Developments in technology have allowed for the increase access of online coursework

to students in education. The flexibility that online learning offers students can also
create barriers for disabled learners. As higher education continues expanding
curriculum into virtual learning environments, learning management systems and webbased trainings, disabled learners are also faced with more challenges in using these
technologies to learn.
The principle of accessibility asserts that designs should be usable by people of
diverse abilities, without special adaptation or modification. I found this to be a
profound statement made by the authors of, Universal Principles of Design. (William
Lidwell, 2003) Still working on this paragraph
Wiring, attention, memory, sensory integration, (Medina, 2014) all play a role in how
students learn. Disabilities often affect the same areas that Medina mentions in his
book. In progress

Designers of web based learning content often choose to relay the information from a
course in the least time consuming ways. When doing so, they often can leave out key
elements that are need for disabled learners to successfully use the provided
information. Disabled learners could have learning disabilities that cause them to need
to change the size of type, or use software to assist them. A visual impaired student
may use a brail device to display digital content, or a hearing impaired student may use
a screen reading software that reads aloud the content on the screen.

With the use of digital content by e-learning instructors, they must remember that not all
users access the information they are providing in the same manner. The solution is
human-centered design (HCD), an approach that puts human needs, capabilities, and
behavior first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of
behaving. (Norman, 2013) This statement is made by Don Norman in his book, The
design of Everyday Things. By using Human centered design instructors could create
content that is usable to all students no matter their abilities. The focus should be on
what issues will or may arise from the selected content. For instance, if an instructor is
using a video presentation, having the video captioned would allow for hearing impaired
students the same information as other students.

The book Dont Make Me Think, by Steve Krug, had a very interesting chapter on
accessibility and mentioned two arguments that create skepticism that may cause
designers to not take the extra time to make their courses accessible to all. A % of the
population has a disability and making things accessible benefits everyone. (Krug,
2014) Arguments like these are often viewed as exaggerations and can lead designers
to avoid the extra time and work needed to include affordances for accessibility in their
designs. Another issue raised by Krug is, most designers and developers are not going
to become accessibility experts. (Krug, 2014) This issue is a real problem in designing
accessibility into learning content. Many instructors may have little to no experience with
creating content for accessibility and as such may avoid it entirely and leave it up to
someone else to modify their content for accessibility. This is true at Western Oregon

University as they have an Office of Disability Services that assists students with
disabilities get the additional assistance needed to use the course content.

-Still working on a closing paragraph, and have a few more sources I would like to use
for my paper that I found today, but have not had the time to fully read through them.

Works Cited
Krug, S. (2014). Don't Make Me Think, Revisited. San Francisco: New Riders.
Medina, J. (2014). Brain Rules. Seattle: Pear Press.
Norman, D. (2013). The Design Of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.
William Lidwell, K. H. (2003). Universal Principles of Design. Beverly: Rockport
Publishers, Inc.