Bite-Sized Accessibility Lesson

Concept Overview

A brief, interactive online lesson will be assigned as homework before the Narrative, Digital Media, and Learning class discussion I will lead about narrative and digital accessibility. The goal is to help build a common (introductory) understanding of what accessibility means and set the stage for the class discussion about digital accessibility.

An illustration of a curb cut surrounded by people, including someone in a wheelchair, one pushing a stroller, and two riding bicycles. Near the bottom, it says, 'When we design for disabilities… we make things better for everyone.'

Narrow curb cut. The raised sidewalk edge (painted yellow) slopes down to the middle of a crosswalk.

Illustration of the curb-cut effect by sketchplanations (left). Blog post photo of a simple curb cut (right).

Target Audience

The students in this master’s level NYU class are primarily first-year graduate students enrolled in various programs. Therefore, I do not want to assume that every student is already familiar with digital accessibility.

Learning Goals

The goal of this brief lesson is for students to gain (or review) a basic understanding of the following:

What is accessibility?
Why does accessibility matter?
A definition of “digital accessibility.”

Prototype

I used the free trial of Articulate 360’s Rise 360 microlearning tool because its web interface made it easy to create and customize a lesson with interactive components quickly. In addition to short blocks of text, the lesson includes four “flippable” flashcards, one multiple-choice question, and a clickable labeled image. I included these interactive components to encourage users to participate actively in the lesson.

The lesson's title screen, which says, 'Narrative & Digital Accessibility Intro [by] Rachel Stein'

The microlesson's beginning as displayed by Articulate's mobile simulator (above).

🔍 EXPLORE THE PROTOTYPE

“Narrative & Digital Accessibility Intro” microlesson.

⚠️ ABOUT THE PROTOTYPE

It is a PDF rather than the live version to ensure continued access since I created the lesson using a free trial.

It was created by exporting the course as a PDF using the built-in tool and then edited with Adobe Acrobat. While these steps resolved some formatting, readability, and other issues, the process likely introduced typos and other cross-application and accessibility issues (e.g., the heading hierarchy is somewhat unclear).

Next Steps

Content:

Simplify the lesson’s language.
Have an ~expert review the lesson material.
Incorporate participants’ feedback: Parts of the lesson that seem clear and complete to me (as the lesson creator) may not be to others.

Format:

Since Rise 360 supports exporting the lesson as HTML, a production version could easily and should be self-hosted.
Improve lesson accessibility (e.g., ensure consistent heading structure is clear visually and with a screen reader).

Acknowledgments

This project was initially created for NYU’s graduate course Narrative, Digital Media, and Learning. During the course, it was submitted in a simpler format instead of as a portfolio project write-up. After the course, I remade the prototype, incorporating some material from my graduate course Digital Frictions—Museum Accessibility and Digital Design.
This project’s cover image is from a Taylor & Francis article.
The microlearning includes content-specific source links.