Foundations of Course Design:
Creating Accessible Courses
What is Accessible Course Design?
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education defines accessibility as:
“[When] a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally integrated and equally effective manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use. The person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally, and independently as a person without a disability.”
When designing courses that can reach all students, instructors should consider how their materials, assignments, and content delivery could support students with a wide range of abilities, strengths, and resources. It is important to return to the question: what are potential barriers in my course that may hinder student learning, and how can I remove them?
Designing accessible courses reduces the risk of making harmful assumptions about our students, including (but not limited to) “all students know how to seek help when they are struggling,” “physical disabilities come with mental disabilities,” and “students who struggle with writing are lacking intellectually.” Instead of coming into the classroom with these implicit assumptions, accessible course design primes us to center the individuality of our students.
Why Is Accessible Course Design Important?
First and foremost, designing courses in an accessible manner is the law. Creating accessible courses is required by state and federal laws, as well as Mines policy. In other words, it is our legal responsibility to design courses that enable participation and encourage success among all of our students. Failure to comply with ADA reinforces harmful norms of relegating students with disabilities to the margins.
Beyond legal obligation, designing accessible courses makes course material more usable for all students, promotes a campus-wide culture of accessibility, breaks down barriers for current and prospective students, and challenges assumptions about who “belongs” in higher education. Your course design communicates something to students, and we want our materials to communicate that our students matter and belong. While accessibility does not cover every element of inclusive pedagogy, creating accessible content is a major step towards a campus culture of inclusivity.
Lastly, accessible course design supports diverse learning pathways, as instructors are encouraged to think about learning experiences that reach a diverse range of learning preferences and backgrounds. For many, practicing this new way of thinking about course design supports instructor innovation and creativity—this is an iterative exercise that encourages instructors to reflect each semester on how they can reach and support the success of all of their students. As such, accessible courses may require more front-loading time, energy, and brain power during the design phase, but it should create a more efficient process once you reach the enact and reflect phases of teaching.
What Does Accessible Course Design Look Like?
When we think about accessibility, we often focus on accommodations for students with disabilities. While there will always be a need for some individualized accommodations, instructors can make their courses accessible to a greater number of students by proactively following accessibility best practices. Not only should class materials be available to all students, they should be meaningful and usable. To familiarize yourself with the different dimensions of accessibility and associated best practices, please review the strategies below.
Cognitive Accessibility
- Create flexible policies for assignment extensions
- Post slides to Canvas prior to class
- Allow students to take photos of slides
- Diversify types of assignments/class activities
Visual Accessibility
- Adopt screen-reader compatible practices
- Use sans-serif fonts in digital documents
- Use large font during lectures
- Use readable colors and styles
- Use the Canvas accessibility checker to ensure readability
Financial Accessibility
- Use open educational resources
- Put copies of the course textbook on reserve at the library
- Limit assignments that require access to technologies or services with associated costs
Auditory Accessibility
- Upload class lectures and discussion notes to Canvas
- Turn on captions when playing videos (including live meetings on Zoom or Teams)
- Create clear videos with transcripts and limited background noise.
Mental (Health) Accessibility
- Communicate care for your students in your syllabus
- Provide a list of campus resources on your syllabus and/or Canvas page
- Provide flexibility around attendance policies
- Check in with your students through daily check in questions and surveys
Temporal Accessibility
- Avoid mandatory commitments outside of class hours
- Avoid unnecessary time-constraints when designing assessments
- Communicate flexible office hours and late work policies
- Create asynchronous participation opportunities
- Start and end class on time
Physical Accessibility
- Communicate a range of ways to access spaces (building ramps, elevator locations, closest all-gender restroom).
- Create a variety of participation opportunities during field work sessions.
- Create virtual office hours to supplement in-person office hours.
Beyond these measures listed above, implementing a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) approach is an accessibility practice that allows you to proactively build effective learning environments for a diverse body of students without the need for hyper-customization or individualization. The UDL framework has its origins in the field of architecture, wherein the goal is to intentionally design physical environments to be “usable by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptations or specialized design” (Burgstahler 2009).
Example
Consider this example of how universal design can be applied to physical environments. On the left, we see that a ramp has been added to the stairway to support building entry for wheelchair users. In the center image, we see a “push to open” accessibility button designed for disabled users. The third image shows a sliding door that opens automatically as an individual approaches. What are the differences between these designs, and how might we apply these concepts to our own course design?
©gettyimages via Canva.com
These first two images—the ramp and the button—provide examples of accommodations. Accommodations are specific supports added to an environment that target specific needs or barriers. Accommodations often require individuals to put in additional work or advocate for themselves in order to receive certain benefits. For instance, this ramp seems to have been added as an afterthought to the original design—perhaps installed only after a long organizing effort by folks with disabilities. When compared to the automatic sliding door, the accessibility button requires users to do something “extra” (push the button) in order to receive benefits. Drawing a parallel to higher education, student accommodations include receiving extra time for an exam or assignment, access to certain audiovisual materials, or being able to use a computer or calculator for a specific task. Often, this means that minoritized students must proactively identify themselves as “in need” in order to access the benefits of accommodations. The automatic door, on the other hand, offers a design more aligned with universal design principles insofar as it is proactively and fully integrated into the physical environment and offers equitable entry and benefits for all users without the need for additional actions on the user’s part. Implementing UDL in your teaching doesn’t just reduce barriers for folks with a specific need; it promotes an effective learning experience for all students in your course.
With UDL, you do not need to customize your course to meet every individual student need. Instead, you proactively build a course that features multiplicity, variety, student choice, and flexibility. Click the button below to explore four broad strategies for implementing UDL into your course design. Challenge yourself to consider as you read: How many of these ideas could you implement in your course?
Another way to implement UDL is to adopt “+1 Thinking” as you design your course. The idea is relatively simple: “For every interaction that learners have now—with the materials, yes, but also with each other, with instructors and with the wider world—provide one more way for that interaction to happen” (Tobin, quoted in Lieberman 2018). Click the button below for ideas on how you might implement the +1 approach in your own course.
Use Generative AI to Make Your Courses More Accessible
Generative AI (genAI) tools such as Microsoft Co-Pilot, Google Gemini, and ChatGPT can prove useful when brainstorming ways to make your course more accessible. To get started, copy and paste the following prompt into one of the tools above:
“I am going to provide you with some contextual course information so that you can help me make my course more accessible. Analyze the following course materials and provide me with a few specific suggestions for ways that I can make my course more accessible for a diverse group of students. Draw from the “Universal Design for Learning” framework when generating your suggestions, with an emphasis on flexibility, multiplicity, variety, and, where possible, student agency and choice. Here is the course information for you to analyze: (Copy and paste syllabus language, course learning outcomes, policies, summative assessments, and/or other course materials).”
Don’t stop there—refine your initial outputs by providing additional contextual information about your course (a course description, for instance), and tailor your accessible approaches toward your specific teaching and learning needs. Please consider the social, environmental, and legal impacts of using generative AI. We recommend consulting our “Effective Teaching and Generative AI” resource for more information.
DIG DEEPER: Additional Resources for Mines Faculty
Guidelines for Effective and Accessible Assessments: This resource identifies Mines student perspectives on assessment, identifies barriers to accessibility with corresponding solutions, and offers general recommendations for making your assessments more accessible
Accessibility Checklist: This resource lists best practices in accessibility for your course materials, videos, lectures/notes, and Canvas pages.
Digital Accessibility Principles: This resource lists and explains four principles of digital accessibility, as identified by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Digital Accessibility Training: This resource provides links to self-paced accessibility trainings on Percipio (Mines login credentials are needed to access these trainings).
Toolkit Navigation
Part 1: Developing Course Learning Outcomes
Part 2: Designing Summative Assessments
Part 3: Building Learning Pathways
