Accessibility and Online Education Materials

It’s a lot harder to convert in-person materials to accessible online material than you think. And you can’t leave out accessibility.

Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Also, I will be updating older articles (like this one) and the updates will only be published on Substack. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

Each day there are at least a dozen new articles in my LinkedIn feed on converting dead-tree, in-person course materials to online course formats. Maybe 1 in 10 of them (if that) address accessibility, and then usually just in passing like “oh, yeah, remember to caption your videos”

Emergencies are not a valid excuse for leaving children with disabilities behind. Folx, these are all lawsuits waiting to happen. The plaintiffs are winning 98 % of them. Don’t be the one they make the example of.

Continue to follow accommodations identified in 504 plans, IEPs, and by disabled student services

If a school has agreed to a particular set of accommodations such as captioning, an emergency that moves education to the home setting is not a valid excuse for ignoring those agreements.

Not all disabled students have 504 plans, IEPs, or recommendations from disabled student services

Problem:

• Some students are just getting by in in-person settings, and will be less successful studying from home
• Some students don’t realize they are entitled to extra services
• Some students (and their families) feel that asking for special education is stigmatizing, and so they don’t ask for something that their children could benefit from.
• Some students have conditions (such as anxiety, clinical depression, autism) that will worsen in isolated settings.