Designing for Inclusive Learning: 3 Text-to-Speech Strategies to Make Accessibility More Than an Add-On

By Amy Foxwell
05/30/2023 – Ace-Ed 

Meeting the needs of learners who need accommodations takes more than tacking a plug-in onto a website or LMS. Making content truly accessible takes holistic, intentional efforts by everyone from the IT team to the teachers and faculty members who create the content. But this isn’t just about learners who need accommodations. Approaching accessibility as more than a quick fix or an add-on supports all learners. Why? The same tools that make a site accessible also improve engagement so that students of all abilities and learning styles have an equal opportunity to engage and succeed with the content.

This is the mission of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) construct, an instructional framework giving learners who need accommodations and those who don’t, multiple ways to engage. At its most basic level, UDL embraces the perspective not of add-ons and afterthoughts, but rather of intentional design and structuring of learning materials and the environment to support everybody….Read Amy’s full article on Ace-Ed here.