Creating Accessible and Inclusive Online Learning: Moving Beyond Compliance and Broadening the Discussion

Accessibility is a hot topic in online education these days. Despite the increased focus on accessibility, most discussions of creating "accessible" online courses and elearning simply focus on adding alternative text to images and captions to video. In this article, we argue that online educators and workplace learning professionals (including instructors, instructional designers, managers, and administrators) should be thinking beyond compliance and instead thinking about how they can support all learners. We begin by providing the overview of some laws focused on accessibility, we then describe how people struggle learning online at all levels (i.e., compulsory, postsecondary, and workplaces), and then conclude with evidence-based practices on how online educators and workplace learning professionals can support all learners.