Building an Accessible Online Course, Module by Module

What course-level accessibility covers

A course is a collection of very different materials delivered through a learning platform: recorded lectures, readings, slides, assignments, quizzes, discussion boards and sometimes live sessions. Students with hearing, vision, motor, cognitive or learning disabilities meet barriers in different places. A deaf student may sail through the readings and get stuck on an uncaptioned video; a blind student may manage the videos and get stuck on a scanned PDF or an image-only diagram; a student with a motor disability may be blocked by a timed drag-and-drop exercise.

Designing for these needs from the start is cheaper than responding to accommodation requests one at a time, and it helps many students without disabilities too, such as those studying in a second language, on a phone or in a noisy place. Approaches such as Universal Design for Learning frame this as offering more than one way to take in and engage with material. Legal requirements depend on your country, institution and sector and change over time, so check the current rules with your institution's accessibility or disability services office.

Videos and audio

Every video lesson needs accurate captions, and every audio-only item, such as a recorded podcast-style lesson, needs a transcript. Where visuals carry information the narration does not mention, such as an equation written on a whiteboard or a diagram being annotated, either describe it in the narration or provide description. The success criteria and accuracy expectations for educational media are covered in detail in captions for educational video accessibility, so this article does not repeat them.

Transcripts earn their place in courses beyond accessibility: students search them before exams, read them at their own pace, and copy terminology accurately. How a transcript differs from a caption file, and when you need both, is explained in transcript versus subtitles. Turning lesson transcripts into full written lessons is a further step covered in converting course videos to written lessons.

Documents, slides and readings

Documents are where many course accessibility problems actually live.

• Use real headings, created with the editor's heading styles, so screen-reader users can navigate by section.
• Provide text, not pictures of text. Scanned pages without a text layer are unreadable to screen readers; run text recognition and check the result, or find a digital original.
• Add alternative text to informative images, and longer descriptions for complex charts and diagrams.
• Give data tables header rows and avoid merged cells where possible.
• Write link text that says where the link goes, not click here.
• Never use colour alone to convey meaning, such as red for wrong answers.
• Prefer course pages in the learning platform, or well-structured word-processor files, over PDFs where possible. If you must use PDF, export it tagged from an accessible source document.
• For mathematics and science notation, use formats that assistive technology can read, such as MathML rendered by the platform, rather than images of equations.
• Share slide files as well as or instead of a flattened PDF, with a sensible reading order and alternative text for images.

Quizzes, assignments and time limits

Assessments need extra care, because a barrier here affects grades, not just convenience.

• Every question type must work with a keyboard and screen reader. Drag-and-drop, hotspot and matching questions are frequent problems; offer an equivalent alternative format if the tool's version is not accessible.
• Images in questions need alternative text that gives the information needed to answer without giving away the answer.
• Time limits should be adjustable. WCAG's timing guidance is commonly read as requiring that users can turn off, adjust or extend time limits, with some exceptions, and most learning platforms let you grant extra time to individual students. Learn where that setting is before the first quiz goes live.
• Warn before a session times out or a quiz auto-submits, and avoid designs where losing focus or a dropped connection ends an attempt.
• Write clear instructions, including the number of questions, the time allowed and whether answers save automatically.
• Give feedback in text, not just as a colour or an icon.
• Avoid assessments that depend entirely on one sense, such as identifying a sound, unless that skill is genuinely what is being assessed, and plan an accommodation route if it is.

Learning platform navigation and structure

• Use the same structure in every module: an overview, the materials, the activity and the assessment, in the same order.
• Give modules, pages and files descriptive names, such as Week 3 reading: supply and demand, rather than Document 3.
• State due dates and requirements in text on the page, not only in a calendar widget.
• Keep nesting shallow, so students reach materials in a few steps.
• Check the platform's theme and any custom colours for contrast and focus visibility.
• Test embedded third-party tools, such as interactive exercises, simulations and video hosts, individually. Their accessibility varies widely and is often worse than the platform's.
• Check the course on a phone, where many students do much of their work.

Live classes and recorded seminars have their own requirements, covered in running accessible webinars.

Auditing an existing course

For a course that already exists, an inventory turns an overwhelming task into a list.

1. List every item in the course: each video, audio file, document, slide deck, quiz, external tool and link.
2. Record for each item its type, its length or size, whether it is required, and its current accessibility status.
3. Run the platform's accessibility checker if it has one, and a document checker on files, to catch structural problems such as missing headings and alternative text.
4. Test manually what checkers cannot: navigate one module by keyboard only, listen to one document with a screen reader, and watch one video with the sound off.
5. Prioritise required items, items used early in the course, and items with the most students.
6. Fix in batches by type, such as all videos, then all PDFs, because the skills and tools are shared.
7. Record what was fixed and when, and re-check whenever material is updated.

Item

Lesson 2.3 video, 11 minutes, required

Captions

Automatic only, not reviewed

Transcript

None

Visual content

Slides read aloud; one chart not described

Priority and owner

High, module author, by start of term

Common mistakes and limits of course accessibility work

• Captioning videos but leaving slides and readings as inaccessible PDFs.
• Treating automatic captions as finished.
• Building assessments in a tool nobody has tested with a keyboard.
• Granting extra time only after a student has already struggled through a quiz without it.
• Auditing once and never re-checking after updates.

Course design reduces the need for individual accommodations but cannot remove it. Some students will still need adjustments, such as alternative formats, extended deadlines or a different assessment method, arranged through your institution's disability services process. Automated checkers miss problems that only human testing finds, and no audit replaces feedback from students who use assistive technology.

Where mydubly fits in a course audit

mydubly handles one slice of course accessibility: drafting captions and transcripts for video and audio lessons. From a lesson file chosen on your device, the subtitle generator produces SRT and VTT caption files, and the video to text tool gives the same job's plain and timestamped transcripts. Most learning platforms and video hosts accept SRT or VTT uploads. Files can be up to 2 hours each, and the spoken language is detected automatically.

The caption files contain recognized speech only: single-line cues, no sound tags, no speaker labels and no description of visuals, so each needs review before it serves as accessible captions. mydubly does not check documents, quizzes or navigation, is not a learning platform, and does not create audio description. Pricing is per file: 1 credit per minute with a minimum of 5 credits, partial minutes rounded up, so 40 lessons that each run a little over nine minutes are billed at 10 minutes each, 400 credits (40¢) in total. If students need lessons in other languages, that is covered on the online course translation page.

Next step: inventory one module

Start the audit with the first module students see. List every item, test it with a keyboard and with the sound off, and record what fails. Fixing one module well gives you a template, and a realistic sense of the time the rest of the course will take.