Each and every class includes a diverse array of learners who come from varied backgrounds and access, receive, process, and express information in different ways. By incorporating Accessible Education principles during course design, you’ll effectively anticipate and prepare for the arrival and engagement of these learners in your classroom.

While this module emphasizes course design, the principles shared below also apply to single-session and sequenced lesson planning. As you’re reading through this section, we encourage you to think about the material in relation to a course, lesson, or training that you’re designing, instructing, evaluating, or may (re)design in the future. Our goal is to support you in applying an accessibility lens to the important educational work you’re already doing.

This module is organized into three components:

1. When can I apply Accessible Education principles?

• In this section, we will introduce our final Accessible Education question: When can I apply Accessible Education principles?

2. Designing a Syllabus that Attends to Accessibility

• At the outset of a course, it’s important for us to communicate essential information to students, including our desire to support their learning and reduce barriers to accessibility in the classroom. This section will highlight several important considerations for inclusion in your syllabus.

3. Choosing Accessible and Inclusive Course Materials

• The course material we select to accompany classroom activities plays a significant role in student learning. We will end the module by identifying things to keep in mind when making these decisions.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• Decide how you will let your students know that you welcome talking to them about accessibility barriers and their learning needs;

• Identify 2 barriers that students may experience in accessing your course content; and

• Develop a strategy for mediating these barriers to enhance access for all.