Accessibility

Accessibility is the process of designing things to support their use by people with disabilities, and universities are legally and morally required to make sure that their materials and environments are accessible. Sheffield Hallam University is committed to making our physical and digital environments accessible for our varied communities, including staff and students, to allow everyone to engage and thrive in their learning and work.

Accessibility is everyone’s responsibility and there are many different ways in which individuals can improve the accessibility of their practice, ranging from using tools and techniques to improve the accessibility of learning and other materials through to adjusting teaching practices to make it possible for everyone to engage effectively. This page will cover some of the ways to make learning generally more accessible, though there may be specific actions that can be taken to better reflect the accessibility needs of particular students.

Accessible Materials

Materials can be made more accessible in a few complementary ways, including how they are written or designed through to the formats used to share them with students and staff.

Designing for Accessibility

The most effective way to make materials more accessible is to design them that way from the outset, rather than having to edit them later. There are many guides to making materials more accessible and Sheffield Hallam University recommends the widely used SCULPT principles as they quickly address many of the main accessibility issues in a very simple way. Focusing on six common aspects of many documents and resources means that SCULPT is a manageable way to remember and improve accessibility in a meaningful way. For more detailed information, the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has guides on designing and developing accessible online materials.

Accessible Maths

Making maths materials accessible is still a significant challenge, particularly for visual information such as formulae and graphs, but there are things that can be done to improve materials. Read the dedicated page on Accessible Maths for specific guidance and suggestions.

Checking Digital Accessibility

As most materials are now created digitally, even if they aren’t provided to students that way, Sheffield Hallam University provides a number of tools that can check and provide guidance on improving their accessibility.

Teaching materials in Blackboard will be given an accessibility score automatically and guidance provided on how to improve their accessibility through the Anthology Ally service. However, it can be more efficient to address the accessibility of materials as they are being created, and the Accessibility Assistant tools built into Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel are a good way to check for accessibility issues and correct them as you go.

In addition to these checking tools, several tools are also provided to students to allow them to change the format of materials to better suit their needs. The provision of these tools to students also reduces the need for staff to create multiple versions of materials by empowering students to do so for themselves. For teaching materials on Blackboard, Ally's Alternative formats feature offers a convenient way for students to convert to alternative file types that suit their needs, such as audio or braille. For other materials, both Sensus Access and Anthology Ally Transformer allow students to upload files for conversion and support a range of input and output formats.

Accessible Teaching Practices

While there is a legal imperative for improving the accessibility of teaching materials, it is also recommended that equal consideration is given to making teaching practices more accessible. As the range of different practices and activities is so varied, the following are simply some starting points for thinking about how accessibility could be improved.

Adapt teaching to your students’ needs – find out from your students whether there are any types of teaching that are particularly effective or act as a barrier to learning and adapt your delivery accordingly.
Provide materials in advance – many students can benefit from having the opportunity to review new information in advance as it allows them to more fully engage in the session itself.
Offer formative assessment opportunities – in addition to allowing students to check their own understanding, these enable students to get an understanding of assessment requirements, submission processes, etc. which can reduce stress during the summative assessment.
Consider offering alternative assessment formats – for some students writing an essay is a daunting task, while for others doing a presentation is extremely stressful and challenging, so offering a range of equivalent submission formats for an assessment can be a good way to reduce the anxiety and allow the students to perform to the best of their ability.

Inclusive Teaching