LXD Spotlight: Geri Atanassova-Boft on Accessibility

Before I became an instructional designer, I was a language teacher. And I have realized that language teaching was one of the very few school subjects where instructors didn't really see many students with disabilities at any level. It was sort of a vicious circle: we didn't get students with disabilities that much, so we didn't have a need or a reason to really develop any strategies for helping and supporting them. Accessibility was always an afterthought—always added, never initially in the design from the start. We just didn't feel the need to do this because, why do it if no one is going to need it? But this started changing over the past maybe 10 years.

I started seeing more and more students with various disabilities. For me personally, it was two students I had in back-to-back years who changed my approach.

In the first case, it was a deaf student who relied on sign language and who had an interpreter in class. She needed to learn Arabic for religious purposes because she was a Muslim—which is as valid and important a reason as you can possibly have to learn a language. I had no idea where to start and what to do, so she and her interpreter essentially helped me understand what a deaf student needs in a language class. That was quite a successful experience for me that taught me a great deal, and the student enjoyed the class and learned a lot.

The next one was a complete and utter disaster. My student was blind, and I had nothing to offer him. Our textbook didn't exist in an electronic format—it couldn't be read by a screen reader because it was just on paper. There was no accessible version of the textbook and no accessible version of the accompanying materials. Everything in the textbook was color-coded. (As language teachers, we use color a lot.) I spent a summer with a colleague and with the Office of Student Services at the university trying to figure out a way to help the student, and I wasn't successful. He ended up dropping the course because he felt he could not be successful in it—a very valid observation.

That made me think: why wasn't I prepared? Why wasn't my field prepared? Why were there no resources for that one student? And that was one student 10 years ago. Since then, there have been many more, because students with disabilities are venturing a lot more now into subjects they previously thought would be out of bounds for them.

I feel that it is a lot more common for online students to be signing up for courses precisely because they have some sort of disability or a temporary limitation that makes them unable to navigate an in-person class. Technology also contributes to the need—because even if a student doesn't have a disability, they can still be in a situation where they can't hear the video, or they can't see the text or the PowerPoint slide or the image, because the connection is bad or the video didn't render correctly. Alternatives need to exist in online courses, not just for students with disabilities, but really for everyone.

Accessibility in online courses is about equity—not just for people with disabilities, but really for all users. In online learning, this is one thing that needs to exist in the design from the very start.

This is a very good question. On the surface, there is the Title II DOJ rule that mandates that all public institutions will need to meet WCAG AA standards by 2027 or 2028, depending on the size of the institution. However, even without the pressure of specific deadlines and a specific standard, online courses and learning materials at private institutions still need to meet a threshold of accessibility.

What I have seen has not been a private versus public divide. It has been a resource-rich versus resource-poor divide. And frequently, the difference is not even between universities as a whole but rather between individual colleges within universities that have separate budgets. Universities and units that can afford to be proactive are much more likely to take comprehensive accessibility measures early. Colleges that don't have the financial and logistical support are really struggling.

Retrofitting hundreds of courses across various subjects, student audiences, and disability challenges is an enormous and complex undertaking. For institutions without the resources, it has been really difficult.

Yes. AI agents have been very helpful in doing accessibility audits. With AI, you don't have to rely on a specific accessibility tool. You can just set the parameters that you want AI to examine, get a full report, and then use that report to make sure that the content is really accessible. What AI can do really well is find the issues, flag them for you, and make sure that you have addressed and fixed all of them after that.

For me, that has been a very efficient way to use AI in making sure that courses in Moodle, for example, are accessible—because the built-in accessibility tool in Moodle has not been great. AI has been a really efficient, reliable, and effective tool for filling that gap.

As always with AI, there has to be a calibration phase. When you run the first reports, sometimes there will be false flags and sometimes things will be missed. It's always important to first run a report on something you have already reviewed yourself—where you have identified all of the flags—and then have AI check. Then, if necessary, recalibrate what AI is looking for and give it a list of the things that need to be addressed and the things it misidentified the first time around.

That has been a helpful approach. But it is not a good idea to rely on AI completely from the start without first checking.

I have learned a lot about how much I still have to learn—even though I have been trying to learn as much as possible for the past 10 years. There is always something else and something new that I didn't know before.

One of the most surprising things I recently learned is that the CDC published a report on the instances of disability in the United States—based on 2022 data—and the figure is staggering.

When you look at how disability evolves throughout a person's lifespan, pretty much all of us at some point in our life will be likely to experience disability, whether temporary or permanent. According to the same report, almost 45 percent of the U.S. population over age 65 reports having a functional disability—almost half the people reaching retirement age. And in online education, which has been opening so many opportunities for seniors to continue their learning, this number is very important to keep in mind. Half of the seniors taking your lifetime learning class are likely to have some sort of disability. It needs to be baked into the design.

My favorite place is called WebAIM—Web Accessibility in Mind—a nonprofit center from Utah State University. It's an amazing resource: a web hub for information about accessibility and disabilities, WCAG standards, and various tools including color-contrast checkers, alt text validators, and checkers for web pages. What I love about it particularly is that it's not just about checklists and ticking boxes—it provides a lot of information about why certain requirements exist and what features can create obstacles for people with various disabilities. Whenever I have an accessibility question, I always start there.

There are a few other resources as well. The International Association for Accessibility Professionals (IAAP) has both members-only and public resources, including webinars, articles, and accessibility checklists. The Online Learning Consortium also has both members-only and public resources worth exploring.