Accessibility and Universal Instructional Design

Instructors should ensure that their teaching addresses the learning needs of all students. When preparing lessons and resources instructors should consider Universal Instructional Design (UID) ensuring that their resources can be used by students of varying abilities.

Universal Instructional Design (UID)

Universal Instructional Design (UID) is a process that involves considering the potential needs of all learners when designing and delivering instruction.^[1]

UID means identifying and eliminating unnecessary barriers to teaching and learning while maintaining academic rigour.

UID evolved from the concept of universal design in the physical world, where key goals include flexibility, consistency, accessibility, explicitness, and supportiveness. UID applies these very same principles to teaching and learning.

UID is about truly universal thinking - it goes beyond just accessibility to reflecting on how to maximize learning for students of all backgrounds and learner preferences while minimizing the need for special accommodations. UID addresses accessibility and addresses the fact that any group of students' will have varied learning styles.

The Seven Principles of UID describe how instructional materials and activities should:

1. be accessible and fair,
2. be flexible, provide flexibility in use, participation and presentation
3. be straightforward and consistent and,
4. be explicit, explicitly presented and readily perceived
5. be supportive, provide a supportive learning environment
6. minimize unnecessary physical effort or requirements, and
7. ensure a learning space that accommodates both students and instructional methods.

The following is a summary of ways that UID can be applied to your course:

• Delivery Methods: Use a variety of delivery methods and learning approaches, including lecture, discussion, hands-on activities, projects, cases, internet-based interaction, etc. Make sure each is clear and accessible to students with a wide range of abilities, backgrounds, and previous experiences.
• Learning Methods: Make print materials available in electronic format. Provide text descriptions of graphics presented on web pages. Use PowerPoint to make presentations legible in large spaces. Use captioned videotapes. Provide outlines in advance to allow students to prepare for the topic to be presented. Create printed and web-based materials in simple, intuitive, and consistent formats.
• Interaction: Encourage different ways for students to interact with each other and with you. This may include in-class questions and discussion, group work, and Internet-based communications.
• Feedback: Provide effective prompting during an activity and feedback after the assignment is complete. Use feedback to help correct errors and misconceptions. Allow opportunities for self-assessment. Ensure that web or CD-ROM-based learning tools provide proper feedback for both navigation and learning.
• Assessment/Demonstration of Knowledge: Ensure that students’ opportunity to demonstrate knowledge is frequent and if possible, flexible. Consider options besides tests and papers for demonstrating knowledge, such as group work, demonstrations, portfolios, and presentations.
• Physical Effort and Access: Ensure that classrooms, labs, and field work are accessible to individuals with a wide range of physical abilities. Make sure equipment and activities minimize sustained physical effort, and accommodate people with different physical abilities (e.g., something as basic as left-handedness). Assure the safety of all students. Minimize the need for unnecessary physical travel by making materials available or allowing them to be submitted electronically.

Electronic Resources

Instructors need to consider the principles of UID when creating electronic resources. These principles apply to both the content and format of electronic resource. The asynchronous availability, variable pacing and the general flexibility of electronic resources can be of great value to learners with disabilities. Unfortunately electronic resources are not innately accessible, but a little attention to the preparation to electronic resources is all that is needed.

The technical measure of the accessibility of the format of an web-based resource is the WCAG2 standard. The requirements of the WCAG2 are summarized in the four letter acronym POUR:

1. Perceivable
2. Operable
3. Understandable
4. Robust

Preparing Electronic Resources

The good news is most modern tools that help construct content directly for the web help individuals create accessible content. At Brock University the main web site's Drupal-Based Content Management System (CMS) helps ensure content created in it is accessible, as does Isaak, Brock University's Sakai-Based Learning Management System (LMS). The tools for creating content directly in these systems helps ensure the content is perceivable, operable and robust.

The challenge is in ensuring that content created in desktop applications is accessible, especially when multimedia is used. Content created on a desktop application is often not robust enough to perceivable and operable on the web - often traded for more control of the layout. Content that is "exported" to a web page can prevent individuals that are poorly sighted or individuals with learning disability from using strategies and tools that would normally work on properly created and accessible electronic resource.

Multimedia content is particularly challenging, as it can require the use multiple senses, and unless accommodations such as transcription or description are added, some individuals may not be able to access multimedia content.

This table is intended give a guide to instructors when they are creating/uploading content to the web. Ideally all information should be entered using the methods found toward the right of the table, however instructors should be aware of the compromises they are making when using other methods.

Level of Accessibility:	Unacceptable	Poor	Good	Best
File type or Format	Images without alternative or descriptive text. Tables/Images used for decoration not for organizing information. (assuming no alternative is given)	Files in MS Office format: DOC, DOCX, XLS, PPT	The Adobe Portable Document Format can be easily created from most programs (See Making PDF documents).	Create or copy content directly in Isaak/Sakai via options like "Create HTML Page" or use other web-based tools.
Explanation	Content cannot easily be searched or read by screen readers. Text that is no in an image is naturally more transformable and scalable.	Generates a "Blocked by Internet Explorer!" alert. The inconstancy of presenting content in these formats presents a problem. Requires MS office ($120 ~ $600) Inconsistent presentation based on version of Office, IE, etc. An obvious exception would be an accounting course would need to use MS Excel files.	PDFs are generally a good choice. Try to avoid documents with columns, as they can confuse some software.	The native text editor's HTML pages are fast to access and accessible to assistive technologies. Your use of this tool and its headings and bullets option will enhance the experience for all students.

Notes and References

1. ↑ Introduction to Universal Instructional Design (UID) at the University of Guelph. University of Guelph Teaching Support Services. retrieved on August 1, 2008 from http://www.tss.uoguelph.ca/uid/uidbrief.cfm
2. The Inclusive Design Research Centre at OCAD University, in partnership with UNESCO and the Government of Ontario, has developed consolidated and publicly-reviewed guidance to help ensure the accessibility of office documents and the office applications with which they are created. These guides can be found at http://adod.idrc.ocad.ca/