how to create emphasis in an accessible course design

The following examples are simple ways to make your course more accessible to students with disabilities, students who have English as a second language, and first generation college students. Clearly spell out expectations at the beginning of the course (e.g., grading, material to be covered, assignment due dates, attendance expectations).

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How do you make a course accessible to students?

Provide accessibility instructions at the beginning of your course so they’re immediately comfortable with its layout and design. For example, if you use a consistent keyboard shortcut throughout the course that jumps to the next slide so learners don’t have to use a mouse, let them know that up-front.

How to create accessible eLearning?

6 eLearning Design Tips For Creating Accessible eLearning 1. Ensure That All Components Within Your Course Are Accessible To Learners With Visual, Auditory, Physical, Speech, Cognitive, And Neurological Disabilities. Or, make sure that an alternative is available for them. For example:

Why do we practice accessible design?

At the forefront of why we practice accessible design is the desire to have clients benefit fully from the presentations we create for them. A large part of being a presentation designer is knowing your audience and knowing how they are accessing your material.

What makes a good course design?

When the design of a course is approached in a thoughtful and inclusive way, it creates an educational environment where all students have an opportunity to learn and demonstrate their mastery of the course content.

How do I make my course more accessible?

AccessibilityEnsure text is truly text. ... Make sure content is in an easily understandable reading order. ... Use HTML where possible. ... Ensure visual and audio elements have captions and transcripts. ... Do user testing and solicit feedback.

How will you ensure that the activities are designed in an accessible and inclusive way?

If you want to practice inclusive design, you MUST: work with people with disabilities to explore the problems you're trying to solve. talk with people with disabilities about a variety of possible solutions. engage in workshop activities to co-design and co-create solutions to the problem.

How do I make my canvas more accessible?

Thankfully, there are five relatively simple things you can do to make your Canvas course more accessible for all students.Headers. Headings (titles for sections) provide structural hierarchical information for a document. ... Links. ... Images. ... Mobile friendly. ... Documents.

What is inclusive accessibility?

Inclusiveness differs from accessibility in that it doesn't specifically address a particular need or problem that the audience may have, but instead provides a spectrum of tools and features that the end user can choose from to fit their requirements in that given environment or context.

Why is accessibility important in learning?

If learning materials are not accessible to learners, then learners' abilities won't be accessible to educators. Education should be challenging for all learners. If it wasn't, there would be little incentive for students to continuously develop their skills and abilities any further than necessary.

How do you check accessibility in canvas?

The accessibility checker button is positioned as the last button on the Rich Content Editor toolbar. After selecting the icon the Accessibility checker menu will appear on the right hand sign of the screen. If any accessibility errors are detected then they will be highlighted in a blue overlay.

What does it mean when a course is not designed accessibly up front?

If a course is not designed accessibly up front, some students with disabilities are burdened with the need to work with the disability service office to obtain access.

What is accessible online course?

A highly accessible online course will remove the need for many accommodations. If you take the time to follow the suggestions in the previous sections and you are using an accessible LMS, students with disabilities will be included proactively. In fact, sometimes in a well-designed online course, students with disabilities participate seamlessly and do not even need to connect with the disability resource office.

What is accessible video player?

Accessible Video Players. The use of accessible video players is typically a decision made on a college-wide level. If you are using an LMS that allows you to embed your own videos, a good practice is also to include a link that goes directly to the source video (e.g. YouTube, Vimeo, etc.)

Why is it important to organize modules in a similar way?

If you have a course that has several modules , it is helpful to organize each module in a similar way. This predictability helps many students navigate the course and makes it less likely that students will miss an important activity. Below is a sample organization that illustrates this consistency.

Why is sharing accessible videos important?

Share Accessible Videos: Introduction. Video content can be much more engaging than more static content, adding great benefit to an online course. At the same time, if access is not considered, video content can present barriers for many students.

Why is design important in education?

When the design of a course is approached in a thoughtful and inclusive way, it creates an educational environment where all students have an opportunity to learn and demonstrate their mastery of the course content. Design that does not take into consideration the variety ...

Can you navigate a course using a keyboard alone?

A user can navigate the course using the keyboard alone or with the use of assistive technology in ways that are equally effective. Designing in ways that consider these principles will go a long way toward inclusion and access for students with disabilities. This toolkit is not meant to be comprehensive.

What is accessible elearning?

Accessible eLearning ensures that all learners have a barrier-free opportunity to participate in web-based learning activities. While accommodating the needs of people with disabilities in online learning environments, it also serves as a best practice for creating and developing learning opportunities that are accessible to everyone.

How to accommodate learners with visual impairment?

An easy way to accommodate learners with a visual impairment is to add zoom features. Having the option to simply increase the text size to make the text or screen more readable may be enough to meet the learner’s needs. Potential barriers can result when content is not resizable or you can’t change the screen size. 2.

What is the most significant barrier to online access?

It includes conditions ranging from simple nearsightedness or farsightedness, to age-related difficulties, to a variety of color-blind conditions, to complete loss of sight. Individuals with a vision impairment often face the most significant barriers in accessing online content, given its visual nature.

Why are there barriers in a document?

Barriers are created when correct heading elements have not been used to structure content and when link text is not meaningful on its own (e.g., “click here” provides no useful information). Additionally, drop-down menus should be avoided, as screen readers will only interpret them as one object.

Can hearing loss be a barrier to online learning?

Learners with hearing loss will typically experience fewer barriers in accessing online content than people with vision impairments, though multimedia and audio content will obviously present barriers if alternatives such as captions or transcripts are not provided. YouTube, for example, allows users to produce text from a video’s audio track. If you have included a video in your course, you may want to consider uploading it to YouTube to take advantage of this feature. Alternatively, if your course includes audio or narration, you can include closed captioning or provide learners with a downloadable handout of the transcript.

Is online learning accessible to people with disabilities?

An online course environment should not pose a barrier to learning, however with widespread adoption of online learning, many online courses are simply not accessible for people with disabilities.

Is interactivity good for eLearning?

According to Christopher Pappas, “while eLearning interactivity is a great way to engage your learners, you should try to avoid complex interactions when developing accessible eLearning material. Learners with poor motor skills will not appreciate, for instance, intense drag and drop interactions, so you need to find alternative ways to design your interactive elements, making them a simple as possible”.

How to make an accessible eLearning course?

Another way to design an accessible eLearning course is to ensure that your content can easily be navigated. Instead of using “click here”, you can use the button tab which clearly states “NEXT”. That’ll go a long way in helping the visually impaired people interested in your eLearning course.

Can you see all disabilities?

Of course, not all disabilities are clear to see. Except you are very close to such individuals or he/she discloses it, it can be hard to identify some disabilities. That’s why you need to consider these individuals while designing your eLearning course.

What do students with visual impairments need to be able to access?

Students with visual impairments need to be able to easily access materials. What this means in practice, though, can range from making your syllabus really clear to ensuring that your assessments work with a screen reader.

Should course design be accessible?

It cannot be stressed enough that course design should factor in accessibility from the beginning. Doing so at the start of your course design will save you time and help ensure that you’re not recreating the wheel.

What is accessible graphic design?

When we mention accessible graphic design, we mean designing for people with color blindness, other visual impairments, such as low vision, and motor disabilities. Below is some information to keep in mind regarding how your designs will be experienced by those who have these disabilities.

How to ensure presentation design is color accessible?

To ensure your presentation design is color accessible, there are resources you can use to see what your design would look like to someone with any type of color blindness.

How to test how well colors contrast each other?

This is likely because they are the same tone. An easy way to test how well your colors contrast each other is to put them into grayscale. An example of how grayscale reveals how well colors contrast each other. Generally, you want to go for high contrasted elements in your design because that is the easiest to see.

Why is the order of your slides important?

While screen reader users may not be able to see the design of your slides, the order of your content is still important to ensure a seamless progression through the content. These tips will help you ensure your layouts are logical and compatible with how a screen reader will navigate through the content.

Why do you want to use high contrast elements in a design?

Generally, you want to go for high contrasted elements in your design because that is the easiest to see . Light text on a dark background or dark text on a light background will appear more clearly than light text on a light background or a dark text on a dark background.

When marking items as a group, do you need to indicate that each of the individual aspects of the graph or image

When marking items as a group, you will need to indicate that each of the individual aspects of the graph or image are decorative. In the alt text window in PowerPoint, you will have the option of setting decorative images. Click this option if you do not need to write alt text for the image.

Do you need alt text for grouped objects?

Creating alt text for grouped objects. There is a common misconception that grouped objects in PowerPoint do not need alt text, but this is not necessarily true. When you have a heavily detailed graph, you will want to write alt text that explains the main takeaway.

What is Canvas Ally?

A Canvas page can be accessible digital syllabus. Canvas Ally is a service that focuses on making digital course content more accessible. It provides guidance to faculty on how to improve the accessibility of their content, and automatically provides students with more accessible alternative formats.

How to avoid underlining text?

Avoid underlining text unless it’s a link. Use bullet points to summarize information and numbered lists to show sequential data. Images that provide important, relevant information to your syllabus require a text alternative description. Use alternative text (alt text), a written description of images and/or objects.