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Accessibility

Our team models and supports accessible pedagogical practices and technology tools that promote equity and inclusivity. We believe accessibility is crucial to educational success. 

What is accessibility?   

Accessibility is an educational principle that all students have a right to access and interact with learning materials in ways suitable to their needs. In classrooms and digital learning environments, students should be able to access all course materials and technology tools equitably and without undue hardship. Examples:

  • If students who are hard-of-hearing do not have access to captioned video lectures, their learning suffers through no fault of their own. 

  • If homework readings are formatted in such a way that screen readers cannot read them, students who are blind and low-vision have no way of completing their homework. 

  • There are millions of people who have undisclosed and/or invisible disabilities that impact their access to education.

Accessibility means teaching without repeating these forms of discrimination. All students, faculty, and staff should have equal access to resources, services, content, and technology tools. This is part of inclusive, equitable pedagogy as well as a requirement of district policy, state law, and federal law.  

All course design, no matter the modality, should center on accessibility. This is the core of Universal Design for Learning, a framework for building accessibility and equity into your course. Universal Design pushes us to proactively:

  • build in multiple means of representation, i.e. provide learners with several ways to acquire the same information

  • offer multiple means of expression, i.e. allow students more than one way to demonstrate their knowledge or skill levels

  • provide multiple means of engagement, i.e. give students several options for interacting and ways to engage with their own interests and challenges.

We recommend devoting the first day or week of your class to having a conversation with students about accessibility and asking what they need in order to be able to fully access your course.

What are your accessibility responsibilities as faculty?

You are responsible for making sure that all your content is accessible. There are various tools in Canvas, in Microsoft Office, and Adobe Acrobat to check and improve the accessibility of your content. If any or all of these items sound unfamiliar to you, don't worry. Start small and build on your knowledge over time – small changes will go a long way for all of your students. 

Seattle Colleges provides a one-stop shop of resources, known as the Accessibility Training Hub. Here are the self-enroll link and direct link. In the hub you'll find checklists, recorded training sessions, paid micro-courses, and more.

Instructional Designers are here to help you get started and receive guidance along the way. Please reach out to us with any questions. The eLearning team also includes Canvas administrators, instructional technologists, and accessibility experts to assist with questions outside of our instructional design expertise. 

Our LEAD program also offers paid training with accessibility content. If you are a full-time or part-time faculty member at any of the Seattle Colleges, please check out our LEAD page for current offerings and stipend amounts.

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