If It Isn't Accessible, It Isn't Finished

When I worked as a web developer, a feature was never "done" just because it looked right on my screen. It had to pass testing on every browser, every device, and for every user. Now that I teach and coach teachers on technology, I notice we rarely hold learning materials to the same standard. A lesson looks polished, so we post it. But a lesson some students can't read or navigate isn't finished. It just hasn't been tested yet.

So, I tested one. As a peer evaluator, I audited a sample lesson called "Orchards and Vineyards." On screen, it looked fine. Under the hood, it had several accessibility issues. When a screen reader reached the first image, it read out a computer file path, letter by letter.

Why Accessible Materials Matter

Accessible materials let students with visual, hearing, motor, or cognitive disabilities learn as independently as their peers. Accessibility is also a legal obligation: the ADA and Section 504 apply to online content, and Harvard's 2019 captioning settlement shows the consequences of ignoring it (King & Piotrowski, 2021). Some educators see accessibility as extra work for a few students, but accessible design benefits everyone (Rybin Koob et al., 2022). Clear headings help every reader scan a page.

How to Evaluate Accessibility

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA remain the accepted standard (King & Piotrowski, 2021), built on four principles: content must be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust (Huss, 2022). Research supports two complementary testing methods:

• Automated checks. Using the WAVE tool, Huss (2022) found errors needing immediate attention on 390 of 600 high school websites, most often missing alt text, confusing links, and poor contrast.

• Screen reader testing. Experts testing five classroom tools with screen readers found barriers in everyone, such as unlabeled buttons (Rybin Koob et al., 2022).

  
  

What Worked, and What Didn't

The lesson had strengths: clear writing, readable text size, a logical reading order, and cited sources. However, I found several accessibility bugs, including:

• Fake headings that screen readers could not navigate

• File paths as alt text on all three images

• Vague or missing captions

• Red text as the only emphasis, failing the 4.5:1 contrast standard

• A label inside an image that screen readers could not read

Figure 1. The original "Orchards and Vineyards" lesson before accessibility revisions, with plain-text headings, red key terms, and short, vague captions.

Debugging the Lesson's Design

I followed my developer cycle: inspect, fix, verify. I applied heading styles, wrote meaningful alt text, expanded captions, replaced red text with bold, added a document title, and corrected the reference, documenting each change with comments.

Figure 2. The revised lesson with tracked changes and comments documenting each accessibility fix, including heading styles, bold key terms, and descriptive captions.

Verification taught me the most. A file path technically counts as alt text, so an automated checker may never flag it. Only a person can judge whether a description truly helps.

Three Tools I Recommend

1. Microsoft Accessibility Checker flags issues as you write.

2. WAVE checks blogs and webpages (Huss, 2022).

3. A screen reader such as NVDA lets you hear content the way students do (Rybin Koob et al., 2022).

   
   

Ship It Only When It's Ready

This audit reshaped how I coach teachers: accessibility belongs in the workflow, not at the end. In software, we test before we ship. In education, our "users" are students, and every one of them deserves a lesson that's truly finished.

What accessibility habit has made the biggest difference in your materials?

References

Huss, J. A. (2022). A high school website is a school community's communication center…but is it ADA compliant? School Community Journal, 32(1), 245–263.

King, C., & Piotrowski, C. (2021). Navigating the ADA accessibility requirements and legal pitfalls in online education. College Student Journal, 55(2), 127–134.

Rybin Koob, A., Ibacache Oliva, K. S., Williamson, M., Lamont-Manfre, M., Hugen, A., & Dickerson, A. (2022). Tech tools in pandemic-transformed information literacy instruction: Pushing for digital accessibility. Information Technology and Libraries, 41(4). https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v41i4.15383