Accessibility isn’t optional — it’s the heart of digital learning

Alt text: Young woman wearing assistive visual technology. sits with a colleague at a computer

There’s an expression in the accessibility world: “If you design for disability, you design for everyone.” And once you’ve worked in higher-education learning design for more than five minutes, you realise how true this is.

We often think of accessibility as a checklist — colour contrast, keyboard navigation, captions, alt text, transcripts. All critically important, yes, but still only the surface. In practice, accessibility is a mindset. It starts long before the content hits Canvas. It begins when the storyboard is blank.

When I work on a new module, I don’t ask: “How do I make this accessible later?”I ask: “What choices do I need to make now so nobody gets shut out later?”

Accessibility is proactive, not reactive.

It means choosing a heading structure that screen readers can understand — not one that simply looks nice. It means ensuring that diagrams come with explanations, not because students can’t understand them, but because students shouldn’t have to guess. It means designing assessments that test knowledge, not digital navigation skills.

And it means thinking about context. For example, the student studying on a packed tram with unreliable mobile data. The student who is recovering from a concussion and cannot handle dense pages of text. The student whose first language isn’t English and relies on captioned content to follow the nuance. Accessibility supports all of them, not just one group.

Of course, accessibility isn’t only technical. It’s tonal. It’s emotional. It’s structural. Does the module build confidence or anxiety? Does it make learners feel capable or confused? The role of an instructional designer is to position the learner at the centre, anticipating the moments when they might get stuck and eliminating those friction points before they exist.

Sometimes that means redesigning an entire block. Sometimes it means changing a single sentence. Sometimes it means saying, gently but firmly, “We can’t use that image; it won’t pass accessibility.” And sometimes it means celebrating when the academic says, “I never thought about it that way — thank you.”

Accessibility is about more than compliance. It’s about dignity. When students feel seen and supported, learning becomes possible. And that — not ticking boxes — is why accessibility is the beating heart of digital education.

James Eade