When you revise course materials to improve accessibility, you expand the universe of learners who are welcome and included in higher education. Although 1 in every 5 college students report having a disability, people with disabilities are often overlooked in discussions of DEI. When course materials are accessible to students with disabilities, you affirm that diverse ways of learning, experiencing, and expressing knowledge are not only accepted or tolerated but are valid and valuable.

Designing for accessibility aligns with antiracist and queer-inclusive design. Students with disabilities carry diverse experiences of race and sexuality. For example, people with disabilities who are queer women of color bring strategies and claims on disability identity, community, and inclusion that are distinct from their white and straight disabled peers. Digital accessibility increases the dynamic exchange of knowledge, expertise, and problem solving in learning spaces. When course materials are accessible, they protect not only access to information but the opportunity to create knowledge itself.

Accessibility also aligns with ensuring multiple means of representation, a foundational principle of Universal Design for Learning. Providing multiple means of representation means planning for learner variability, or anticipating that your students will need more than one way to receive information. For example, to ensure access to information for blind or low vision students, images include alternative text as well as image descriptions when images are complex. To ensure all users can navigate between tabs with ease, links describe their destination and format rather than listing a url alone. Audio/visual media includes media captions and transcripts so that users who are hard of hearing or Deaf have equitable access to media information.

In the video below, students who use accessible technology describe what it means to them. As you watch or read the transcript, take note of what students care about the most. What quotes stand out to you? What phrases do you want to remember as you revise this textbook for accessibility?

Fig. 3.1 In this 2021 YouTube Video from the National Center on Accessible Course Materials, students describe what accessible technology means to them. See also: Video Transcript for Game Changing Technology [availability pending; copyright permission request sent].

Improving the accessibility of course materials is a collaborative process. No one person can do it alone. Take note of your support team (fellow revising authors! campus partners! support staff!) who can help you to meet accessibility standards in your content revision. Our support team will ensure that your revised textbook meets several accessiblity standards in our final review of the textbook. These standards include:

• Appropriate page structure (headings, lists, tables)
• Appropriate page organization in your Pressbook
• Appropriate use of color, both in terms of color contrast and avoiding use of color alone to convey meaning

However, there are accessibility standards that depend on your role as a subject matter expert. These tasks must be completed by a revising author with expert knowledge of the purpose of an image, link, or media feature. These tasks include:

• writing figure captions, alt text, and image descriptions
• writing descriptive links
• checking for accuracy in media captions and transcripts

In the next section, we’ll go over basic aspects of these last three tasks and give you a chance to practice working with alt text, image descriptions, and figure captions, as well as managing links and media captions!