Cognitive Accessibility

Use Simple, Easy-to-Understand Language

Where possible, use simple, easy-to-understand language. This includes short sentences and common words. Avoid idioms or figures of speech. Reduce or eliminate jargon, especially in instructions to students. In addition to discipline-specific jargon, be on the lookout for jargon related to the university, higher education, Canvas, or your course.

Simple language has many benefits, including reducing confusion and fatigue for students with cognitive disabilities.

Reduce the Need for Memory

Identify places where you are referencing something else, then find ways to remind students. Hyperlinks are a powerful tool to reduce the need for memory. For instance, if you say, "In Unit 2 we discussed X topic," you can hyperlink to the content in Unit 2 to refresh students' memory. Likewise, if you reference a syllabus policy or other instructions, linking to them helps students not have to remember where they are located.

Reducing the need for memory can minimize frustration and allow students to focus on the task at hand.

Provide Multiple Ways to Understand Content

For key content, do not rely on one form of understanding only, as this can harm students who do not learn well in that way. For example, instead of providing a text explanation only, include a graphic representation such as an infographic and an audio representation such as a podcast. Use graphs, charts, and tables to supplement ideas explained in text form.

Providing multiple ways to understand content ensures that students with cognitive disabilities can learn in the ways they learn best.

Break Up Content

Long content can be difficult for people with cognitive disabilities to understand. Avoid walls of text. Break up longer content using section headings, bullet lists, images, or multimedia. Create separate pages in Canvas to chunk content so that no one page has too much content.

Breaking up content helps reduce fatigue and increase comprehension and motivation.

Review Key Items

Provide recaps, reviews, or summaries for key items. Reviews help student learn and retain information, and they can are helpful for students looking for a particular piece of information. Mark recaps or reviews clearly so that students can easily find them.

Make It Easy to Get Help

Students with cognitive disabilities may need help in your course. Making it clear where they can get help is an important step to reducing barriers for these students. Make yourself available for students to give you feedback. Provide clear links to university resources and technical support, preferably in multiple places throughout your course.

Create a Predictable and Stable Course

Reduce the number of links in your course navigation. Avoid changing your course navigation or structure unless absolutely necessary. Don't use terms that are dramatically different from how most other university courses use them. Don't change assignments or due dates unless necessary. If you do change assignments or due dates, make sure to clearly mark this in multiple places. Don't assume students will see an Announcement and be able to know and remember changes to the course.

Creating a predictable and stable course helps reduce anxiety and ensure students don't have to spend important cognitive bandwidth interpreting the course.

ADHD/ADD

For students with ADHD/ADD, your goal is minimize distractions. One of the main factors here is the layout of a webpage. Thankfully, with Canvas, the page layout is simple and easy to navigate. Be attentive when you are assigning materials from an external source. Sometimes, these materials use layouts that are visually complex or distracting. For readings, provide PDF links with any distracting elements removed, rather than a direct link to the reading. For example, a student with ADHD reading the following New York Times interview would benefit from a distraction-free PDF.

Having longer paths to find information can be hard for users with ADHD. As much as possible, ensure key items are easy to access from your main navigation and/or course home page. See how many clicks it takes to find key items like your syllabus or contact information, then do what you can to reduce the number of clicks. For example, include a link to the course syllabus and your contact information right on your course home page. Placing key information in multiple places also helps make it easier for students to find what they need without getting lost or distracted.

Finally, reconsider any time limitations you place on students, such as through online quizzes or in-person activities. Students with ADHD often perform worse under time constraints and benefit from having no time restrictions at all.

Autism Spectrum

For students on the autism spectrum, simplicity is key. This includes using simple language (which we discussed earlier) and reducing visual complexity. If possible, reduce the complexity of informational visuals, such as graphs or charts. Break up walls of text using section headings, lists, images, or videos.

It's also important to provide clear directions for students on the autism spectrum. For example, instead of saying "finish your quiz" in the quiz instructions, tell students to "click Submit."

Dyslexia

For students with dyslexia, non-textual representations of course content are helpful. For instance, provide graphic, video, and audio representations alongside text.

Unless absolutely necessary, do not require specific spelling. If you use quiz questions like "Fill in the blank," make sure to provide as many possible spellings as you can.

Minimize the use of ALL CAPS or italics text, as these are less legible, especially for people with dyslexia. Use size or other elements for emphasis instead. Also use plenty of white space throughout your pages, making sure not to condense too much information into a smaller visual area.

While you may have heard of dyslexic-support fonts like OpenDyslexic, we do not recommend them as they are not easily available in Canvas and the scientific evidence for their effectiveness is minimal. If you make your Canvas site accessible using the advice in this self-paced course, individual students will be able to customize their own view of the content, such as changing fonts or magnifying content.

Anxiety

To reduce anxiety about the unknown, signpost what comes next in various ways throughout your course. For example, at the end of each page, include a brief "Up Next" statement, so that students know what to expect.

Make key information, such as due dates and assignment requirements, clear and prominent. This can help with students feeling like they're missing something important or need to go searching to make sure they are doing things right.

Reduce anxiety-provoking design elements, especially on your assessments. For example, unless necessary, quizzes should not make students answer questions in order without being able to go back and check answers. Like with ADHD, we encourage you to reconsider time limitations on quizzes, as they can also negatively impact performance for students with anxiety.