Accessibility is important. You know this. I know this. But you, like me, may still have questions: What does it mean to make course content accessible? If I want to make my course more accessible, but don’t have students with specific accommodation needs – or don’t know what those needs are yet – how do I know what to prioritize? How do I make any specific part of my course accessible for my students, much less the whole course? Where do I even start?
And doesn’t this all take a very long time?
For years, I was in the dark about this, and I’m still learning. My teaching background includes teaching literature, creative writing, composition and teaching English to speakers of other languages. When I was teaching, I’d often receive student requests for accommodation, but these were typically for students who needed more time or a quiet room to take an exam, or who might need a bit longer to write an essay. Until recently, I had very little knowledge of accessibility practices, much less best practices or how to begin building an accessible course.
And, I figured, I can’t be alone. So I sat down with CTI instructional designer Julie Rummings, who specializes in accessibility, and asked her for advice on how to get started. And Rummings’ first bit of advice may not surprise you: When it comes to tackling accessibility issues, when creating a course from scratch it pays to keep accessibility in mind from the start.
“It’s much faster to start with accessibility [practices] from the get-go, instead of building or inheriting a course and then having to remediate,” Rummings said. “If you’re brand new faculty, that’s actually the best starting point, because you can pick articles to share that are already accessible, and design your resources to be accessible from the beginning.”
If that’s not you, and you’re already up to your chin in course content, have no fear: you’re our target audience, and we’re here to help.
It’s much faster to start with accessibility [practices] from the get-go, instead of building or inheriting a course and then having to remediate
Julie Rummings
Well, CTI is here to help, and I’m here to learn along with you.
Getting Started
So, here are the first three things you can do to start making your courses more accessible for your students:
- Uploading course content? Run Ally in Canvas to review any files you upload. Ally is a tool integrated into Cornell’s Canvas courses that will analyze your course content, and give you a score based on how accessible your document is. It will then tell you how to fix the issue, and also provide helpful links that explain why certain aspects of your course rated poorly, which in turn helps you learn about accessibility.
Rummings adds a note of caution here though: always remember that “automated tools are not perfect; using Ally is just the starting point.” It’s a good starting point, but accessibility is a journey, so its also important to build your knowledge of accessible practices, so you can identify issues that Ally cannot detect.
- Have complex graphics, like charts, maps, infographics? They’ll need detailed descriptions to be accessible – and generative AI can help. Every time you include visual information in your course, it’s important to provide thoughtful and thorough alternative text, which helps students with low vision or who may depend on screen readers to understand the context and learn alongside their peers.
And while it’s true writing a paragraph describing all of the graphics in your course materials can be time-consuming, AI can actually be a good help – simply enter a prompt with your specific parameters, such as “describe this image in a paragraph describing all the data and any text that’s in the image.” Then, as with anything related to AI, double check that the information is accurate and includes any information necessary for your course or lesson objectives.
- Uploading recorded lectures? Great! Just be sure to fix the auto-generated captions, to ensure accuracy for students who may depend on subtitles. Some platforms – think Panopto and Kaltura in Canvas – usually provide a simple way to do this. And accurate captions don’t just help students with auditory processing challenges – international students may also benefit from this practice. I know this from my own experience with learning Spanish: I can follow so much more with Spanish-language subtitles than I can by listening alone.
While manually editing captions may sound time-consuming, there are ways to minimize the effort you need to put in to ensure accessible recorded content. For example, consider cutting your video lecture into clips that highlight important concepts from lecture, or concepts most related to your learning objectives. Why?
According to Rummings, “Clips are often more memorable to students when they’re reviewing it back as a study aid, They’re also easier to caption and won’t take as long to do so, because the file has just a few minutes of content, instead of up to an hour or more.”This has the added benefit of helping to create a compromise for students who want the lecture to be available online for review, and faculty, who want to make sure the students are incentivized to go to the class.
Panopto and Kaltura have basic trimming capabilities, which allows users to cut the beginning and edits of their lecture recordings. Panopto also has an option to add “chapters” to your lecture if you want to make it easier for students to navigate – though including a more complete lecture means a bit more of a lift when you’re captioning.
For those interested in providing clips, “more in-depth editing requires an external tool, but it doesn’t have to be sophisticated editing software,” Rummings said. “A simple free tool will work just fine, and the library has a decent list.”
Getting started creating accessible course content can feel like staring at a mountain you want to climb from the trailhead miles away. But it doesn’t have to. Remember, you don’t, won’t and can’t just magically arrive at the top! It’s not possible, and it’s overwhelming to try to imagine. But if you take things slowly, you can make significant progress. Accessibility is a journey, so remember: little by little, one walks far.
Ready for more? Start here: Check out our Accessibility Guide, and never hesitate to reach out to CTI if you have questions. It’s what we’re here for!