12 For Accessibility
The importance of accessibility in your selected learning technology cannot be overstated. One of the best affordances of learning tools is the way that they can make the content more readily accessible to a wider array of people — and one of the pitfalls is clearly that a tool designed without accessibility in mind will leave some of your students struggling to access content or engage in activities.
If you selected the tool yourself, you will almost certainly have considered accessibility as a factor in making your decision. Even if you did not choose the technology, however, it is important to validate its usage against key accessibility standards. This may be as simple as looking at the website or documentation for the tool and confirming that it meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) or those of some other regulating organization. If this information is not available, you should take that as a potential warning sign and conduct further evaluation. The Online Learning Consortium provides guidance on various tools to test for digital accessibility: https://sites.google.com/sloanconsortium.org/accessibilitytoolkit/accessibility-evaluation-tools?authuser=0
Having already used the tool, you should also draw on your own and your students’ experiences to confirm whether any of them encountered any flaws in the utility of the technology.
If you did not select the digital tool and you have accessibility concerns, raise them as soon as possible with the relevant decision-makers (see “Advocating to Drop an Existing Tool” below for more guidance as needed).