City University of Seattle Library: Accessibility: Home

Overview

Accessibility in the context of education calls to mind at least two definitions:

A document, presentation, link, site, or digital object that folks can easily discover and connect to.
A document, presentation, link, site, or digital object that folks can fully engage with—read, write, think, react, respond—because it has been intentionally and inclusively designed for a range of users.

Intentional and inclusive design for accessibility means discarding practices that center able-bodied perspectives and view disabled folks, neurodiverse folks, non-traditional learners and more as aberrations to a so-called norm. It also means going beyond federal and state laws or guidelines, carefully investigating our assumptions, and looking beyond our own bodies/selves.

The design practices in this Research Guide are just a starting point. They do not represent a complete overview of moves one should take to make documents, presentations, links, sites, and digital objects accessible. Rather, they represent initial steps and will hopefully urge staff, instructional designers, faculty, and program managers to learn and do more.

The organizations linked below promote guidelines and recommendations for web accessibility, and provide training and tools useful to explore.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these, and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations; but will not address every user need for people with these disabilities. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Following these guidelines will also often make Web content more usable to users in general.
Web AIM
WebAIM’s mission is to expand the potential of the web for people with disabilities. [They] empower individuals and organizations to create accessible content by providing knowledge, technical skills, tools, organizational leadership strategies, and vision. WebAIM is a non-profit organization based at the Institute for Disability Research, Policy, and Practice at Utah State University.