The accessibility conversation often begins with compliance requirements, accessibility checkers, and remediation workflows. While those topics are important, they only tell part of the story. At its core, accessibility is about creating learning experiences that help students succeed.
This post is the first in a series exploring a simple idea: digital accessibility is not just about compliance. It is about people. More specifically, it is about ensuring that every student can effectively access, understand, and engage with course content.
Who Needs Content to Be Accessible?
A common misconception is that accessibility only benefits students who have formally registered with Disability Services. The reality is far more complex.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 21% of undergraduate students report having a disability. However, research shows that only a fraction of those students register with their institution’s disability services office. In fact, data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study found that while 21% of undergraduates reported having a disability, only about 8% registered with their institution for disability services. Additionally, research from the National Disability Center indicates that only about half of students with disabilities disclose their disability to their institution’s disability services office.
Those statistics highlight an important reality: faculty and staff may never know which students need accessible content. Some students choose not to disclose. Others may not yet have a diagnosis or may not qualify for formal accommodations. Accessibility cannot be viewed as something we provide only after a request is received. Instead, accessible design should be part of the experience from the beginning.
Why Do Accessibility and Usability Matter?
Accessibility and usability are closely related but not identical concepts.
Accessibility focuses on ensuring that content can be accessed by people with diverse abilities. Usability focuses on how easy content is to understand, navigate, and use.
A course can technically meet accessibility requirements and still create unnecessary barriers for students. For example:
- Course materials may be readable by assistive technology but are scattered across multiple modules making them difficult to locate.
- Videos may have captions but students may not have been provided enough context to understand how the video relates to course objectives or assignments.
- Assignments may be accessible but do not include the purpose, clear instructions, or criteria on how they will be assessed.
When students spend more time figuring out how content works than engaging with the content, learning suffers.
Course organization, navigation, consistency, and clarity all contribute to the overall student experience. A well-designed course helps students focus on learning rather than overcoming avoidable obstacles.
Who Benefits?
The benefits of accessibility extend far beyond students with documented disabilities.
Consider the variety of learners in our classrooms:
- Students with temporary injuries or medical conditions.
- Students with learning disabilities, ADHD, or mental health challenges.
- Students for whom English is not their first language.
- Students accessing content from mobile devices.
- Students studying in noisy environments who rely on captions.
- Students balancing work, family responsibilities, and coursework.
- Students who simply learn more effectively when information is presented clearly and consistently.
Many accessibility practices improve usability for everyone. Captions help students review difficult concepts and new terminology. Clear headings make content easier to scan. Consistent module structures reduce confusion. Descriptive links and organized layouts help students find information quickly.
In other words, accessibility often creates a better learning experience for all learners, not just a specific population. This principle aligns closely with Universal Design for Learning (UDL): designing environments that are flexible and effective for the widest possible range of students.
What Can Faculty and Staff Do?
Technology can help identify accessibility concerns, but technology alone is not enough.
Accessibility tools such as the Microsoft Accessibility Checker, Panorama Course Reports, and other automated tools provide valuable feedback and can quickly identify many technical issues. They are an essential starting point.
However, automated tools cannot evaluate everything.
They cannot determine:
- Whether alternative text is meaningful.
- Whether instructions are clear.
- Whether course navigation makes sense to students.
- Whether content is organized logically.
- Whether a student can easily find what they need to complete a task.
That requires a human perspective. Accessibility checkers are excellent at identifying technical issues, but they cannot fully evaluate how real people experience content. Human review is an essential part of creating usable and inclusive learning environments.
A practical approach is to combine both:
- Use automated accessibility reports and checkers to identify technical issues.
- Review your course from a student’s perspective.
- Ask whether expectations are clear, navigation is intuitive, and content is easy to find.
Looking Ahead
Throughout this series, we will explore accessibility through the lens of the student experience. We’ll discuss accessibility scores, alternative text, video accessibility, clear communication, course organization, and the limitations of automated tools.
IT will host workshops associated with this series throughout the Fall 2026 semester. Please keep an eye out for these workshops on the GGC Events Calendar.
The most important takeaway is this:
Accessibility is not defined by a score. A truly accessible course is one that students can successfully access, understand, navigate, and use.
That is where accessibility and usability meet, and where the student experience begins.