Navigating accessibility legislation and good practice as a member of staff at the University can feel daunting, but it is ultimately about removing barriers so that all your students can engage fully with your teaching. Don’t feel scared by it, or be put off trying, inclusivity is a process reached in a lot of small steps. Making a few simple changes can make a big difference to your students.
For UK academics, accessibility is governed by two main pieces of legislation, which together form a framework for teaching that is inclusive by design.
This section will tell you what you need to know about the legal requirements and the practical steps you can take to meet them.
Defining accessibility
At its core, accessibility is the practice of designing products, digital content, physical environments, and educational experiences so that they can be used by people of all abilities and disabilities.
Think of it as a commitment
In a higher education context, it is helpful to look at accessibility not as a compliance checklist, but as a commitment to equal participation.
A widely accepted and cited definition within academia comes from the Office for Civil Rights in the US Department of Education:
Accessibility means when a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally integrated and equally effective manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use.
The social model of disability
In the UK, accessibility is heavily informed by the Social Model of Disability. This states that people are disabled not by their medical conditions or impairments, but by the barriers existing in society (and in our classrooms).
Under this model, a student is not “disabled by dyslexia”; rather, they are disabled by a learning environment that relies exclusively on dense, unstructured, written text without offering alternative formats. Accessibility is the act of dismantling those barriers.
The UK Legal Framework
There are two relevant acts that apply specifically to the UK:
- The Equality Act (2010)
- Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) 2018 (often shortened to PSBAR)
The Equality Act
The Equality Act protects students and staff with disabilities (including physical and sensory impairments, mental health conditions, and specific learning difficulties like dyslexia or ADHD) from discrimination.
Reasonable Adjustments
You are legally required to make “reasonable adjustments” to ensure disabled people are not substantially disadvantaged. This might mean allowing extra time for assignments or providing alternatives to traditional assessments.
Anticipatory Duty
You cannot simply wait for a person to disclose a disability and ask for help. The law requires you to anticipate the needs of disabled students and design your courses and materials to be as accessible as possible from the start.
PSBAR
Because UK universities are publicly funded, we are classed as public sector bodies. Under PSBAR, all digital content we produce must be accessible.
The WCAG Standard: Your digital materials (websites, SharePoint pages, Blackboard documents, Word files, PDFs, PowerPoints, and videos) must meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard.
There is no exception for content on Blackboard because it sits behind a login prompt.
Thinking about the students (and staff we attract) and where they might be studying, we should also be aware of:
Local Guidance
Within Durham, we have our own guidance :
Disability Support Plans
This is a document of reasonable adjustments written together by a disabled student and staff from the Disability Support Service. This should then be shared with their department and college.
Alternative assessment types
The University has tasked departments with agreeing in advance alternative assessment types – anticipating the needs of our diverse learners. These are for cases where a student cannot engage with the assessment as stated in the module descriptor and assessment brief because of a disability. In order to maintain consistency and equity, each department should identify and approve appropriate alternatives to all relevant forms of summative coursework.
Find out more about alternative assessment formats
Summary
A good, accessible experience boils down to three things:
Proactive Design
Anticipating barriers and removing them before someone encounters them. Instead of waiting for a student to request a transcript for a video, you provide captions and a transcript by default.
Independence
An accessible resource allows disabled students to learn and navigate their courses autonomously. If a student has to rely on a support worker or constantly email you to decipher poorly formatted documents, the material is not truly accessible.
Equivalency
The experience does not have to be identical, but it must be equivalent. For example, a student using a screen reader to listen to an article is not reading it visually, but they are acquiring the same information with equivalent ease.