Universal Design for Learning (UDL) can reduce many barriers for all instructors and learners. Instructors and learners can work together to design multiple ways for learners to demonstrate that they have achieved mastery of course concepts and are moving toward and completing course objectives. Engaging with learners and the course material in this way is especially important when every learner may face a challenge in accessing course material and completing their courses differently from how they anticipated at the beginning of the semester.

Instructors and learners may face multiple challenges accessing online material.

• Some communities do not have sufficiently robust infrastructure to support every instructor and learner online simultaneously. 
• Instructors and learners may also face challenges from their equipment, and/or may need some additional ways to access and participate in courses in an online format. 
  

To accommodate their learners, instructors will want to provide scripts for lectures and videos, for example. These scripts are often smaller information packets while lectures or videos are much larger information packets. Instructors may also want to provide rubrics for assignments and assessments and engage learners in helping them to imagine ways to demonstrate progress towards and mastery of learning objectives. These practices also accommodate instructors and learners who find multiple modalities for accessing information and achieving course objectives essential to their learning.

Follow these steps to create content that is accessible to all students:

Run the built-in accessibility checker as you create Word Docs, PDFs, and/or PowerPoints and correct the errors and warnings as you work.

• For example: to check accessibility in Word, 
  1. • Click the “File” tab in the Ribbon to open the Backstage View. 
     • In the “Info” section, click the “Check for Issues” drop-down button in the “Inspect Document” area. 
     • Then click the “Check Accessibility” command to launch the task pane. 
     • A list of “Errors” and/or “Warnings” may appear.To check accessibility of pdfs:
• For example: to check accessibility of PDFs (Acrobat Pro)
  • • Choose Tools > Accessibility. ...
    • In the secondary toolbar, click Full Check. ...
    • In the Report Options section, select options for how you want to view the results. ...
    • Select a page range if you prefer to check individual pages of a document. ...
    • Select one or more of the Checking Options.
• Use the heading and list functions in Word 
• Use an accessible font, like Verdana
• Use high contrast colors 
• Avoid using underlining and bold to make a point
• Provide links to online resources and/or order a digital course packet for hard to come by resources instead of scanning and uploading as a PDF

Include only necessary and content-driven images and add the alternative descriptions as you work

Use captioning when you record lecturettes and edit for accuracy. You can record with captioning and edit closed captioning in your Panopto and Zoom. You can also edit captioning in recordings you upload into YouTube

Follow these steps to assess digital content you collect for accessibility:

1. Test that PDFs you find online are tagged and searchable
2. Ask publishers to provide online or digital content (like PowerPoints) that meet accessibility standards
3. Provide links for websites with working links and accessible font and contrast colors
4. Check that third-party YouTube videos have accurate captioning (if they do not provide a transcript or ask your accessibility office to run the video through Amara)
5. Provide students with accessibility statements and contact information for online tools like Blackboard, Zoom, VoiceThread, YouTube, Poll Everywhere, Flip Grid, etc.

Sources and Relevant Links