Assistive Technology Explained: A Look at How Users Experience Your Content

Most faculty design course materials thinking about how they look. But for a significant number of students, how course content looks is only part of the picture -- or not the picture at all. Students with disabilities may experience your course through a screen reader that reads text aloud, a magnification tool that enlarges content, voice control software that lets them navigate without a mouse or keyboard, or captions that make lecture videos accessible without sound. 

Understanding how these tools work -- and more so, what gets in their way -- is one of the most useful things you can do to improve your course experience for every student.

1. Screen Readers: Your Course as Sound

Screen readers are software applications that convert on-screen text into synthesized speech or Braille output. Common screen readers include JAWS (license required), NVDA (free, Windows), Narrator (free, Windows), ChromeVox (free, Chromebooks) and VoiceOver (free, Mac). Students who are blind or have low vision rely on screen readers to access course content. Screen readers can also benefit students with learning disabilities, limited mobility, and other disabilities in their interactions with digital content in different ways. 

Watch: Screen Reader Demo for Digital Accessibility (4:44)

Here’s what that means for course materials:

• A screen reader reads content in the order it appears in the document structure, not necessarily in the order it looks onscreen. For example, a visually organized two-column layout might be read as all left-column content, followed by all right-column content. Documents that lack proper heading structure will be read in a jumbled order -- or not read at all. 

• Images without alt text are announced as “image” or are read aloud by the file name. A screen reader user who hears “image001.jpg” as the file name learns nothing from that image.

• Links are often navigated as a list. A list of “click here” links has no meaning without context. Choose action verbs such as “complete survey,” “download article,” or “review before class” as these provide the what and why of the link to screen readers. 

• Heading styles allow screen reader users to jump to sections of a document the way sighted readers can scan headers. A document without proper heading styles, however, must be read in its entirety from beginning to end.

2. Voice Control: Navigating Without Hands

Voice control software (such as Windows Voice Access or Apple’s Voice Control) allows students with motor disabilities to navigate and interact with content using spoken commands. Students might say “click Download Syllabus” to activate a link -- which only works if the link has clear, descriptive text.

• Vague link text cannot be reliably targeted by voice commands. Choose action verbs for web links, avoiding “click here” or “this guide.” 

• Forms and interactive elements without visible labels cannot be activated by voice.

• Accessible,descriptive text throughout your course makes voice navigation faster and less frustrating.

Image: Screen magnification software, such as ZoomText, allow users to enlarge on-screen content to support accessibility and comprehension. 

3. Magnification Tools: Your Course at 4x Original Size

Students with low vision may use screen magnification software (such as ZoomText or Windows Magnifier) to enlarge content to two, four, or even 10 times its original size. At high magnification levels, only a small portion of the screen is visible at once.

• Text that is embedded in images cannot be magnified without becoming blurry. If your content contains images of text instead of real text, that content becomes illegible when enlarged. 

• Low-contrast color combinations (light gray on white, yellow on white) are difficult to read at normal size and become even harder to read at high magnification.

• PDFs that are image-based rather than text-based do not magnify clearly. Tagged, text-based PDFs reflow much better.

Magnification software can have its limits, however, as low vision varies widely from student to student and some tools may not meet every student’s needs. If a student using magnification tools reports issues when accessing physical materials such as handouts, textbooks, or lab worksheets you can refer them to Disability Access and Resources (DAR) for additional assistive technology support. DAR can provide document cameras or mirror-cams which help students magnify physical materials in real time. 

4. Captions and Transcripts: Your Course Without Sound

Students who are deaf or hard of hearing cannot access audio unless it’s captioned or transcribed. Yet captions benefit a much wider group: students in noisy environments; students who process text more easily than audio; multilingual learners; and students who use captions as a study aid.

• Auto-captions are a starting point, not a finished product. Errors in auto-captions (e.g., wrong names, missed phrases or words, misheard sentences) are common and can significantly impact clarity and comprehension. If a video announcement in Blackboard isn’t captioned, for example, students who need them will miss your message entirely.

• Transcripts make audio content searchable and accessible to students who cannot play video at all.

• Audio descriptions, which verbally describe essential visual information in a video, extend access to students who are blind or have low vision.

5. What This Means for Building Your Course

You don’t need to become an assistive technology expert to make a meaningful difference in your students’ experience. Creating accessible content can take only a few minutes using established best practices along with UMBC supported tools. Oftentimes, the barrier is awareness of these methods, not lack of effort. A few consistent habits can go a long way:

• Use heading styles so screen reader users can navigate your documents.

• Write alt text that describes what an image communicates, not just what it depicts.

• Make link text descriptive and self-contained.

• Review and correct auto-captions on your videos.

• Choose real text over images of text whenever possible.

• Check your work using built-in tools like the Accessibility Checker in Word and PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat's accessibility checker, or Blackboard’s Ally.

Accessible course design isn’t about designing for a hypothetical “typical” student. It’s about recognizing all students arrive with a range of needs, preferences, devices, and ways of interacting with digital content -- and ensuring you offer flexible and usable materials across those differences.

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