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Digital inclusion is defined by the United Nations as “equitable, meaningful, and safe access to use, lead, and design of digital technologies, services, and associated opportunities for everyone, everywhere”.

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Access to and effective use of technology are essential in many areas of daily life, from applying for jobs to staying informed or accessing vital services. As educators, we have a responsibility to ensure all students are prepared to think critically, communicate effectively, and use technology productively as members of a global society. Digital inclusion and accessibility promote equity by ensuring that every student—regardless of background or ability—has the tools and skills needed not only for academic success but for lifelong participation in an increasingly digital world.

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Why Digital Inclusion | Center for Digital Inclusion

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Digital Inclusion is defined as the “ability of individuals and groups to access and use information and communication technologies (ICTs). Digital inclusion encompasses not only access to the Internet but also the availability of hardware and software; relevant content and services; and training for the digital literacy skills required for effective use of information and communication technologies”1.

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Use headings appropriately

Use clear, readable fonts (sans-serif recommended)

Avoid using all caps, color, italics, or bold to convey meaning

Maintain high contrast between text and background

Left justified for screen readers

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Alt text for images

Closed captions for videos

Provide transcripts

Ensure audio quality is clear

Allow control over audio/video playback

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This video by the University of Connecticut highlights the importance of developing accessible course materials and outlines key strategies for doing so.

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Strategies for Developing Accessible Course Materials

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Before sharing materials, use this quick accessibility checklist.

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Home About Accessibility Accessibility Guidelines ​​​​This checklist will provide a starting point to help you assess whether your content meets accessibility standards. The links in the descriptions will ta​ke you to a full explanation and tutorial. Download a copy to use offline (DOCX - 14KB). ​ Use this checklist to review your online content. Item and DescriptionYesNoNotes and Revision Plan1. All images, graphics, tables, etc. have descriptions (alt text).2. All videos have accurate captions.3. All audio-only content has a full transcript.4. Tables are properly formatted so that they can be read easily by a screen reader5. Headings are used to organize content and make it easy to navigate.6. Contrasting colors and simple backgrounds are used in all materials. Text and graphics are meaningful when viewed without color.7. Descriptive hyperlinks are used instead of the URL alone or a hyperlinked “click here.”8. Links are provided to all applets, scripts and plugins needed to launch various technologies.9. All documents and presentations (example: Word, Excel, PowerPoints and PDFs) have been tested with an accessibility checker.10. The accessibility of all tools, content, materials and websites, including those from external sources, has been confirmed.

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The University of Massachusetts Amherst offers a resource page with guidance on making various types of documents accessible, including Microsoft Word documents, PDFs, and converting graphics to text.

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University Relations leads our campus in harnessing the resources and expertise of our broad portfolio in a coordinated and strategic way to ensure that the powerful message of the University of Massachusetts Amherst reaches all of our varied audiences, both internal and external.

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North Dakota State University's Information Technology Division provides guidelines for making accessible tables, along with a helpful checklist at the bottom of the page.

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Tables are a way to organize and share information in a clear and effective manner. To do this, start with accessibility in mind. Tables need headers, alternative text, and a simple structure for individuals with disabilities and all users to understand.

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This web page by Illinois State University offers accessibility tips for Padlet.

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Accessibility Tips for Padlet | Help - Illinois State

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Universal Design for Learning Guidelines

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Universal Design for Learning Guidelines

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CAST's UDL Guidelines provide "a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities."

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

Reenvisioning the UDL Guidelines

Because the UDL Guidelines are meant to be informed by feedback from the field as well as new research, they have been updated several times in the past. We are in the process of updating the Guidelines once again in our UDL Rising to Equity initiative.

This update will focus specifically on addressing systemic barriers that result in inequitable learning opportunities and outcomes. CAST aims to develop a transparent, inclusive, and community-driven process. If you are interested in collaborating and staying updated on our progress, we invite you to complete a brief survey.

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The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.

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Use the mnemonic SLIDE, created by AEM:

Styles are used for section headings.

Links are descriptive and meaningful.

Images have text descriptions.

Design is perceivable, with high contrast.

Evaluation is holistic and authentic.

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Print-friendly handouts for creating accessible documents are also available:

Are you new to accessibility? This page is meant to be your entry point into the creation of accessible content with familiar tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs. You will learn about five practices that can have a significant impact on the learner experience for all students, especially those who rely on assistive technology for their access to the curriculum.

To help you remember these practices, we've created the mnemonic SLIDE, which stands for:

Styles are used for section headings.

Links are descriptive and meaningful.

Images have text descriptions.

Design is perceivable, with high contrast.

Evaluation is holistic and authentic.

Each of the practices is also described in more detail in a playlist of closed-captioned videos with step-by-step directions you can follow at your own pace. Pause the videos, try things out, and reach out to us if you have any questions. While the practices are explained in the context of creating an accessible document, with one exception (Styles) the techniques apply to slide decks as well.

Once you've watched the videos, put your new skills into practice with a document you will revise based on the best practices you've learned about in the videos.

Styles

Section headings will help you break up your content and make it easier to understand through "chunking." Section headings will also be helpful to your learners who use screen readers. With a special keyboard shortcut or touch gesture, they can navigate by heading to find the section with the most relevant content. This can save them valuable time when navigating long documents.

However, not all section headings are created equal in the digital world. It is not enough for you to just select the text and choose formatting options to make it stand out (by making it bold and increasing the text size). You also need to assign an appropriate heading style.

Slide titles can perform a similar function as headings in your slide decks: they orient the reader and improve navigation. Use the Outline view (View, Outline) to review your slide titles in Microsoft PowerPoint and make sure they are unique and descriptive.

Links

Your learners who are screen reader users can also use a keyboard shortcut or touch gesture that brings up a list of links on a web page or document. If several links read as "click here" or "learn more" when presented on a list, they will find it difficult to determine what will happen when a link is selected. Make sure your links are meaningful on their own, without the surrounding text to provide additional context.

Images

Screen readers can only describe images if you provide a text description for them (also known as alternative text). The text description can also take the place of the images to ensure important information is not lost if your learners turn off images to save bandwidth on a device with a poor connection or a limited data plan.

Design

Use color to add visual appeal and make your content more inviting to learners, but remember that text with low contrast will be difficult to see and require more effort to read. Provide good color contrast to help your learners focus more of their energies on gaining an understanding of the information, rather than on overcoming barriers caused by poor design.

Evaluation

Use the accessibility checker in your authoring tool if one is available to make sure your work meets basic accessibility requirements. Just remember that even the best of these automated accessibility checking tools have their limitations due to the subjective nature of many accessibility techniques. For example, an automated checker can determine if an image has alternative text, but it will not indicate whether the alternative text accurately describes the content of the image. As long as you keep the limitations of these checkers in mind and don't see them as a replacement for learning accessibility best practices, they can make a valuable contribution to your accessibility work. The best automated checkers will include extensive guidance on how to fix identified errors, and will be a valuable tool for building your knowledge of accessibility.

The ultimate measure of whether content is accessible or not, however, is how well it supports learners in reaching their goals. You should seek feedback from users of assistive technologies along with the results of accessibility checkers to ensure content is usable for all.

Try it yourself

Are you ready to put what you learned from the videos into practice? This activity will allow you to check your understanding of the new practices you have learned, and you can contact us at any time if questions arise as you explore your new accessibility skills.

Use the provided Google Docs document and apply the techniques discussed in the videos to improve the heading structure, include descriptive hyperlinks that make sense out of context, and add alternative text to the images.

When you are done, use the built-in Office accessibility checker (or the Grackle add-on for Google Suite) to check your work. There are also "after" versions of each document you can use as exemplars.

You may also like ...

AEM Center at CAST
2022

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Creating Accessible Documents - AEM Center

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Learn five practices for creating accessible documents and slide decks.

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Run through an accessibility checker:

https://wave.webaim.org/

https://www.canva.com/help/using-design-accessibility/

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/improve-accessibility-with-the-accessibility-checker-a16f6de0-2f39-4a2b-8bd8-5ad801426c7f#bkmk_use

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WAVE ® is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content. Our philosophy is to focus on issues that we know impact end users, facilitate human evaluation, and to educate about web accessibility.

WAVE Browser Extensions

You can use the online WAVE tool by entering a web page address (URL) in the field above. WAVE Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browser extensions are available for testing accessibility directly within your web browser - handy for checking password protected, locally stored, or highly dynamic pages.

WAVE API and Testing Engine

The WAVE subscription API and Stand-alone WAVE API and Testing Engine are powerful tools for easily collecting accessibility test data on many pages. The stand-alone API and Testing Engine can be integrated into your infrastructure for testing intranet, non-public, and secure pages, including in continuous integration processes.

Accessibility IMpact (AIM) Report

Your Accessibility IMpact (AIM) assessment report provides detailed WAVE test data, your site's AIM score (a measure of end user impact compared to web pages generally and as determined by human testers), and expert manual test results to give you insights into the accessibility of your web site for users with disabilities.

Need more than one page at a time?

Our friends at provide an enterprise-level web accessibility evaluation system based on WAVE that gives site-wide monitoring and reporting over time.

Learn more at pope.tech.

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WAVE ® is a suite of evaluation tools that helps authors make their web content more accessible to individuals with disabilities. WAVE can identify many accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) errors, but also facilitates human evaluation of web content.

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The World Economic Forum discusses how AI can drive digital inclusion by expanding access to education and connectivity, while recognizing the need for supportive policy and strategic investment.

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How AI can enhance digital inclusion and fight inequality

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Ensuring the digital economy remains accessible to all is vital in counterbalancing tech-driven inequality, and AI could be a powerful driver of inclusion.