Designing Accessible Online Curriculum

By Dr. Carolyn Stevenson

The first in a three-part series highlighting accessibility and writing across the curriculum, this blog post explores how intentional course design can remove barriers and support diverse learners in online higher education. It highlights practical strategies grounded in accessibility to ensure content is usable by learners of all abilities. By prioritizing accessibility from the start, faculty can improve learner engagement, equity, and academic success.

In an effort to meet the needs of diverse learners, it is important for higher education faculty to ensure that the curriculum is accessible to all. In their advice for course designers, Lomellini et al. suggest that “accessibility features could include providing alternative text for images, enabling accurate captions for multimedia, developing consistent course navigation, using plain language, and ensuring compatibility with a variety of devices, including assistive technologies” (2025, p.1). The resources outlined here can help educators promote online learner success in writing across the curriculum and meet the needs of all learners.

Faculty are driven by a passion for learner success. Ensuring our courses are accessible to all is not only vital to learner success but also legally required. On April 24, 2024, the Federal Register published the Department of Justice’s (Department) final rule updating its regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The final rule has specific requirements to ensure that web content and mobile applications (apps) are accessible to people with disabilities (Civil Rights Division, 2024). The new ADA Title II Ruling has a compliance date of April 24, 2026.,

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Accessibility

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a principle that faculty and curriculum designers can use as guidelines for designing online curriculum that is accessible to all learners. UDL is based on scientific insights into how individuals learn, with the goal of “learner agency purposeful and reflective, resourceful and authentic, strategic and action-oriented” (Center for Applied Special Technology [CAST], 2025, p.1). By following the UDL principles, an online curriculum can be made accessible to all.

UDL is a framework to guide the design of learning environments that are accessible, inclusive, and challenging for every learner. Ultimately, the goal of UDL is to support learner agency, the capacity to actively participate in making choices that serve learning goals. The UDL Guidelines inform the design of learning environments to support learner agency that is:

• Purposeful – internalized self-efficacy, acting in ways that are personally and socially meaningful.
• Reflective – self-awareness and metacognition to identify internal motivations and external influences that support learning and make adjustments when necessary.
• Resourceful – understanding and applying assets, strengths, resources, and linguistic and cultural capital.
• Authentic – increasing comprehension and deepening understanding in ways that are genuine.
• Strategic – setting goals and monitoring learning with intentionality.
• Action-oriented – self-directed and collective action in pursuit of learning goals (CAST, 2025).

Supporting the learner’s agency is an ongoing process. Faculty and curriculum developers should review course accessibility on a regular basis to ensure that content is accessible to all.

Resources and Tips for Creating an Accessible Curriculum

Faculty and curriculum developers have a wealth of reliable, authoritative resources to choose from to assist in designing accessible and inclusive online courses without having to start from scratch. Using information and tools from established organizations reduces uncertainty and saves time while promoting best practices in accessibility.

The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)

The best starting point is CAST itself, funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs. CAST hosts the UDL guidelines and provides a research-based framework to support diverse learners. Its focus on recognition, strategic, and affective networks helps educators design courses that address how students perceive information, demonstrate learning, and stay motivated—key components of effective digital instruction (CAST, 2025).

The Described and Captioned Media Program (DCMP)

Other very useful resources include the described text videos produced by DCMP. DCMP offers free, accessible video content with captions and descriptions, making multimedia materials usable for students who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or have low vision.

Purdue University’s Accessibility Checklist

The following tips, provided by Purdue University (2025), are designed to help create accessible online course content for all learners. For Word documents, use built-in heading styles (H1, H2, etc.), with only one Heading 1 serving as the document title, and add a separate document title in the file properties. Include alternative text (alt text) for all images, charts, and tables, use meaningful self-describing hyperlinks instead of phrases like “click here,” and reserve underlining only for links. Always run the Accessibility Checker before sharing documents. In PowerPoint, use high-contrast color schemes, avoid relying on color alone to convey meaning, ensure logical reading order, add alt text to all visuals, and use the Accessibility Checker to identify common issues. Instructors are encouraged to share original file formats rather than PDFs when possible; however, if PDFs are necessary, they should be created using accessible PDF guidelines to preserve usability.

For multimedia and visual design, always provide closed captions for videos, ensuring they are accurate, synchronized, and include non-speech elements, such as music or laughter. Live and prerecorded videos should also include audio descriptions that narrate key visual information. Although platforms such as Mediaspace generate automatic captions, these should be manually reviewed for accuracy. All images should include concise, contextual alt text (under 150 characters), avoiding unnecessary phrases like “image of,” with longer image descriptions used for complex visuals when needed; tools such as Microsoft Copilot can assist with generating alt text. Maintain sufficient color contrast (at least 4.5:1 for standard text and 3:1 for large text) and use accessible font sizes. Finally, whenever possible, provide materials in multiple formats (e.g., Word and PDF or PowerPoint) so students can choose the format that best supports their learning needs and preferences (Purdue University, 2025).

Conclusions

Together, these resources support legal compliance, equity, and improved learning outcomes by ensuring that course materials are accessible to all students. By implementing small changes today, we can ensure that our digital doors are open to every learner and make writing instruction across the curriculum truly accessible.

References

Center for Applied Special Technology [CAST]. (2025). The UDL guidelines. https://udlguidelines.cast.org/

Civil Rights Division. (2024). Fact sheet: New rule on the accessibility of web content and mobile apps provided by state and local governments. U.S. Department of Justice. https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/

Described and Captioned Media Program [DCMP]. (2026). Resources for school personnel, families, students, and content creators. https://dcmp.org

Lomellini, A., Lowenthal, P.R., Snelson, C., & Trespalacios, J.H. (2025). Accessible and inclusive online learning in higher education: A review of the literature. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 37, 1306–1329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-024-09424-2

Purdue University. (2025). Digital instructional materials: Accessibility checklist. https://www.purdue.edu/innovativelearning/tools-resources/accessibility/digital-instructional-materials-accessibility-checklist/

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About the Author: Dr. Carolyn Stevenson(she/her) is a full-time faculty member for the Professional Studies Department, Department of Multidisciplinary and Professional Studies (MaPS) at Purdue University Global. Dr. Stevenson has over 25 years teaching and administrative experience in higher education and has been serving the organization for over 20 years.