Importance of Accessibility

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Welcome to Accessibility in 5, a series from UFIT where we explore a quick tip on making your content more accessible in five minutes or less. I'm Kimberly Heal, and today's topic is why accessibility is important.

(Lower third reads Kimberly Heal, training/education specialist)

Let's begin with what is accessibility? Accessibility ensures that all students can access digital course materials and content. Accessibility also gives students who have disabilities an equal opportunity to engage in their classes and activities that involve digital content.

Welcome to Accessibility in 5, a series from UFIT where we explore a quick tip on making your content more accessible in five minutes or less. I'm Kimberly Heal, and today's topic is why accessibility is important.

Let's begin with what is accessibility? Accessibility ensures that all students can access digital course materials and content. Accessibility also gives students who have disabilities an equal opportunity to engage in their classes and activities that involve digital content.

As faculty, staff, and content creators, we all share a role in accessibility. When we create accessible content, we remove barriers by ensuring that all students, no matter their ability, disability, skills, or language level, have access to course materials. Let's take a deeper dive into why designing with accessibility in mind is important.

First, accessible content doesn't exclude students from education. Currently, 26% of adults in the United States have some type of disability that can be classified as physical, auditory, cognitive, speech, or visual. Disabilities can also be visible, invisible, temporary, and situational. Regardless of the disability, we want everyone to have equal access to content without barriers and with the same access of ease as someone without a disability.

Second, accessible content improves usability for everyone, leading to a positive user experience. Even those without disabilities will benefit from accessible design. For example, captioned videos are necessary for someone with a hearing limitation, but those captions are also helpful for learners who only partially understand the language presented, or for learners who may be viewing the video in a noisy environment. Multimodal content, such as captioned videos, even improves comprehension and retention of information.

Lastly, accessibility is the law. As a public postsecondary institution, the University of Florida is subject to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires that all digital content is accessible to people with disabilities. This includes websites and online content, courses, multimedia, images, and electronic documents. Audio content, such as videos, must be captioned, while essential images must include alternative text or a description that someone with a visual impairment can access with a screen reader. Microsoft Word documents, PowerPoints, and PDFs must also be accessible for screen reading software.

Is it difficult to design accessible content? Not at all. There are many great resources to assist.

For one thing, each month in our Accessibility in 5 videos, we will also feature a different quick tip that will make the design process much easier. Webaim.org is another great place to begin for helpful tips and guidelines in designing
accessible documents, PowerPoints, PDFs, and more.

Visit Getting Started with Accessibility at citt.ufl.edu for additional resources for getting started with the basics of accessibility.
Remember, accessibility is the right thing to do. We may not know if someone has a disability, but when we provide accessible content, we empower all.

Thanks for watching Accessibility in 5. You can find this video, as well as previous ones, archived on our website. Tune in next month to learn five foundational accessibility tips.

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