STEP 1: Getting Started with Accessibility
Define accessibility and understand the importance of WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
What is accessibility?
Accessibility ensures all students – including those with disabilities – can access, engage with, and succeed in course content (documents, LMS, communications).
Reactive Accommodations
- Focuses on equal effort
- Retrofitting materials only when a specific request is made
- Treats accessibility as an individualized burden
Proactive Inclusion Design
- Focuses on equal access
- Ensures all students – including those with disabilities – can access, engage with, and succeed in course content from day one.
- Treats accessibility as a universal design standard
This paradigm applies universally to Course Materials, Learning Management Platforms, and Communications.
What is WCAG 2.1 AA?
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 covers a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these, and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on any kind of device (including desktops, laptops, kiosks, and mobile devices). Following these guidelines will also often make web content more usable to users in general. (Information taken from: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines W3C Webpage).
This How to Meet WCAG (Quick Reference) explains success criteria and techniques.