Making Digital Content Usable for Everyone

Maggie Grady: 0:03

Welcome to a special edition of the CATT Teaching Table Podcast, produced by the University of Buffalo's Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation, otherwise known as CATT, and supported by the Genteel's Excellence in Teaching Fund. I'm Maggie Grady, Instructional Innovation Project Manager for CATT. This Teaching Table mini-series features short episodes designed to help faculty prepare for upcoming ADA Title II regulation changes, which are taking effect in April of 2026. Together we'll explore what these updates mean for teaching and learning at UB and share practical ways to make courses more accessible and inclusive. Joining me in these episodes is Sarah Gugliemi, CATT's Instructional Consultant for accessible and inclusive pedagogy. Sarah works closely with faculty to design courses that are usable, inclusive, and aligned with accessibility best practices. So welcome back, Sarah. So let's start with defining usable content. So what exactly making digital content usable for everyone, what does that mean?

Sarah Guglielmi: 1:09

Yeah, well, if you think about the word usability, what it refers to is how easily students can interact with and understand course materials. Something can technically meet the accessibility guidelines, but it could still be hard to use it if it's cluttered or inconsistent or confusing in some way. So the goal is to make your materials clear, organized, and flexible so students can focus on learning your content and not figuring out how to access your content. I'd also like to note that these strategies fall under an accessible and inclusive pedagogical approach, which is called Universal Design for Learning, or UDL for short. UDL involves designing course content for the widest range of learners up front. And we'll continue to explore UDL principles in the rest of the series.

Maggie Grady: 1:56

So, Sarah, can you tell us what are some of the design strategies faculty can use and start using right away?

Sarah Guglielmi: 2:02

Yeah, here's a few high-impact ones faculty can start with. And for all of these, you want to keep ease of use in mind for the widest range of learners, which is keeping in alignment with the UDL principles. First, you want to organize content for readability by chunking content into sections. This involves using titles, subtitles, and white space in your documents. In digital accessibility language, titles and subtitles are called headings or tags in electronic documents. And you might be have seen some of these words if you've been working with the accessibility checkers. You want to learn how to use built-in heading styles in your word processing programs, such as Word, Google Docs, or UB Learns. They allow students to overview information and move back and forth within a document, whether reading by eye or with a screen reader. Next, I suggest becoming more aware of color contrast and avoiding using color alone to convey meaning. Some of our students are colorblind, while others might be working with various visual impairments. So the proper color contrast is important in order for them to read the material. The accessibility checkers will flag color contrast issues and they'll ask you to select another color. And the last thing I'd suggest is to get in the habit of providing a combination of lecture, written, audio, and video content with digital accessibility features already in place. This gives students different ways to take in the material and that supports students with different learning needs. When you offer lecture recordings, you want to offer them with edited captions and transcripts. And our UB's platform, Panopto, offers ways to do this in a way that's simple and accessible. And faculty can learn more about these approaches and features in the training materials that we have provided through both CATT's resources and the EDI office. And we will put the links to those resources in the episode notes.

Maggie Grady: 3:53

And also relying on Ally, which is built into UB Learns to help you make your documents accessible, which is super helpful. Yep. So those are great strategies, and it does help to make the materials easier for everyone, not just the students with assistive technology.

Sarah Guglielmi: 4:10

Yeah, exactly. Good accessibility design, it's good learning design, and it supports all students, whether students are juggling work and home life or learning on the go, and students whose learning needs are influenced either by a temporary or a permanent disability.

Maggie Grady: 4:25

So, what tools can faculty use to check or improve usability and their materials?

Sarah Guglielmi: 4:31

Yeah, well, usability is one of the features that the ADA Title II regulations cover, and faculty can start by familiarizing themselves with the accessibility tools in common programs that they use. These tools are designed, their computer programs are designed with features that help help content creators meet these new ADA guidelines. So tools in UB Learns, Microsoft Word, and PowerPoint, those are the most common programs that faculty use. And if you haven't seen it already, each of these programs has an accessibility checker with embedded help menus that can help you identify and correct digital accessibility issues. The checkers are not comprehensive and they do have some limitations, but they are a great starting point to learn and to get started with remediation. And just a reminder, CATT offers consultations and training resources that help walk faculty through how to meet the ADA Title II regulations and to make digital materials more inclusive. And we'll put a link to those resources in the episode notes.

Maggie Grady: 5:29

It's encouraging to see how accessible design naturally supports student success.

Sarah Guglielmi: 5:36

It is. Small design changes can make a big difference in how students engage and develop in their learning.

Maggie Grady: 5:41

I agree. Thank you for joining us, Sarah. Join us next month for episode four Digital Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning. Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to this episode of the Teaching Table podcast. If you enjoyed today's discussion, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. We'll be back soon with more conversations on teaching, learning, and technology. Until then, keep exploring new ways to reach and inspire your students. As always, be sure to connect with us online at buffalo.edu/ catt, that's C-A-T-T, or email us at ubcatt@ buffalo.edu.