One aspect of the ubiquitous affordance that is often overlooked is the large portion of the audience that might have difficulty interacting with digital content in a meaningful way. When you are designing a course, are you taking into consideration people who are blind, hard-of-hearing, or have a learning disability?

Consider the fact that 26 percent (1 in 4) of adults in the United States have some type of disability. Of these people,

• 10.8 percent have a cognition disability with serious difficulty concentrating, remembering or making decisions.
• 5.9 percent are deaf or have serious difficulty hearing
• 4.6 percent have a vision disability with blindness or serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.^[1]

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/infographic-disability-impacts-all.html

While it is not overly complicated to implement features that open up content to this audience it is, in my observation, too often overlooked, poorly implemented or not factored in to the budget of a project.

In my early days as an eLearning and web developer, I gave little thought to accessibility. It was often an afterthought, and when implemented, it was spotty and not well thought out and thus not very usable.

It wasn’t until my mother-in-law suffered a tragedy, which left her completely blind, that the importance of accessibility became real to me. Rather than being an afterthought, I began to make it an important consideration in the design of my work. I try now, as much as possible, to put myself in the shoes of someone who is blind or hard of hearing, or has a learning disability, and build in affordances that will allow them to interact with the content in a meaningful way.

Accessibility and the Law

In the U.S. many clients now require that accessibility features be built in to their courses. This is especially true of government contracts or projects that are funded by the federal or state governments^[2].  Not meeting these requirements could put you in a legal bind when required by law.

Both Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) specify that information must made available to all members of the public, regardless of sensory disabilities.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed a set of accessibility guidelines, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), that can help you in making sure the various components of your courses are accessible.

This following explainer video I created for a previous employer gives a simplified overview of accessibility for the web.

RESOURCES:

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview (a set of best practices that applies to web-based content in general): https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/
• GSA Government-wide IT Accessibility program (section 508): https://www.section508.gov/
• ADA Title III: https://www.ada.gov/ada_title_III.htm
• Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act: https://www.fcc.gov/general/section-508-rehabilitation-act