1. Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication
Tom Gibbons
Instructional Designer
South Seattle College
Center for Extended Learning

2. What is Universal Design?
Rubik’s Cube for Blind Persons, Konstantin Datz,
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

3. Who does Universal Design help?
Everyone.
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

4. Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication
Why Bother?
It’s an issue of social justice and diversity.
Following UD principles makes communication clearer and more consistent.
It’s the law.
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

5. Document Formatting
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

6. Document Formatting Use headings Use descriptive hyperlinks
Use list styles
Add alt text to graphics
Use tables appropriately
Be aware of color and contrast
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

7. What is the purpose of a heading in a document?
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

8. Headings create visual hierarchical structures for information access.
When used correctly, headings and styles also create machine- readable semantic structures that reflect the visual hierarchy.
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

9. 1. Use Headings Creates easy, consistent visual structure
Creates underlying semantic structure for other devices
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

10. Headings apply to all document types
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

11. 1. Use Headings
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

12. 1. Use Headings Resources:
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

13. 2. Use Descriptive Links Resources: OR:
OR:
Semantic Structure from WebAIM
US Government’s Section 508 Page
Styling PDFs from WebAIM
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

14. 3. Use List Styles
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

15. Remember to ask, “What does this image mean?”
4. Use Alt Text
Remember to ask, “What does this image mean?”
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

16. 4. Use Alt Text
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

17. A slime mold on the forest floor
4. Use Alt Text
Describe the image—don’t just give it a title.
Gross! OR
A slime mold on the forest floor
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

18. 4. Use Alt Text Try to avoid creating images out of text
If you feel you need to for design purposes, make sure to use alt text
Keep it short
If you can't keep it short, be sure to include a text-based alternative
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

19. What is the purpose of a table?
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

20. 5. Use Tables Appropriately
Keep tables simple
Don’t use tables for complex layouts: Tables are for tabular data.
Use headers for columns and rows
Use technology to help you:
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

21. 6. Be Aware of Color and Contrast
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

22. 6. Be Aware of Color and Contrast
Color Insensitivity and Low Vision
Resources:
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

23. Eliminate image-only email
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

24. Eliminate image-only email
Include your web-optimized poster (or better yet, link to it), but also include a text equivalent to the visual information
Use Word to style your and then copy and paste into Outlook
Send directly from Word by using the “Send to Mail Recipient” command (it’s in File > Options)
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

25. Eliminate image-only email
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

26. Mobile access and why it’s an important barometer
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

27. How can captioning help everyone?
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

28.
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

29. Captioning
Three different examples of a short video can be found starting here:
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

30. Captioning Also include an accessible transcript for audio and video
Video and audio aren't randomly accessible
If you create a 10-minute video and caption it, you might as well include the transcript.
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

31. Captioning Help with captioning in
Canvas
YouTube
Panopto
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

32. What is the value of a PDF?
*This section on PDFs owes a debt of gratitude to Terrill Thompson and the folks at the University of Washington DO-IT. They’re awesome.
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

33. Save documents as tagged PDF
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

34. Adobe PDF Three general types: Image
Text document with no underlying structure
Tagged, well-structured document
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

35. Is My PDF Tagged? Ctrl (or Command) + D
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

36. Use a tool that supports tagged PDF
And maybe a few others:
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

37. Follow a few basic rules
Use heading styles
Use other built-in structural features (lists, tables)
Add alternate text to images
Define language, especially if document contains foreign language content
Save/Export to a tagged PDF
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

38. Didn’t follow these steps?
PDF accessibility can be repaired in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
For more information about creating accessible pdfs:
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication

39. Additional online resources
Accessible Technology University of Washington
AccessSTEM
Universal Design Strategies in Teaching and Communication