Title: Introduction
Course: Accessibility (Multiple LMS Version) > Section: Page Breakdown of Lesson

Accessibility is the extent to which something is accessible and useable by all users, including people with physical disabilities or learning disabilities. In digital learning, accessibility also relates to making content usable on a wide variety of devices and operating systems, possibly without internet access.

Did you know...

About 10% of the U.S. population has some form of colorblindness, with the highest rate occurring among white males.^1 This means you likely have 2-3 students in each class who either cannot detect the difference between certain colors or see color at all.

1. Aao.org,. 'Caucasian Boys Show Highest Prevalence Of Color Blindness Among Preschoolers'. N. p., 2015. Web. 4 Mar. 2015.

Accessibility is for Everyone

While accommodating disabilities is a significant part of accessibility, making your digital content accessible benefits all students by making it more user-friendly and easier to adapt to their individual needs or learning style. Making all content accessible also accounts for the "invisible" or undiagnosed disabilities that you don't know you need to accommodate. Don't wait either - it's much easier to make your content accessible as you create it, rather than having to go back and fix it later.

Teachers, in general, must be able to recognize different learning styles and adapt assignments and the course. Online and blended teachers should pay special attention to gaining an understanding of each student's skills and challenges in the early days of an online/blended course. In an online or blended class, course content and curriculum is delivered through a learning management system (LMS) or other online repositories that archive course materials. Research and work using web resources (i.e. library databases, online journals, news sources, and social networking sites) are just a few of the ways in which students complete assignments.

At Intermediate District 287, we encourage the use of Moodle. One of the benefits of using this tool is that we can make it more accessible and practical for students with disabilities. We have options to edit core features that create for easier navigation that cannot be leveraged in other tools.

Communicating, collaborating and sharing knowledge between students and their teachers via assignment, quiz and forum modules; Google Docs; or email are considered necessary skills. If teachers have students with disabilities, they must know how to adapt course content and instruction to meet these students' needs. Providing adequate digital content for visually impaired, hearing impaired, or learning-disabled students can be a challenge without proper considerations.

Many are unaware of how widespread disabilities are in the United States.

- An estimated 3.5 million people age 5-17 have a hearing, vision, or cognitive disability.
- Roughly 36 million individuals have a disability, which is 12% of the population.

(Data are courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau, 2008-2010 American Community Survey.)

This page on accessibility created by Jon Fila and Caitlin Cahill for Intermediate District 287 is licensed CC-BY-NC-SA. Based on a work from Leading Edge partners: @One, iNACOL