colors (e.g. between the background and font color, or between separate colors on a graph). There are many free online tools available for checking color contrast, but we recommend WebAim’s Color Contrast Checker and ContrastChecker.com.
• Do not use color to communicate meaning without other markers of that meaning present. If you have color-dependent information in images or within the text of your resource, be sure that either alternative methods of recognition (such as differing patterns) are present, or that the contrast can be adjusted by users.

From the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Online Accessibility Tools

There are a number of accessibility-checking tools to identify areas that can make it difficult for assistive technology tools to work properly. The online WAVE tool does just that: identifying errors and possible issues with the accessibility of websites.

The Flexible Learning for Open Education (floe) website provides access to a suite of tools intended to “supports learners, educators and curriculum producers in achieving one-size-fits-one learning design for the full diversity of learners.”^[4]

Text Attribution

• This chapter was adapted from “Accessibility and Usability” in The OER Starter Kit by Abbey K. Elder. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Media Attribution

• “Using Styles for Document Structure” video by the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
• “Adding Alternative Text to Images” video by the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
• “Creating Descriptive Links” video by the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
• “Checking Color Contrast” video by the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.