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Accessibility is an aspect of Universal Design for Learning. Universal Design for Learning is a way of thinking about and creating a learning environment that makes student participation and engagement as ubiquitous as possible. An accessible course is designed with different learning styles and abilities in mind, so that the maximum number of students can participate without additional accommodation. If accessibility is built into the structure of the course upfront, less work will need to be done to facilitate an accommodation later on.

As more content is moved online, it becomes imperative, that instructors are aware of the impact as well as how to remediate some of the barriers, that keep students from fully participating in their courses.

The Importance of Accessibility

WebAIM did an analysis of the top 1 million websites earlier this year (2019). They used WCAG 2.0 Level A/AA–the lower two levels of compliance–and estimated that less than 1 percent or so of commonly accessed websites conform to WCAG 2.0 Level AA. They found on average 59.6 average accessibility errors per page. According to WebAIM, users with disabilities should expect to encounter an error on 1 of every 13 HMTL elements with which they interact. A complete summary of the results is available.