Digital Accessibility Literacy Skills: Reading, Writing, and Producing Accessible Media

We can engage with specific digital accessibility skills as literacy skills. To do so is more than an act of rhetorical resistance. It is an act of educative transformation.

Currently, our education system limits literacy skills, and digital literacy skills, to the skills needed for neurotypical, able-bodied people to communicate with neurotypical, able-bodied people. By adopting specific digital accessibility skills as literacy skills, we claim space in curricula and rubrics for teaching and assessing the skills necessary to communicate with – and educate – people with disabilities.

By applying this educative lens to skills that are at their core reading and writing skills, we learn to include people with disabilities in our learning communities and in the digital commons. Is this not the transformative power of literacy?

Digital Accessibility Literacy Skill-building Goals:
1. Improve access, agency, and inclusion for people with disabilities
2. Demonstrate respect through the production and use of digitally accessible media and communications.

Educators can use the following Digital Accessibility Skills framework to guide inquiry or to collaborate with colleagues and staff to build skills toward these goals.

1. Writing Skills

• Proficient with the following WCAG 2 text-based strategies to produce digitally accessible media, e.g., digital documents, emails, slide decks, websites, social media, video, audio, and images, digital games, surveys, etc.
  • Write titles and headings to both convey meaning and provide navigable structure.
  • Write link text that is meaningful and contextual.
  • Write meaningful text alternatives for images
    • Write alternative text and captions for simple images.
    • Write image descriptions for complex images, infographics, charts or graphs.
    • Understand appropriate use of each.
    • Prepare verbal descriptions of images for oral presentations.
  • Write/create transcripts and closed captions for multimedia
    • Write described transcripts.
    • Understand and assess the limitations of automatically generated transcripts and captions.
  • Write/provide clear written and verbal instructions
    • Use plain language where possible
  • Keep written and verbal communications clear and concise
    • Use ordered lists and bullets appropriately for structure and clarity.
    • Label, author and format tables accessibly, and use them for data not design.
    • Use colour only as a secondary means of communicating, never the sole means e.g in a legend.

2. Editing/Checking Your Work and Publishing Skills

• Proficient at using accessibility checkers in publishing software (Office, Adobe, Google Docs, WordPress, LMS, etc.); akin to spell-checking or grammar-checking work using a software’s built-in tools prior to distribution.
• Exercises judgement when faced with the decision to distribute media with significant digital accessibility issues
  • Communicate any know issues with the media if it is distributed.
• Proficient at using your knowledge, experience and technology, or otherwise sourcing support, to assess the accessibility of media.
  • Communicate issues in advance
• Proficient at saving, publishing, and sharing media that retains its accessibility features.

3. Reading and Curation Skills

• Proficient at identifying digitally accessible media by reading for the use of the above strategies, or by employing other strategies that assess accessibility.
• Proficient at sourcing accessible versions of files or media.
• Familiar with the legislative framework that supports digital accessibility versioning of media, specifically:
  • Copyright allowances and limitations for producing or acquiring accessible versions of files, and
  • How libraries can provide guidance.
• Familiar with how to source accessible versions through libraries, archives, some publishers, and some distributors for books, magazines, journals, textbooks, and audio visual media.
  • Familiar with timelines to acquire accessibly versioned materials, which can vary substantially (bringing us back to the reason media needs to be made digitally accessible in the first place.)

When these digital accessibility literacy skills are addressed along side accessible digital choices, actions, beliefs, and critical pedagogical practices, we have the makings of transformative digital accessibility praxis.

Transformative Joy

My hope is that we will eventually treat these digital accessibility literacies the way we currently treat grammar in a child’s learning journey.

We don’t teach kids what verbs are before reading them picture books, singing songs, and having satisfying conversations. Children come to understand the grammar rules while being immersed in the joys of communicating. They understand the poignant frustration of being misunderstood, or of misunderstanding something, because of a grammar error. That, along with the joy of being understood, motivates them to get grammar right.

I hope that neurotypical, able-bodied and disabled children will one day be taught meaningful and transformative ways of communicating equitably and agentively with each other from the get go. (To that end I’m working on Anti-Oppressive Communications Habits for our next generation, too.)

As adults learning these skills now, I hope that we might connect with a child-like curiosity and look for the joy in this learning journey. Building proficiency takes time, and as with the other literacy skills you learned as a child, mistakes will be made. That’s OK. That’s learning. You and your learners will appreciate the value of getting digital accessibility literacies right when you succeed in removing some of the strain from your digital conversations and learning environments, and make room for more joy.

Where are you experiencing the joy of communicating with students with disabilities in ways that contribute to their agency, access and inclusion?

FYI: Many academic institutions have services to support educators who want to proactively skill-build but are likely using terminology like “digital accessibility training” or naming their training after the compliance framework or legislation the institution is required to follow e.g., WCAG 2 or AODA. Consider taking the courses available at your institution and applying this transformative lens to the information provided.