In the age of online courses, students with disabilities can face challenges due to inaccessible aspects of digital platforms.

Difficulties have come up for students with disabilities due to the virtual format many courses now take on.

Cyndi Wiley, the digital accessibility coordinator at Iowa State, explained how digital learning platforms could sometimes be inaccessible.

“When anybody adds content to Canvas, or we add content to our websites through our content management systems, that’s when we can do things inaccessibly,” Wiley said. “Things like PDF files, for instance, if we just scan those, they come in as images and students who use assistive technology then can’t utilize that particular PDF. Students that have visual impairments and need to zoom in to a PDF, and if it’s an image rather than text, the image can lose a lot of resolution and it makes the text unreadable.”

Jamie Niman, accessibility coordinator at Iowa State, also explained challenges students with disabilities have faced during virtual coursework.

“Navigating through classes on Canvas can be very difficult for students that have executive functioning challenges,” Niman said. “If you have instructors placing the expectations and assignments and deadlines and things like that in the syllabus, where they typically are, that’s one place. But then sometimes they might have them within the modules, they might have them within assignments, they might look different for each class. That’s been some of the problems I think we’ve been running into when we coach students through finding out what’s due, what’s coming up in the future, those expectations, it’s not as consistent across different colleges.”

Niman went on to explain how different online course formats affect students differently.

“I know for some of our students the asynchronous part can be really tough,” Niman said. “On the flip side, I’ve seen students say with the pressure of attendance being lifted, they’re able to actually engage with the class. So, some find the asynchronous material helpful and some find it very hard to engage with.”

Wiley explained what Iowa State is doing to make digital platforms more accessible.

“What we’re doing at ISU is we are vetting software that we buy, so if anything is going to be released campuswide, I get to take a look at it and kinda pinpoint where the areas of improvement need to be,” Wiley said. “There’s a push from us as universities to have things that are accessible and developed accessibly.”  

Digital platforms have also implemented changes to become more accessible. Niman discussed how Zoom now has auto captions that help deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals and that this is a “step in the right direction” for digital platforms to become more accessible.

Linda Lind, education professor and Project SEARCH business liaison at Iowa State, explained the advantages of meeting virtually for students with disabilities. 

“I think it’s less intimidating to be online then maybe in front of a whole group of people,” Lind said. “I think people are more likely to take risks in speaking out on a virtual platform where they don’t see a hundred other people in the same room with them.”

When it comes to improving digital accessibility, Wiley said the best way to do so is with general awareness.