Access for All: Redesigning Faculty Accessibility Training

Project Overview

The Access for All course is a self-paced Canvas training designed to help faculty and staff create accessible instructional materials. The course provides practical guidance for creating accessible Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, Canvas content, and Panopto videos.

Originally developed in Blackboard in 2017, the course was migrated to Canvas in 2020. While the migration preserved the content, the course had never been fully redesigned for the Canvas environment. In addition, the college transitioned from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365, and instructional videos moved from YouTube to Panopto. These changes created an opportunity to redesign the course, modernize the content, and improve the overall learning experience.

Project Goals

The redesign focused on:

Modernizing content for Microsoft 365 and Panopto
Improving navigation within Canvas
Organizing content into manageable learning modules
Creating a consistent visual identity throughout the course
Developing a resource that faculty and staff could revisit as an ongoing reference

My Role

This project was developed collaboratively with another instructional designer and also served as her first major project after joining our team.

While we worked closely throughout the redesign, my primary responsibilities included:

Planning the overall course redesign
Designing the Canvas course structure and navigation
Creating the visual design, graphics, and page layouts
Building the course within Canvas
Establishing design standards for consistency
Updating course content to reflect Microsoft 365 and Panopto
Mentoring and collaborating with a new instructional designer throughout the development process

My colleague developed the instructional videos and narrated tutorials integrated throughout the course.

Design Approach

Design Philosophy

Accessibility can feel overwhelming, especially for faculty who are new to the topic. Rather than presenting accessibility as a checklist of requirements, we designed the course around practical improvements that instructors could immediately apply in their own courses.

The course emphasizes short learning modules, consistent navigation, visual examples, hands-on practice, and practical resources that participants can return to whenever they need a refresher. Our goal was to build confidence while helping faculty create more inclusive learning experiences for all students.

Visual Design

A primary focus of my work on this project was creating a cohesive visual experience throughout the course. This included developing page layouts, custom graphics, banners, icons, and navigation elements that provided a consistent look and feel across every module.

The visual design was intentionally clean and organized, allowing participants to focus on the content while making it easy to locate information and navigate the course.

Accessibility

Because the course teaches accessibility, it was important that the course itself model accessible design practices. Throughout the redesign, we incorporated accessible page structure, meaningful headings, descriptive link text, accessible color contrast, alternative text for images, captioned instructional videos, and accessible document examples.

By modeling these practices throughout the course, participants experience accessible design while learning how to apply those same principles within their own courses.

Collaboration

This project demonstrates the collaborative nature of instructional design. By combining instructional design, accessibility, educational technology, graphic design, and multimedia development, we created a resource that continues to support faculty and staff across campus. The project also provided an opportunity to mentor a new instructional designer while establishing shared design standards and workflows.

The Course:

Homepage Design

The homepage serves as the central navigation hub for the course. It was intentionally designed to be simple, visually organized, and easy to navigate so participants could quickly locate the information they needed.

Key design features include:

Welcome message introducing the course
Getting Started section with navigation instructions
Clickable icons providing direct access to each module
Resources section linking to additional accessibility tools and references

Module Organization

The course is organized into self-paced modules that guide participants through one accessibility topic at a time. Each module follows a consistent structure, helping learners quickly recognize where to find information, activities, and resources. Maintaining the same layout throughout the course creates a familiar learning environment and reduces unnecessary cognitive load.

Key design features include:

Chunked content organized by topic
Consistent module layout
Predictable navigation

Content Pages

Each content page was designed to present information in a clear, approachable format. Rather than overwhelming participants with long pages or lengthy videos, content was organized into smaller, manageable sections that encourage focused learning. A consistent visual theme throughout the course helps learners recognize page elements and navigate the material with confidence.

Key design features include:

Chunked content for easier learning
Microlearning through short instructional videos
Consistent page layout and visual branding
Clear visual hierarchy using headings and graphics
Practical examples that support immediate application

Each module concludes with a short knowledge check that reinforces key concepts and provides immediate feedback. Because this is a professional development course, the quizzes are formative rather than graded. Participants are encouraged to demonstrate mastery by earning a score of 100% within three attempts before moving on to the next module.

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