What happened
Every Learner Everywhere reported on guidance from its “Keep Calm and Make It Accessible” webinar, presented with Northwest Higher Education Accessibility Technology Group. Tasha Biesinger of Oregon State University and Justi Echeles of Oregon Health & Science University said accessibility work can begin with practical choices about PDFs, LMS pages, slides, scans, equations, diagrams, captions, headings, and image descriptions.
Why it matters
For faculty, course designers, and student success teams, the practical message is that accessibility need not start as a technical compliance checklist. The presenters emphasized preserving familiar teaching practices while making student-facing artifacts more usable. Examples included narrating whiteboard work, reconsidering whether a PDF is necessary, using LMS or HTML pages where appropriate, and rebuilding handwritten scans into clearer documents.
What to do next
Embed accessibility prompts into existing faculty development, especially around slide design, Universal Design for Learning, Quality Matters, or LMS transitions. Ask faculty to review actual course materials before discussing standards. Involve libraries before uploading scans or readings, and create routes to accessibility staff, instructional designers, IT, or vendors for hard cases. Some issues will require institutional standards, technical remediation, or vendor pressure.
About this briefing
Reviewed by TutorFlow Editorial. We link the primary source, preserve its publication date, and distinguish reported claims from TutorFlow analysis. Our commentary focuses on practical decisions for educators and training teams.
Discussion (0)
Open to everyone