5 Discussion

Despite the intentions of accessibility legislation, digital learning materials remain largely inaccessible. The ubiquity of inaccessible digital learning materials is a contributing factor to the enormous number of academic accommodations required by disabled students and immeasurable exclusion. Given that accessibility legislation has not had the intended impact, this research sought to determine if a better understanding of the experiences of disabled students would influence post-secondary employees to create and choose more accessible digital learning material.

While existing research addresses disabled students’ perceptions of academic accommodations and post-secondary experiences generally, there is a lack of work addressing the specifics of access barriers to digital learning material on an individual level. Key findings of this research include that student co-designers identified Word documents and web content as more accessible and useable formats compared to PDFs and publisher platforms. Co-designers emphasized the additional time needed to complete tasks using assistive technology and/or inaccessible content. Co-designers also discussed other positive and negative experiences in their learning careers as well as some potential solutions to make digital learning material more accessible. These findings, when presented to post-secondary employees, were found to be impactful and beneficial to responding employees although some flagged possibilities for further investigation. Despite the limited sample size, this research reveals that understanding the experience of disabled students using digital learning materials positively influences post-secondary employees to create and choose more accessible content.