Defining accessible digital content and some of the barriers that students may experience.
What do we mean by accessible digital content?
Whether a student is studying at ANU fully on campus, fully online or some combination of the two, they will interact with online, or digital, learning content. Digital learning content can include online journal articles, podcasts, videos, interactive learning activities, assessment instructions, or lecture slides.
Digital learning content accessibility is achieved when that learning content can be accessed and used by students with disabilities, using assistive technology if necessary, and students can modify how the content is presented or formatted to better meet their learning needs.
ANU is committed to ensuring that our digital campus is accessible to all (ANU Strategic Plan 2021 – 2025 (PDF, 17 pages, 1.33MB)).
Barriers
Many students experience barriers when accessing digital content, whether presented in a course site, website, PDF file, or through apps such as Word or PowerPoint. These barriers include:
- Inability to view images, including text scanned as an image
- Inability to hear and/or understand audio content, including video
- Difficulty in deciphering and/or understanding large blocks of text
- Difficulty in locating specific content
- Difficulty in navigating through content
- Inability to interact with learning content, including embedded third-party content and tool
When these barriers exist, i.e. the content is inaccessible, students may not be able to access the content at all, may miss significant amounts of the content, or may expend considerably more time and effort to access it. This leads to an inequitable and non-inclusive learning experience for these students.
When digital content is presented in an accessible way, these barriers are reduced or removed.
All students benefit
Accessible digital learning content enables all students to spend their valuable time engaging in learning instead of struggling to find and access content.
It is important to remember that accessible digital content assists all students, not only those with disabilities, as it reduces the cognitive load and time required to navigate, locate, and understand the digital content.
Copyright material
Where copyright materials are not in an accessible format for a person with a disability, the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) 2017 amendment allows ANU to provide those materials in an accessible format. This information is summarised on the ANU copyright and digitisation section of our copyright rules (opens an ANU website).
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a key resource in defining accessible content.
W3C, the consortium that authored WCAG, provides the following information on its What is Web accessibility page (opens an external website):
Web accessibility means that websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities can use them. More specifically, people can:
- perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web
- contribute to the Web
Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including:
- auditory
- cognitive
- neurological
- physical
- speech
- visual
Web accessibility also benefits people without disabilities, for example:
- people using mobile phones, smart watches, smart TVs, and other devices with small screens, different input modes, etc.
- older people with changing abilities due to ageing
- people with “temporary disabilities” such as a broken arm or lost glasses
- people with “situational limitations” such as in bright sunlight or in an environment where they cannot listen to audio
- people using a slow Internet connection, or who have limited or expensive bandwidth