Why is accessibility important in Instructional Design? It's legally required, but more importantly, making educational content accessible means that you're ensuring that all people have the opportunity to learn with the content you're designing.
Watch the video below to learn more about the importance of accessibility and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG):
If you're transitioning to Instructional Design from a teaching career, you've heard the phrase, "Good teaching is good teaching." When I was teaching English Language Learners (ELLs), this meant that providing accommodations for my ELLs (pre-teaching vocabulary, pairing vocabulary to images, referencing previous learning, etc.) not only helped my ELLs, but also my native English speakers.
The same idea applies to accessibility. For example, blind and vision-impaired people will use a screen reader to access their coursework. Not all students will require a screen reader to complete their coursework, but all students could benefit from using them!
Learn more about screen readers on the American Foundation for the Blind's website: Screen Readers.
If you've never used a screen reader, I'd recommend downloading the free NVDA Screen Reader to experience what it's like to use a screen reader.
Standards and best practices for accessibility are evolving and changing. The goal is to make accessible desgin the norm. If you're brand-new to Instructional Design, there's a lot to learn!
Here are five suggestions for improving accessibility that you can start using now:
#1 Add Captions to Videos
Any videos that have audio should provide captions for learners. Transcribing videos can be extremely time-consuming and/or expensive. Using YouTube's free autogenerated captions can give you a solid starting point. Keep in mind that a robot isn't going to be as accurate as a human, so you might want to go back and check for errors. If you're embedding a video in a course management system like Canvas or Moodle, you can have YouTube generate the captions for you, edit the captions in the editor, and download the .srt file (this is a subtitle file), and add the file to your video.
If you're open to hosting your content on YouTube, YouTube's autogenerated captions can also be auto-translated into a wide range of languages making it accessible to a linguistically diverse community.
Learn more about captions and using YouTube to generate them:
#2 Add Alt Text to Images
Alternative (Alt) Text should be provided for any images that convey meaning. This means that each image that isn't purely decorative needs to have a description added to it. How to add Alt Text to an image varies depending on where your image is housed (Word, Canvas, PowerPoint, etc.). There are a variety of YouTube tutorials you can use to guide you.
Learn more about writing Alt Text:
#3 Use Keyboard Interactions Only
As Instructional Designers, we're always looking for ways to make learning interactive and engaging. Unfortunately, this can lead to creating learning experiences that aren't accessible to everyone. Sticking to interactions that utilize a keyboard or keyboard interactions (arrows on a keyboard) will help ensure that everyone is able to access your content. Usually, these types of interactions are accessible:
Text entry
Multiple choice
Multiple response
Fill-in-the-blank
Drop-down
In general, stay away from drag and drop interactions!
#4 Use Inclusive Language
Not everyone "clicks" or presses their finger on a button on a mouse. In your instructions, use "select" instead.
#5 Label Links as Website Titles
A person using a screen reader will be alerted that the screen reader is reading a link. You don't need to include "click here", "website", or any other type of label. A best practice is to label a link with the title of the website.
Read more about accessibility in 3 Free Accessibility Resources for Instructional Designers.