Inclusivity and Accessibility

Through the course content, the instructor fosters a climate of respect, inclusivity, fairness, and trust among the community of learners.

The course employs language and practices that encourage learners to feel a sense of belonging and community. Fostering respect and trust in the course creates an atmosphere of inclusivity and fairness. This is often achieved through the instructor’s presence being visible in the course. Engaging with and actively seeking all students’ input and respectfully negotiating academic and personal differences is important. Students who feel a sense of belonging are more apt to complete not only the course, but the program, and they are also more likely to transfer the learned skills to novel experiences.

Evidence of the instructor’s effort to foster a climate of respect, inclusivity, and fairness may include facilitating discussions that honor and respect differences of opinions and cultural uniqueness; utilizing learner-centered language; focusing on finding consensus and agreement; inviting students to share relevant, meaningful, personal reflections; and creating space for individual differentiation and culturally defined experiences in a considerate way that honors the diverse student population.

For more information on inclusive practices, refer to the Understanding Your Online Learners or Understanding Your Learners unit.

The course visual design is consistent, relevant, appealing, and easily viewable regardless of device.

All course content is strategically designed to enhance visual appeal, aid comprehension, and reflect Butler’s Brand Toolkit. Page layouts are consistently formatted and easily viewed regardless of device. Strong visual design includes appropriate use of titles and headings, white space, meaningful images and graphics, and color. Consider utilizing the Canvas Template for foundational elements to help create an effective course design. For more information on best practices related to visual design, refer to the Enhancing the Visual Appeal of Your Course unit.

Text is appropriately and consistently sized, styled, chunked, organized, and free of typographical errors.

All text in the course maximizes readability through appropriate and consistent sizing, style, formatting, organization, and chunking of information. Additionally, the course is free of typographical, grammatical, and mechanical errors.

All course content meets accessibility legal requirements.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) emphasizes that all learners benefit from course content that is perceptible, varied, and flexible. Additionally, Butler is legally bound to create fully accessible course content, regardless of the enrolled student population (per Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0), Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Accessibility 508 Standards, and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)).

For example, all images in the course should be accompanied by textual representations (alt text).

Documents should utilize heading and paragraph styles, sans-serif fonts, visible and contrasting colors, descriptive links, and table headings and be accessible by a screen reader. Additionally, instructors should avoid written materials that rely on shape, size, or color of text alone to convey meaning.

Video and audio content should include accurate closed captioning and transcripts of the audio and image content.

For more information on how to create accessible course content, refer to Applying Universal Design for Learning and Leveraging Accessibility for Student Success units.