Teaching with Accessibility in Mind

Accessibility in teaching refers to designing learning experiences for students that support their learning irrespective of their backgrounds or cognitive, sensory, physical, or other disabilities. The CTL is committed to helping faculty learn about how accessibility can be a foundational element of their teaching.

1. UVM Office of Accessibility Services:
   • UVM accessibility standards for online materials
   • OAS forms library
     • Form to request captioning
     • Form to request document conversion for accessibility
2. CTL CALM Courses Workshops (Creating Accessible Learning Materials)

Sometimes, our teaching practices can present barriers to students who experience temporary or lifelong disabilities including short or long-term illness, vision or hearing impairment, mobility challenges, mental health conditions, and learning difficulties e.g., dyslexia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and language or auditory processing disorder.

Some disabilities are not recognizable unless the student discloses them, but unfortunately some students fear being stigmatized and may not disclose their disability. All students, whether or not they have a disability (disclosed or undisclosed) deserve our efforts to support them and give them equal opportunities to learn, without barriers. 

For information on the why and how of creating accessible digital materials, please visit the Office of Accessibility Services.

For more on pedagogy, course design, and accessibility writ large:

Begin to adopt practices of Universal Design for Learning

Informed by the field of neuroscience, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an approach to teaching that addresses the diverse learning needs of all students.

UDL recognizes that some individuals may learn best by engaging  in activities such as listening, reading, writing, drawing, experimenting, building, discussing, designing, or observing. The goal of a UDL-based curriculum is to provide students with a variety of options, so they can each choose to learn in the way that's most effective for them. 

See our UDL page 

When designing your course to be more accessible through the lens of UDL, we recommend taking small steps, making incremental changes at a pace that works for you.

For instance, you might:

• Deliver varied instruction, switching between lecture, discussion, iClicker student response systems, group work, in-class writing, and hands-on activities.
• Design your assessments so students can choose how they show what they’ve learned, for example with essays, videos, or other creative projects (e.g. music, mapping, sketching, or skits), and provide flexible options like extended time on assignments.
• Establish a predictable routine for every class, e.g. opening each class with 3-minute mindfulness practice (One resource is UVM mindfulness practices on SoundCloud) or some of the classroom bookend routines described in this Edutopia article.
• Take a few extra steps to create "transparent assignments"—clarifing an assignment's purpose, task, and how it will be evaluated. This has been shown to have a big impact on student learning.
• Invite students to meet with you a few times in the semester to check in and discuss any barriers or needs they may have.
• Communicate, as much as possible, using plain language. (See the CTL Teaching Minute on plain language.)
• Be sensitive to students' worries about revealing their disability out of concern that they may be stigmatized. (Hong, 2015)

The campus authority on creating accessible digital resources is the Office of Accessibility Services. They provide guidelines and offer workshops, consultations, remediations, and captioning. 

Visit the Office of Accessibility Services website