About Us

Nicole: So there's things that we do to structure it so a screen reader can read it properly. Well actually when we design that way it becomes inclusive for everybody.‍

Joseph: Welcome to “Talk learning with me”. I'm Joseph Diaz, an instructional designer passionate about connecting with others and exploring the field of Learning and Development. In this podcast we dive into topics like education, learning science, facilitation, behavior change and other skills related to personal and professional growth. If you're looking to connect with other lifelong learners and discover new insights from talented learning professionals, this show is for you. I've been looking forward to sharing this episode since we first recorded in January and I'm thrilled to finally bring it to you.

Today I'm joined by Dr. Nicole L’Etoile, a dedicated learning experience designer and passionate advocate for accessibility. Nicole specializes in creating accessible and inclusive courses that drive impactful learning experiences, and if this conversation sparks your interest in accessibility, Nicole's “Making Online Content Accessible For All” course is the perfect next step. The next cohort starts

April 7th and it's a great way to deepen your skills in making learning experiences truly inclusive. I'll include the registration link in the show notes so you can check it out. In this conversation we'll explore practical ways to apply accessibility guidelines, the importance of plain language, and some tools you can use to make your content more accessible for all learners. On that note, let's talk about accessibility. 

Joseph: Hey there, Nicole. Welcome to “Talk Learning with Me”. It's great to see you.

Nicole: Hey, good to see you too,

Joseph: How are you doing today?

Nicole: I'm doing well. Yeah. How are you?‍

Joseph: You know, I'm, I'm doing great. We're close to the weekend so really, really excited. I’ve had a lot of really good experiences at work lately and I think 2025 has been kicking off bright. How about yourself?

Nicole: Yeah, it's been great. It's been busy and I'm not going to complain cuz busy is good but it's just it's been busy. I… I just when you said it's 2025, I had to look up at the calendar and go how far into it are we? Oh, it's okay - it's January 17th, okay great. 

Joseph: Yeah. I love that and I have to agree sometimes busy is just the first word that comes to mind when someone says, “how are you doing” and I have to remind myself busy is good. I'm busy with good things and that keeps me happy, but before I get too derailed, Nicole, for those who are meeting you for the first time would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself and maybe your background on accessibility?

Nicole: Yeah, of course. So the title that I'm using today - let's just think of that, like what title am I going by? Some days I'm a business owner, some days I'm a consultant, sometimes I'm a freelancer. But I'm a learning experience designer, I guess, if we summarize the whole thing, who focuses on accessibility, and accessibility consultant and professional. And, the background. You know, it's just really being focused on, how do I make digital content and digital experiences, learning, accessible for everyone and that's, that's been the focus. 

Joseph: Wow that's really cool. And what is it about your career that led you to this specific, specific focus in accessibility? Were there any experiences in particular that stood out that made you really want to hone in so much on making experiences accessible to other people?

Nicole: Yeah and I had a conversation earlier this morning… I had a coffee chat with someone that I met on LinkedIn who has a passion for accessibility as well coming from the University (she's at ASU). She's wonderful, and we were just chatting about what brought us to this and I want to say something was revealed to me even this morning. A I was saying, like, I think sometimes we'll say ability is a journey and there it really is a journey because you start out opening your eyes for one reason towards it or opening your your passion towards accessibility, and it could start from something you do for work, it could start with something personal, it could start with someone that you know. There's usually something that brings you into it and then it starts out and it grows and it grows and it grows and it grows because it's really about human beings.

And I think we start out with I'm doing this because it's a job and it's part of my workload and I started out with a very similar process that most people start out: I have a checklist, I have to review courses that I'm going to put out to the public, and I work with a team of instructional designers. As the LMS administrator, it's my job to review quality insurance, um, make sure that we check all those boxes so it really starts out with that, and then as you learn more and dig into it, it's so much more and we'll get into that. I don't want to reveal everything in this introduction, but yeah for me it started  out as part of my job and it has grown into more of just the way, the way I work in every, in everything I do now. Not just the tasks.

Joseph: Yeah. And I love that you described that journey of starting out with maybe one experience in particular whether that be in work or just personal experience. I know for myself, when it… when I think accessibility, one of the things that always comes to mind quickly is visual accessibility. I wear glasses or contacts and without them I'm pretty much blind, and so I think visual accessibility is something that I'm constantly thinking about and I actually was reminded of an experience as you were just talking.

I remember I used to be a Spanish teacher and I remember one time I was in the classroom with my students and I was writing some different grammar principles on the Whiteboard and I noticed that one of the students was totally checked out. And I asked him, I said, “Hey do you have any questions? Is there something that's confusing you?” 

And he said, “Well I'm actually colorblind and you're writing in a red marker on the whiteboard so I can't see what you're writing.” And that was probably one of my biggest initial exposures to accessibility because he had been through about four weeks of class with me and had just never said anything about the fact that he couldn't see when I wrote in red marker and I was so taken aback I thought, “Oh my goodness.” I can't imagine what an impact that had on his learning experience that he couldn't see probably a good half of the things that I was writing on the board. So I love that you described that Journey - that it's not like all of a sudden one day everything we create is accessible, but it really is this process of becoming more aware, being exposed to new guidelines and accessibility principles, and then incorporating them into our everyday work.‍

Nicole: Yeah, and in your story someone - they, they shared it. They verbalized it to you like so, and not everyone can do that or does that so that's part of that journey. If someone shares it with you, you say okay now I know a little more and then ask the questions or be able to be vulnerable and say, you know, “I don't know what I don't know” and then start asking even more questions. So maybe that opens up the door of: okay, I've been writing in red marker what else have I been doing that might not be accessible for my students.

So you start to kind of hone in and pay attention to that, because not everyone's gonna - not everyone's comfortable talking about it or sharing it so, so those those little, those little things that people share with us are super helpful and then that usually sends us on a “Well what else am I doing? What could I be doing better?”

Joseph: Yeah. That's a really important call out that not everyone's going to be comfortable raising their hand and saying “this isn't working for me, this isn't accessible to me”. And you make a great point. My student didn't say anything for almost a month until finally I asked him what's going on and he pointed it out.  And so you described that you wear a ton of hats as a freelance worker, a contractor, learning experience designer, and I'm just curious in, in the day-to-day work that you're doing as an LMS admin and reviewing content, what do you love or look forward to the most when it comes to your work in accessibility?

Nicole: Yeah. I think there's, there's so many layers to it, and right now I'm not necessarily, I'm not in a position of an LMS administrator, so when I come to the work, I'm designing. So if I'm… I freelance work, I design mostly at the University level as an instructional designer. And so I bake it into the design so I know what I'm looking for, I know that I need to look for certain things before I start. Before I create the content, if I want interaction I know that it has to be keyboard operated, I know that it has to be navigated a certain way, so I won't design it if it doesn't meet the criteria from the start. So you know that's that's an approach. I do enjoy having the knowledge of the web accessibility guidelines standards and specifically knowing am I looking at perceivable, operable, understandable, robust  - the four principles that guide the work; I think of it as the framework to help us make things inclusive, to make us digital content inclusive. So if I have those and I know them then I can design interactions accessible from the start. I can do color designing and make it perceivable from the start. Things like that and so that's one one approach.

When I maybe review, evaluate or audit the work? Having knowledge too of where and what I should start with, what's the barrier, what do I manually look for and what can I automate into a test later on. But how do I communicate that in plain language? So I actually like the part where I have to take what I'm looking at from an instructional designer, look at their work - maybe I'm reviewing and going to give feedback and being able to break down the standard into plain language and say “this is what we need to know”. 

And, I… you know a lot of times when you're talking about e-learning and you're talking about instructional design and course work folks will say, “well I'm not a web designer., I'm not building a website, so I'm not sure how these apply to me”  and they -  and I think I posted about this today on my LinkedIn page - was that it very much applies to you. Although you’re working with a tool in the background, people are accessing your content through the web, right? It's gonna end up on the web at some point. It absolutely applies. Did I answer the question? I don't know.

Joseph: Absolutely, yeah. And I think you almost read my mind there as well. As I was thinking about: you've mentioned these web accessibility guidelines and… well, why does that apply to creating learning experience experiences? And you mentioned two aspects of your work that you love was… You mentioned when you're the one creating the learning this is something you've been so entrenched in that it's almost second nature instead of thinking about, “okay what are the web accessibility guidelines again? Let me go pull them up and look at what the rules and guidelines.” It's something that you're thinking about: is this content navigable with just a keyboard, is the visual contrast enough for somebody to see what I'm trying to share, and you're thinking about is the audio actually clear, clear enough that somebody could hear it if they weren't able to see the screen. 

And you're thinking about these things, it's second nature but then the other side of the coin is also when you're doing those audits. And I can see why that would be so fulfilling because it's almost the exact opposite instead of it being something so innate that you just do it without thinking about it, you can't just say “hey I reviewed your content and you broke accessibility guideline number 3.2 and number 4.6” 

That's, that's not going to really be meaningful feedback for other designers so I love that you all also mentioned when you're doing those audits you have to think about ”How do I put this into plain language so that anybody could understand why this isn't accessible and what we need to change so that our target audience, our learners, can really interact with the content that we're putting out there.”‍

Nicole: Yeah absolutely. Yeah, um, and so those guidelines… It's nice to know. Like, if you see a “one” at the start, I know I'm looking at something that's perceivable. It's nice to know if I see a “two” in front, I'm talking about operable. It goes in order. If I see a “three” in front of it, it's going to be understandable. If I see a “four”, it's robust. So, um, so that kind of helps people, you know, to think about it when you're like, “well if you see that language where we're talking about are these things” and then to be able to, um, have one-on ones; like maybe you and I, like, would meet, you know, and we could say “well it's this guideline, it's this failure. This is what you can do.” I take screenshots of what I'm looking at and then there's always a recommendation that follows.‍

Joseph: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I love that you're so in tune with those guidelines that just from, from seeing the, the number you know exactly which section of the web accessibility guidelines the, the feedback is coming from or the, the challenges, and you're able to quickly draw those lines. And I know that you, you've had a really huge accomplishment lately as well. You earned your CPACC or “c-pac” certification and so I thought that it was really cool that you took the extra time to really dive in. And I know that a lot of people maybe don't have that expertise or that depth of knowledge that you have having earned a certification. And so I'm curious. When you think about web accessibility guidelines as a novice, someone who doesn't see that “one” and just thinks straight to the next line… What, what advice would you have for somebody who thought, who is thinking, “I want to get more involved with making my content accessible but I don't know where to start. There are so many guidelines.”

What is kind of a good way to kind of start off, maybe in the kiddie pool before diving into the deep end, and really being involved in every guideline?‍

Nicole: Yeah, so back to the conversation journey. I, you know, started this journey 3 years ago, so you know I would guess in the accessibility professional world it's kind of like, newbie, right? Like I'm on the newer side here. And yeah when I started out, it was again, I would look at, like, this is my checklist from WebAim, I went through training from, uh, WebAim. And they're out in Utah, where you are!
‍
Joseph: Hey, that's awesome!‍

Nicole: So they would kind of say, “look for these things and start this”. And so it starts there and then it goes, but back, you know, I think the question around where do you start CPACC? Well, I'll go to CPACC first. So the, the, the core professional - to get the certification as an accessibility professional. And the reason I wanted that was because it goes beyond the standards themselves, right? So it's not, it's not becoming an expert in every single standard. It is understanding, this is how I look at it. It's understanding the why behind the standard and why we have the standards that we have. So we - you get to learn about the disability models, right? The frameworks that people approach, the work might come from a social model? Is it a medical model? And maybe from the medical model, it's that person has a disability and it is up to figuring out a cure or to provide assistive technology and accommodation versus a human, you know, coming from a human model.

Okay, so to get started, start exploring the WebAim resources. I also want to start with the W3C website. Now sometimes those, the language of the W3C can get pretty, can get very jargon-filled, so a suggestion I would make if you have the time to do is to take that. And if you're interested in using tools such as Google, Notebook, LM, or any other AI tool, put that in there and say, “can you give me some of this information in plain language?”

I'm an instructional designer. I'm an L&D professional. What would I need to know and how would I apply these so it would then give you some things that you might focus on, right? And there are the basic things that you'd want to start with, such as looking at the resources on Webaim, looking at the W3C, following other professionals on LinkedIn who are providing little tips, and Linkedin Learning has a bunch of free courses that you could get started with. As an intro I also share a resource. It's a curated list. It has some free and some paid and those are some basics. If you want to do a 1 hour or 2 hour free course and just get the basics down, I'd recommend starting with those.

Joseph: Very cool. Very cool. I love that you kind of mentioned using AI in that way, to kind of be your coach and say I want to get into accessibility and there's a lot of jargon, there's a lot of lingo in these guidelines. Help me understand how this applies to my role. I'm creating an instructor-led training, how does that apply? How, how do I make my content accessible? Or I'm creating an e-learning module in Articulate Storyline - what is the application for me with these web principles. It's not just web design. I don't have to just be a web developer to think about accessibility so I thought that was a really cool application

And you mentioned your LinkedIn content. One of the posts that you shared recently that really stood out to me was you helped break down the jargon of plain text. What does that mean when we use plain text and you mentioned a really cool tool which was the Hemingway editor. Taking content and putting it through the Hemingway editor and looking at the readability. Am I writing at the level of a fourth grader, a seventh grader, or is this language so robust that it's going to go over a lot of people's heads? And I thought that was such a manageable way to say, “Is my writing accessible? Am I putting out content that other people can understand or am I getting so caught up in what I know and what I'm an expert in that I'm just talking at too high of a level for most people to understand?”  So I really love that there are tools out there and frameworks that we can use like Hemingway, like Chat GPT, or Google, Notebook, LM, that you mentioned to say, “Help me take these accessibility guidelines and make them relevant to my work so that I can see am I being accessible in my content creation?”

Nicole: Yeah, yeah. And I would kind of add to this a little bit too, because when we talk about it from instruction designers or content developers we start to think  about, well how does it apply to my work? And I'm not a web designer so does it really apply? And I know I should make things readable and understandable but if you're ever finding that you know it's not not as gray. Because there is a standard that says the content should be readable, it should be understandable. So there's an actual guideline that is being used under ADA laws or or 508 laws and EAA and there's, there are laws that are using the guidelines to support this work. So many of us want our content to be readable. I think that's as professionals, right, that's what we do in L&D. We want people to take in what we're saying and we want to make it digestible so we're going to use proper headings because we know that that's good formatting. We're going to use readability levels that we can, you know, provide the best approach we could. Maybe give different formats, maybe we want to give them the audio of the reading, or we want to use a brief of the reading. But really there's, there's a guideline that addresses that, you know, and so you can say too: It, it's not nice to have, It's kind of we have to do this. We should meet guidelines so I think sometimes, um, it's great to have tips and things. 

And a lot of questions people will ask, when they do these talks is how do you work with subject matter experts who are not as open and how do you work with organizations that not everybody's on the same page, so that just made me think of it because it's easy to - Great - to say like let's use this tool, let's do that. You and I are going to do that, maybe some of the listeners are going to do that.

Joseph: And that's powerful that you said accessibility is not a nice to have, it's a must have and I think that that's a mindset shift that maybe some of us haven't had yet or are still working on too, is thinking about I don't have time to go through and make the headings right or I don't have the time to go through and put in this work and so you mentioned being in a space where maybe it's not easy to to focus on accessibility whether that be because of tight deadlines, maybe the people you work with just don't seem to care, or maybe people feel overwhelmed by accessibility. How do you advocate for accessibility in spaces where maybe it's not a priority when you come in and see that people aren't focused on it or maybe you're just interacting with someone who isn't prioritizing accessibility. What have you found as an effective way to advocate for accessibility?

Nicole: Yeah and I want to first… There's like a first layer to that around… It was like a two-part question there. I heard two different things so I want to make sure that I address the first part. Can you repeat that?

Joseph: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I love that you mentioned that accessibility isn't a nice to have, it's a must have but you also pointed out the challenge that sometimes we find our ourselves in different workplaces or settings where maybe it's not a priority: people don't care, they, they see it as a nice to have not a must have, so those settings.

Nicole: Yeah, I remember.

Joseph: In those settings, how can we advocate for accessibility?

Nicole: Okay. I remember what I wanted to say. This is what happens when you get to this, I was to say this age, yeah, I'm going to age myself out a bit all right? So, but I wanted to say about the time that's what I wanted to say first so I will address that doing accessibility right and doing it well will take more time. Once you know how much more time it'll take, the more you do it, you then start to figure out in the workflow: I know it's going to take me an additional 20-30 minutes because I know that I'm not just going to add my captions, right? I know I have to have them, I'm going to add them but that's not it. I'm not going to check a box, I'm going to edit my captions and then from there I'm going to make sure that the speaker has been identified in my captions. I'm also going to make sure the placements of my captions are correct, that they're only two lines on the bottom, and that they don't take up, you know, this much space and block important information on the video. 

The next thing I'm going to do is make sure the language is set correctly so there's going to be a couple of extra things. I'm going to make sure that the transcript is included and edited and if it's a really long transcript, I'll probably put some headings and some chapters. So that right there, what I just said might take someone, right, to caption their video, upload their video, edit their captions in their transcripts. How much extra time would that take? What do you think?

Joseph: Right I would say at least maybe 30 to 45 minutes if you were skilled at it but I'm thinking first time going through I've never done this, that's going to add at least another hour to my workflow personally.

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah, so, so in the mindset of someone who hasn't done that before and I'm on a time crunch and you know I think, oh I met compliance, I did my captions, I checked my box. Well, actually you haven't cuz you maybe you got level A, you know? Like you got your cap but you haven't even met the double standard, the two double A's of captioning and adding that transcript. And then - did you audio transcript? Did you add some descriptive language, right? So however knowing that, acknowledging it. I know when somebody on my team in the past has said, “I don't have enough time and I just need to do the bare minimum so I can move on and get my other work done”, right? 

So the understanding that that's where someone's coming from. One, it's, it's okay. So we need to model and give some tools to do this efficiently. Do I need to train - this goes back to our question - do we need training on that? Should we have accessibility training because now I'm just adding to the training? And then look at it from a lens… so let me give you an example of how to connect this all. I had a teammate who I worked with a couple of years ago who really felt like this was, “I just want to do the basics, hit the compliant bare minimum, and I want to move on.”  And would come back and say, “we have 15,000 people - users -  active users on the LMS. Can you tell me how many of those actually use a screen reader that I need to do this for?” Whew! Take a deep breath, right, that's like, okay, how do I address this? 

So studying and understanding the CPACC is how I think I could approach this differently now knowing what I know. Like I said, it's a journey. You could say there are 2.2 billion people in this world who have a visual impairment. I don't know of that number: how many folks use the screen reader. We don't have that data but could you imagine how many people? And that visual impairment doesn't mean blind either; it could be low vision, it could be color blindness. There's categories and tasks, right, so could you imagine how many people maybe that we don't know about. We're not, we shouldn't be making that assumption. We're privileged enough to say that we don't need them but we should not be making an assumption of which users need this or not use this, and it would be good for all of our users so let's, let's go ahead and do that. Having some knowledge, some factual, statistical data and so now I understand too why we studied that for the CPACC and knowing that so that we could help organizations and others kind of move and shift over a bit.

Joseph: Yeah that's really powerful to take those numbers and help give people that perspective so that when we're trying to advocate instead of just saying, well, it's, it's guideline 3.2, we have to do it. You can say this is how many people are affected by this accessibility guideline and I want to account for those people. 

And I think it really also ties back to what we talked about earlier in our discussion when you said not everyone's going to speak up and say, “I have this this disability.” People aren't going to just, like, like you said in your example, there are 15,000 learners -  how many actually use a screen reader? I can almost guarantee even if there were 150 using a screen reader they're not all going to email and say hey can we make sure that this course is accessible with a screen reader because that's just not human nature. 

We're not going to have everybody reaching out asking and so we have to, as learning designers we have to really be the ones that think about that and advocate for them and then it's going to take vulnerability too on both sides to say, “You know what? I don't understand how many people exactly need this accessibility but I understand that it matters so I'm going to take the extra 20 minutes to make sure that my captions are accurate and well timed, or I'm going to take the extra time to go through and add headings and clear formatting to my post or my content so that it's easy to read and it's easy to understand.” ‍

Nicole: Yeah. Yeah and that's good for everyone, right? So you know it's… so if I'm thinking about what is good for screen reader users and I'm thinking about HTML matters, right, that structure matters - how I set it up. Okay, so I should have proper listing formatting. I should - and that's because there's the way that the screen reader reads the HTML - so I won't go too, too technical. So there's, there's things that we do to structure it so a screen reader can read it properly. Well actually when we design that way? We're designing - it becomes inclusive for everybody.

I like things nicely formatted, you know. I like to skim. I like to look at the headings but beyond that I like to know that I'm using H1 heading, not just making it bigger and bolder. Why do I need to know that? Because a screen reader navigator is going to navigate a page by heading levels so if I use H1, H2, H3 versus I know I want a heading so I'll just make that 32 font. I'll make it bold. That's great for visuals - someone who can, who's sighted, can… That helps them but it doesn't help the screen reader user.‍

Joseph: Yeah and that's a really great point that you make that it benefits everybody when we create accessible content. So to answer your co-workers question we have 15,000 people using this LMS, how many people need this accessibility? You can almost turn that on its head and say I think all 15,000 would benefit from it. It's not to say that all 15,000 need the accessibility but no one's going to be mad if there are really great captions on the video. No one's going to be upset if the audio quality is great. No one reading an article or a post is going to be frustrated that it's easy to skim and find the content you're looking for. So you have to kind of open your mind too and say this isn't just for the people who need it. This is for the benefit of everyone who interacts with the content that I'm creating and working with.‍

Nicole: Yeah. I'm smiling because I love that response, Joseph. I think that's a great response and I think sharing that is going to be really helpful for everyone. Thanks, I love that.‍

Joseph: Absolutely. So thinking about all the different guidelines that you've been exposed to and maybe some of the common challenges that you see whether it be headings, whether it be captions. I'm just curious if somebody today were listening and thinking to themselves, you know, I don't do any accessibility at all. Do you have a favorite guideline or maybe principle that you would say, start with this today. What would be a good starting point for someone who doesn't do any accessibility now but wants to get started in their work today?
‍

Nicole: You may - I want to pull up my course that I have: Making Online Content Accessible for All” because I actually started out with perceivable and I… And perceivable is the first one of the guidelines but it's like, imagine you create a course, you create an e-learning module and nobody can see it, nobody can read it, right? So I mean, so then that. Start there. Can they, can they, um, can they read it? Can they engage with it, you know? Like start with perceivable. There's… Did you see I posted the personas?‍

Joseph: Yes, I did see that post.‍

Nicole: Okay, because that's making me think of that persona…There's the one where, um, you go to the video and there's no sound and there's no caption. And it's just “go there!” If you haven't seen this yet and you're listening, um, maybe we could put it in the show notes. Is that a thing?‍

Joseph: Yeah, absolutely.‍

Nicole: So go to the personas and I think it's either the first or second one. I'd have to pull it up. I don't have it in front of me. Maybe we could pull that up but there's one where there's a video and it has no captions and no sound and it's you're just looking at it and you're going, “Well I'm not getting anything.”

Do that. Share that with someone who says, I don't do accessibility. Like I don't make things accessible. Which I find, I don't… I think you find more people that say, “It's accessible enough.” I feel like we're more in that category versus that hopefully… Maybe I'm optimistic but it's more of: “it's accessible enough” versus “I don't do accessibility at all.”‍

Joseph: Yeah. I think that's a great distinction that there's probably not people out there saying, “I don't want to make anything accessible” or “I don't care” but, yeah, is it accessible enough versus are we really taking the extra time and effort. And so, um, Nicole I think this is really been super insightful to just think about how accessibility goes beyond just looking at guidelines but like you mentioned, it's looking at the why of different accessibility principles. It's making sure we're using plain language so that content is understandable. We're thinking about: is my content perceivable? Can somebody look at this? Is it easy to see? Is it easy to read? Is it easy to understand? When we're taking the time to create videos, are we making sure that the captions are accurate? Are we making sure that they're accurate!

And then you've talked about some really, really great tools like the Hemingway app. You've talked about other resources and websites and so I'm curious. Are there any resources or beginner, um, beginner tools that you would recommend somebody check out today to, to implement into their workflow?‍

Nicole: Yeah, I would… I'll give you the list and you can also put this in the show notes. I curated a list of.. I said, some basics, some free courses, some free tutorials, just things to, to get started. Just to take a look at. Some are long, some are short, some are paid, some are free. People are welcome to… if they're feeling that they're a little, you know. They're ready for the next step and they're a little bit, you know, or have the basics down… I have the course I offer, a “Making Online content Accessible for All course” out of the Instructional Institute which you and I were part of and I would join that. That's facilitated. I'll have a self-paced version coming out in June or July if people would prefer that as well, but yeah I'll give you the list of curative resources and take a look at that.

You can… I would say follow the hashtag #a11y - A, one, one, y -  on your social media feeds cuz people are posting things all the time. And so you could pick up a tool, pick up a tip. But I have said a couple of times that it's nice to have the tips and the tools and the resources. For it to become part of the workflow is when it becomes something that you just do all the time. And, and so maybe you create all your e-learning projects and you have a Post-It note at the end to do your alt text images. And I recommend, if you do them at the end, it's better. Because, you know, sometimes there's drafts and sometimes there's changes, right? So if you just go into, if you're using Storyline, you open up your media library and you just do them all at the end. But have that workflow, have that in there that you do them. And, and start with things like that.

And there's… And I also recently… If you go over to my LinkedIn, if you're watching… I posted a.. I made it free. If you don't have LinkedIn Learning, there's a nice Articulate Storyline course right now that they developed which is great to see for accessibility.‍

Joseph: That's awesome and I think that's really cool. So you mentioned you got a course coming out, people can follow you on LinkedIn. And it really is a reflective process it sounds like. Applying accessibility. It's something we're doing throughout our work but then also really honing in as we finish and thinking about, okay, let me go back through everything I did and really just double check. Am I meeting the accessibility guidelines online? 

And so if somebody wanted to follow your work and connect with you, where's the best place that they can do that? I know you mentioned LinkedIn is a great place to follow you. Where, where do you recommend people go to keep up with you and everything that you're doing in the accessibility space?‍

Nicole: That's probably it. That's like the… Really right now that's it. I'll be… I'll probably put out some things that I'll do, present - presentations or usually that's where I keep everything up to date. I have a newsletter so I can put that out and share it if you want to get more targeted… I don't send you a ton of information, I just every once in a while, updates on the next course or the next thing, that's maybe I'm presenting somewhere and you want to attend. I could put that out, but I would also you know just end with:

One other piece of advice is that, be open to having feedback or having folks push you a little bit further and, and be okay with not being the full expert. Like, so be okay with someone saying, “Hey, I just looked at that and I think it could be better and here's why.” And kind of drop the egos. And I think once we do that we're help - we can really get to the point where we're helping more people.‍

Joseph: Yeah, that's awesome and I will make sure to link your LinkedIn profile, your newsletter and all of the amazing resources that you have shared with us today. It's been so, so insightful to hear and think about that journey. I think Nicole, you and I are both runners so when it comes to accessibility it's definitely a marathon. It's not a sprint. It's not a 100 meter dash, that I'm going to be accessible today and it's over in 10 seconds or less. But it really is this long-term journey of consistently working at it and like you said being vulnerable, being open to getting that feedback and learning and growing from those, from those mistakes, from those challenges. So thank you so much for really helping expand my understanding of accessibility, pointing me in the right direction and sharing that with our listeners as well.‍

Nicole: Yeah, well I really enjoyed talking with you, you know that. And anytime you want to talk we could, you know, I, I love everything you're doing. Your book club -  if anyone's out there that hasn't joined Joseph's book club, it is fantastic, you should do that, and yeah I look forward to more conversations, so thanks.‍

Joseph: Yeah, thank you so much.

[Music]

Thank you for tuning in to “Talk learning with me.” A huge thank you to Dr Nicole LE’toile for sharing her incredible insights on accessibility. Today we explored how to incorporate accessibility into our workflows, why it's essential for everyone, and practical resources to help you get started. If you want to take your accessibility skills even further be sure to check out Nicole's “Making Online Content Accessible for All” course. The next cohort kicks off on April 7th and it's a fantastic way to learn how to design inclusive learning experiences. I'll drop the registration link in the show notes so you can sign up and continue growing in this important skill.

If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with your network and we'll talk soon.

[Music]

Phil Vokey: Just letting those participants come in. Perfect Good afternoon, everybody, just waiting for some more participants to join here, and then we'll get started shortly.

Nicole Letoile:Phil, you're gonna let me know when to advance the slide, right?

Phil Vokey: Certainly. Hi everyone. Just wait for a few more folks to trickle in and I think, yeah, we can. We can get started. Okay, yeah, let's kick it off then. 

So welcome everybody today to Making Online Content Accessible For All Webinar. My name is Phil, I'm joined by my colleague, Nicole. And Nicole, do you mind just moving that slide forward for us? Perfect. And actually, before maybe we introduce yourself, Nicole, I do want to just do a few quick housekeeping kind of comments here. So thank you again for joining the webinar today. Please note that the session is being recorded and you can access it after if you'd like to revisit a part of the conversation. And we also encourage you to participate. So you're welcome to use the chat feature in Zoom to share any thoughts or connect with others. And if you have any questions for Nicole, please add them into Q and A or myself, for that matter, I'll try to address some questions as well, and if anything is missed during the Q and A time, we'll definitely circle back to respond to your questions. So with that being said, I'll just have Nicole kind of take it from here. Great.

Nicole Letoile: Thanks so much, Phil. So before we dive into today's session, I'd like to take a moment to look at our topics, and this will serve as our agenda for the session. We'll start by exploring accessibility, Universal Design for Learning, UDL, and inclusive design, and then how they're connected and why they're important in creating equitable learning experiences. From there, we'll discuss practical solutions for improving accessibility, including strategies such as the alternative and descriptive text for non text content. We'll talk about captions, transcripts and audio descriptions, and additionally, additionally, we'll discuss proper headings and meaningful hyperlinks.  I'll reference the built-in accessibility checker in bright space to simplify the process. And then we'll talk about how to incorporate this into your workflow so it becomes part of your course design process.

I'll share some resources and practical steps to help you beyond the session. And then finally, we'll end with the Q and A, and I'll be happy to address any of your specific questions that are followed up after that. But let's get started with a prompt.

So if you're with us in the chat, you can go ahead and dive right into this question. I want you to think about a time when you faced a barrier, big or smal,l that made something difficult to access, and it could be anything, and that could be a website that didn't work properly on your phone, maybe instructions that were unclear. It could be an event that wasn't inclusive, or even physical space that was hard to navigate. 

So take a moment to recall how it made you feel. What were the frustrations of exclusion? Did it cause you to give up or find a workaround? By connecting to the experience, we can start to understand why accessibility matters and not just in the abstract. So take a moment to reflect, and if you feel comfortable, I'd love for you to share a quick example or a thought in the chat, and I also want you to imagine, if the barrier existed every day, how that might change your thoughts or comments.

So I don't necessarily see the chat necessarily, but I'm hoping that as they come in, I'll see those going. And I will, I'll continue on and, great! Chat is ready and able. Thanks so much. Appreciate that, Stacey. So go ahead and dive in with your comments.. 

All right, and as we connect and you, as you're reflecting, I'll continue on, and maybe something will come to mind as we move through the content. So as we begin to explore accessibility, I want to emphasize an important point. Accessibility is not just about simplifying content or designing exclusively for individuals with disabilities, it's about creating learning environments that are inclusive and equitable for everyone, and we will make mistakes. Trust me, I have made a few. We all come from different experiences and backgrounds, so I encourage you to engage and share your knowledge with others in the session. And think of it this way, as when we design for accessibility, we remove the barriers, we open doors and we welcome every learner. And this approach doesn't just benefit those with visible or invisible disabilities, it's benefiting everyone. And when content is accessible, we empower learners to engage in ways that work best for them, and this can lead to greater success. 

So while accessibility, inclusive design and UDL share common goals. They're not the same, and they have a distinct meaning. And the terms are sometimes used interchangeably because they are interconnected concepts that often overlap in practice. And inclusive design, you often hear, are often called Design for All, is focusing on developing products, services and environments to be usable by the widest range of people, and this approach considers all various factors, and that's age, size, ability and disability, and that will ensure that everyone can access and understand and benefit from the design while accessibility is bridging, it bridges inclusive design and UDL, because accessibility is focusing on ensuring that people with disabilities have an equivalent user experience without barrier, without barriers. 

So accessibility improvements often lead to better experiences for everyone, not just individuals with disabilities. So an example of clear navigation and captions benefits all of all users, regardless of context or abilities. Closed captions were initially designed for learners with hearing disabilities, but improve the learning experience for all users, including non native speakers. And this is referred to as the curb cut effect, where accessible design choices benefit a wider audience than the original target group which was originally intended. So the curb cut effect demonstrates how designing for the needs of people with disabilities often creates a better, more accessible experience for everyone. And this approach aligns with the principles of inclusive design, so it recognizes the broad spectrum, spectrum of human ability, and ensures the design accommodates varied needs, the design is useful to as many people as possible, regardless of abilities or context, and it avoids the need for individual accommodations or retrofitting by addressing accessibility in the design process.

So in the context of eLearning and Digital Accessibility and our online course environments, the curb effect can be applied by designing features that directly benefit individuals with disability, while enhancing usability for all learners. 

So by connecting everything that was discussed so far, we can then turn to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the WCAG, as some of us will pronounce it as, for a practical, widely recognized framework, they provide action and guidance to ensure that the digital content and accessible and is accessible and usable for everyone. And these guidelines are not just meeting compliance. They're about removing barriers and creating equitable learning experiences. I'd like you to think about WCAG as the foundation that will tie together the goals of inclusive design and UDL. And by following these standards, we're not only accommodating diverse needs, but we're also aligning with a shared vision for all learners, regardless of abilities or backgrounds. 

So think of the web accessibility guidelines as the how to guide that will support inclusive design, accessibility and UDL, and the strategies that I'll share with you in this session are outlined in these standards. So let's take a moment here to pause and reflect and think about an example and accessibility often leads to universal benefits, making learning environments more inclusive. Can you share an example you've encountered where design choices intended for accessibility have benefited a wide range of users? 

So if you want to add those to the chat and share some strategies that you've used or examples that you have, I think that will help all of us to understand how designing with accessibility in mind can lead to the inclusive design principles that we aim for. And so as you're mentioning those, and I see those coming into the chat, closed captions, transcripts, absolutely. Searchable transcripts, absolutely. These are all really helpful and things we'll talk about today. And so many of you are mentioning these points directly to inclusive design. And so this slide is highlighting some of these features, such as the captions, the clear navigation. I see accessible color contrast, and so these are embodying the inclusive design principles. 

So additionally, what we're looking for is to, let's think about, you know, examples, transcripts and captions make video and audio content searchable, as you've mentioned here, it can help learners locate specific information quickly that will help improve retention by reinforcing these learning through multiple formats, which would bring us to the UDL, reading captions while also listening to audio. So these are great examples. Thank you so much for adding those in. And so having established the importance of designing with accessibility in mind, let's consider the barriers for learners that we will identify solutions and strategies over the next few slides. So we are focusing on these three for the purposes of the session today. And so it's important to understand impact. So I'd like to share some stats with you to help understand the importance of designing with accessibility in mind. 

At least 2.2 billion people globally have a near or distant vision impairment. 430 million people experience some degree of hearing loss. And approximately 1 billion people worldwide live with a cognitive or neurological condition that affects learning, memory, problem solving or attention. And the exact number of people that use a screen reader worldwide isn't fully documented, but we can imagine what 2.2 people, billion, 2.2 billion people living with some form of visual impairment, per the World Health Organization, that it's safe to say there are tens of million who use a screen reader for digital access, and so the impact is big. So remembering what I said about the web accessibility guidelines and how we think of WCAG as the foundation that ties together the broader goals of inclusive design, what we'll look at are these solutions today, alt text. We'll talk about captions in more detail, headings and hyperlinks. 

And so as just a note, there are 13 slides coming up where I will outline some of these for you. 

There are opportunities for you to engage in the conversation, using the to, continue to use the chat. I encourage you to continue to share, to help with the engagement participation, because I'm going to be talking for a little bit longer. 

So having identified some of the barriers that can affect learning success, let's move on to how we can address these challenges. The next few slides introduce strategies that can help us improve accessibility through our course. So the accessibility checker, a built in tool in Bright Space, can assist in identifying and resolving some of these accessibility issues. The image on the slide showcases the accessibility checker. We see the text formatting options are visible at the top, which include headings, fonts, alignment and an accessibility checker icon and eyeball with a check mark underneath it, and the text reads: accessible, Accessibility Checker. Status message: success with a green check mark. And the text also says, no accessibility issues detected. So using a tool to help us streamline the process that's built right in is extremely helpful and can assist in identifying and resolving some of the accessibility issues that we're going to talk about today. So let's look at the first strategy, the alt text for images, while the slide details what alt text is and some of the best practices are included, I'd like to emphasize why it's important. 

So Alt Text enables a person using a screen reader to understand visual content they can't see. And alt text also benefits those in a low bandwidth area by providing faster loading text descriptions of images. So when an image fails to load due to slow internet connection, alt text is displayed instead preserving the contents meaning and the context. So this ensures that essential information isn't lost. It improves accessibility for all users and regardless of connectivity. So think of alt text as a bridge between visual content and those who interact with it differently. 

And so here are some tips. We want to be concise and we want to avoid redundancy. Descriptions should be helpful but not overwhelming. We'd like to match the purpose so the alt text should reflect the image function. So for example, if an image links to another page, focus on the link's purpose, rather than the image itself. Instead of the alt text, focused on what it looks like, we would explain its purpose. 

So for example, a graph of sales trends over three years would be better suited than saying something other than rather than a bar chart with blue and red bars. So skip the obvious. If the information in the image is already covered in the page, skip alt text. We'll talk about how to do that by marking it decorative inside our accessibility checker. And lastly, users with low vision benefit more from captions and clear, readable pages on the text, which we'll take a look at as well. 

So as we continue on the topic, let's clarify the distinctions between when to use the alt text, the descriptions and the decorative. When in doubt, consider whether the visual content is critical to achieve the learning objectives, while the slide details are important to grasp how to serve this unique purpose. Like you to think about the descriptive example. So if it's descriptive, you give detailed information for complex visuals. So consider the example provided, and this detailed explanation offers insights into the data trends, which is crucial for understanding a visual that would support it. So let's take a look at the bright space. This insert edit image feature to support you in this strategy. So this image on the screen shows an example of the Bright Space, insert edit image option. When inserting an image into a course, that dialog box will appear, indicating your options for choosing decorative images. And below it is a field for alternative description. And this is a practical and easy tool within this Bright Space environment, will help us ensure that our images either contribute meaningful to the content or are appropriately marked as decorative for this image, the image is decorative, is marked decorative, which means that that image does not add any informational content that was required so or the image description was given in the body of the page, and to avoid redundancy, it was marked decorative. 

So let's continue on and look at adding descriptions and when to do that. So whether we're dealing with images, charts, diagrams, sometimes animations, pictures beyond the basic image and audio recordings, text descriptions are more than about being compliant. They are fundamental aspects, aspects of inclusive design. And so we want to translate visual and audio content into text that we cater to diverse learning preferences and needs. And as we move through the content. Think about how each element, if left inaccessible, could create a barrier, and how a text description can make learning inclusive and comprehensive for all learners. And the goal of these is not just to replicate what is seen or heard, but to help transform into formats that can be perceived in different ways, thereby supporting a broader range of learning styles and accessibility needs. 

So you can practice this one if you, if you'd like, if you feel comfortable, give it a try. And so this slide presents an organizational chart on the human resource team at the Evergreen design and as we look at this, let's think about how we can make this information accessible to everyone. If you're comfortable with sharing, let us know how you would approach this in the chat and how you'd make this org chart accessible in a text based format. So I provided in the link that Stacy just put into the chat, there is a description of the organization chart with an example alt text as well as an example text representation. Would love to hear you share some of your ideas, if you are comfortable with the group, and let us know how you would approach this, how you might go about addressing the non text element of a chart and making it accessible for all your learners. So give it a try and let us know what you come up with, and so let's now move on to our second strategy. 

So let's explore the importance of captions and transcripts. It's important to understand their roles and how to implement them effectively. Captions are synchronized with the audio to support real time video comprehension. They are especially helpful for viewers in noisy environments or for those who are hearing impaired. Transcripts will provide the written version of the audio content. This is invaluable for improving searchability, as mentioned within the content, and enhancing learning retention. We want to make sure that the captions actually match the audio, which may involve some editing and proofreading to ensure they sync up perfectly. We want to ensure that transcripts are clean, easy to read and available as downloadable documents to accommodate all users. We also want to include the speaker name in our captions and transcripts to clarify who is speaking. Additionally, we want to meet the color contrast ratio: the four to five to one for the normal text and the three to one for larger text, and if captions obstruct critical visual content, it really makes it difficult for us and for users to understand. So we want to be mindful of placement. 

And finally, we'd like our captions not to be too small or poorly aligned within a font that is not readable. And I will make one note here, one last note about captions. Auto syncing does not meet the WCAG compliance requirement. So you are, if you go to YouTube and you are to look at the closed captions of any video, if it says auto synced at the top left corner, it would be considered a fail. And in this case for your videos, you want to go in and edit the text and fix the issues and not rely on auto captions. That is just wanted to make sure that we noted that here. 

So let's move on to audio descriptions. These descriptions allow learners who can't see visuals to fully understand your video, and they can even enhance comprehension for sighted users by providing additional context. And descriptions of visual elements, like actions, expressions or on screen text can give learners insight into what's happening visually. It can ensure no one misses out on some critical details. And for example, we could describe a character's frown in a tense scene, and that can convey emotion that words alone might miss. And it's important to note here that creating an effective audio transcript isn't about describing everything. It's about striking the right balance, giving the audience what they need without overloading

And think of your descriptions as storytelling. Focus on visuals that impact understanding. And for example, you might want to describe a graph that's central to the point, if you have a graph in your video or a diagram, but skip minor background details, and when possible, we want to integrate descriptions into natural breaks in the audio. This keeps the flow smooth. It avoids distracting interruptions. And then for the more complex visuals, like a dense chart or a diagram, you can pause the video briefly to provide a detailed explanation, ensuring the user has time to process the information without feeling rushed. And I'd like to share some examples with you. So do you need them? Audio descriptions? Yes, it is a standard requirement for compliance. Audio description does take planning. To plan for it, you want to identify the important visuals for understanding the content, and so I'd like to give you some examples of how you might narrate and how it would change the description of what's happening on the screen. 

So for example, instead of saying “Follow these steps to save your file”, you might say, “follow… To save, select File, and Save”. A little more descriptive. Instead of saying, “watch how I assemble these pieces”, you might say, “I'll take the chair leg and put it in the hole of the chair seat, and next, I'll use the rubber hammer to secure it in the hole.”

So we are describing what's happening on the screen. Of course, in the ideal situation, an audio description track would be capable of being turned on and off, like we do captions. And there are examples on slide 29 when you get there that have examples of where you can turn them on and off. YouTube does not currently support the multiple audio tracks. As of today, during this presentation, you do upload two versions, so little technical, but it's possible. So let's take a look at this one here. I'm gonna play an audio description that you might recognize, and this would be considered an audio track. So I am going to look over

Video Playing: Now in a black sky, a sliver of sunlight crests the Earth. Rays of light shoot off the continents, and a three dimensional word orbits the planet: “Universal”. Words appear: www.universalstudios.com,

Nicole Letoile: All right, so this is something you might recognize that would be an audio track. I provided you with a transcript as well. And then let's take a look at another example. This would be an example from the Star Wars and New Hope, 1977 opening crawl. And how this video is really lacking in that it would need audio description to include it, so you have a description there. But this would be a perfect example of a video that would benefit from audio descriptions.

Nicole Letoile: So if you're familiar with the Star Wars opening crawl, we're going to be on the screen. It's going to say it is a war. And then we're going to see a crawl. However, if we were not able to see that. We weren't getting the text, we weren't getting the captions, we're not getting an audio description. So this would be one that would benefit from that. Or you could add, I added the description for you to take a look at, but this one would definitely benefit from audio descriptions. 

So the third strategy, headings clear and navigable. Sorry, navigable content, importance of headings. So let's take a look at our built in ability to add headings within our bright space setting. So headings are not just vital for visual structure. They provide essential navigation for all learners. For example, someone using this using a screen reader, uses headings to quickly jump between sections and a sense of document structure. However, all users would benefit from having the ability to scan and look at a page and be able to scan by headings. Headings don't just help those using assistive technology. They do make the content easier for everyone to scan. 

So think about a well structured page and how you can help others by quickly providing headings to scan. So the h1 signals the main topic of the page. So overusing it can confuse both a person using a screen reader and a user trying to understand the content structure. And we want to think about heading structure as an outline. H2 headings represent the main points, and H3 breaks down those finer details. I want to keep the hierarchy consistent and help everyone follow the flow of information. And we want to consider H1 for the main title, H2 for primary sections, H3 for subsections, and so on and so forth. On the screen, we're looking at the toolbar with the paragraph drop down menu where you have heading 1..2..3..4, block, quote and code. Something to be mindful of is that if a section doesn't require an immediate heading level, it's better to adjust your content structure than to jump levels. If you think skipping a heading level is unavoidable, reconsider your content organization, and sometimes rephrasing or adding immediate headings can solve the issue without disrupting the hierarchy. It is tempting to use headings just to change the size or style of text, and we see that often, but doing so again, creates confusion. So instead of trying to change the text size, we want to use headings as intended, and that's for structured content, and then rely on our other tools for the visual styling.

So our fourth and final strategy: hyperlinks do's and don'ts. So links are not just the navigation tool. They're signals to a learner about where they're headed. Clear, descriptive links enhance the experience for all users, and especially someone using assistive technology, so using phrases like “click here” or “read more” gives no context about the links description or destination, so instead think of link text as a preview to the page it points to. So in this example, “learn more about accessible design principles” tells the learner exactly what to expect, and links should stand out from the surrounding text, and they don't always have that underlying feature. So underlining is important. Underlines are the most universally recognized way to distinguish links, and people will know to click on those. And high contrast colors also ensure users with low vision or color blindness can easily spot them. We want to avoid the raw URL like our example here in the third bullet, we don't add value for most users, and we also overwhelm a screen reader user with unnecessary characters. So we avoid using the written out URL, and we would want to have a descriptive text that we then link out. 

And so hyperlinks, yes, no, or best practice, please weigh in. Do hyperlinks need to open in the same window, unless otherwise specified? Opening links in a new tab without warning can disorient learners using a screen reader.In the what to expect slide I realize that it was there as I'm saying this, and I didn't call it out, but it said, note all links in this presentation will open in a new tab. So you may do that for presentation purposes, or you can put it right next to the link itself. It can interrupt workflow. Some will prefer that. Many will say, Oh, I prefer that for it to open a new tab, but it is a best practice if the link is opening, that we are communicating that there is a change. And so ultimately, that benefits all users, by being clear and communicating, which will make the content more intuitive and user friendly for everyone. Note, you would not fail an accessibility compliance test if you did not open it in and in the same window. So yes, no, best practices. If you'd like to weigh in on your thoughts on that, that would be wonderful. 

So let's now transition into incorporating accessibility into our workflow. Let's take a look at the ways that you can make accessibility stick. So for accessibility to be baked into our design process, we can start by focusing on one aspect at a time until it becomes second nature. Choose one of the strategies we talked about today and master that strategy. Get really good at it. You can use sticky notes or digital tasks to help you make that part of the everyday reminders. And I would ask, do you have an accessibility checkpoint when you're going through your quality assurance process and your course evaluation before it goes live? That can be very helpful. And even though it's at the end, the more you do it, the more likely you will start incorporating it into your designs early on. And so we're always looking to improve, and we could go back and look at a course today or tomorrow and in the future, an older course that we've designed, update it with those accessibility features, test our content with diverse groups of learners, get feedback, to understand and make necessary adjustments, and then also share what we know and. Maybe consider organizing a small training session or a workshop of your own to help those on your team design with accessibility in mind. 

And then, in addition to using the Brightspace built-in accessibility checker, I wanted to point this out, we can also use additional tools to help us learn and improve accessibility. And this side displays the WAVE tool analysis of the home page for my course making online content accessible for all. And it shows zero errors, and it shows zero color contrast and the absence of errors demonstrates the commitment that detail and Brightspace has to designing with accessibility in mind, and using these tools like WAVE into our design process are really helpful to learn more about accessibility, and it also serves as a practical example of how regular checks in our workflow can keep our courses accessible to all. And the WAVE tool is free. It is by WebAIM, and you could add that to your browser extension now and play around with it and see if it helps you to learn more. 

And then, what can you do today to get started? You can start to familiarize yourself with the standards. I would suggest seeking stories and experiences from people with disabilities to understand their challenges. I would recommend following thought leaders and additionally, engaging with experts that combine us with valuable insights. 

Lastly, joining a community of like minded professionals of making online content accessible for all is launching this January. It's a great opportunity to learn and share and collaborate together on creating these accessible, inclusive design experiences. And then, as we move towards the Q and A, think about how you can integrate your own practices and share with us in the chat and share with others things that you're doing right now as part of your workflow. Share your tips. Let's learn together, and let's create those exclusive learning experiences. 

And I provided you with resources that for those of you who like to dig in a little bit more, take a look at those at your convenience, and I will wrap up with the Q and A and closing. There are some links there as well. If you'd like to join us in January and want to get on the newsletter, we also have, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on Blue Sky. Please engage with me, and let's have a conversation. And if you want to learn more about accessibility in D2L Brightspace, there are some opportunities for you to do that. And so that's it. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate everyone being here. Phil, I'll hand it back to you.

Phil Vokey: Awesome. Great job. Nicole. There's one question that I tried to answer in chat, but I'd love to get your expert opinion on as well, and it's actually in Q and A. So the question is, how could I add the detailed description to an image in Brightspace in addition to the alt text, and I suggested a fig caption, but I'm curious if you had any other suggestions. 

Nicole Letoile: Yeah, great question. So the way that I would do that is I would put it right in the body of the page, underneath the image. And if it's getting dependent, I sometimes will attach, like you've seen in the presentation today, a description document, a downloadable description, but tend to really just put it right in the body of the content, right in the text. Because really what you're trying to do is you're, you're, you're adding to the con, you're adding, you're adding a, sorry, you're, you're adding to the content, right? So you're, it's important. So if we make it part of the part of the page, or part of the body text, then it just becomes part of the what's there. Sorry, is that very clear?

Phil Vokey: That makes sense.

Nicole Letoile  Okay, thank you. 

Phil Vokey: Yes, it makes a lot. Yeah, more sense in the fig captions, thank you. Glad I asked that. There is another question that just popped up in Q and A as well. It's from Shannon James. And the question is, how do you overcome a lack of willingness, willingness by others on your team to enact the accessibility best practices that you use, and have you taught them, or any tips? 

Nicole Letoile: Yeah, that's such a good question. I think there's no silver bullet here. There's no perfect answer. It takes time. And you know, the more that I'd say, the more that we have understanding the why behind how designing with accessibility is helping all users. I think having that understanding and being able to communicate to your team is the first start, and then also recognizing that accessibility design doesn't happen overnight. There are, there's, there's elements and ways that we can get better. So introducing one and focusing on that can help tremendously without the overwhelming feeling. And so I hope that answers the question, but I would say, you know, take it one step at a time, introduce a few elements, show the benefits, and, you know, have the why behind it.

Phil Vokey: Perfect. And we have a resounding yes from Shannon in chat. So that's great to see. Just now, Stacy has launched a closing poll, so please review the poll and respond accordingly, and if I believe that was the last question we had as well. Nicole, so thank you very much for this.

Nicole Letoile: Of course, you're welcome. Thank you everyone. So much for joining. This is.. it's always fun to talk accessibility, and I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me. Thanks, everyone I love. I see some familiar names in the chat, hi, call out some people. But Hello, hello, good to see y'all.

Phil Vokey: Okay with that, I think we can wrap so again, thank you Nicole, and thank you everyone the audience for joining us today. And again, the recording will be made available shortly, and you'll receive a communication about that. Okay, have a good day.

Nicole Letoile: Take care.

[Music]

Eugene: Hello everyone, welcome to A11Y Insights. I'm your host Eugene, and I'm the CEO of Engage. Today, we have a really interesting guest. Her name is Dr. Nicole L’Etoile. She is the current owner and head of L’Etoile Education.

Welcome, Nicole.

Nicole: Well, thank you. I'm really excited to be here, Eugene. I appreciate that you reached out and asked me to be a guest.

Eugene: So, why don’t we start out by getting to know a little bit about how you got into accessibility? It’s always something that is interesting. Tell us your origin story—how did you get into education, and especially around accessibility?

Nicole: My current role with L’Etoile Education is that I help my clients build more accessible content. They work with learning management systems, and my vision for my company is to make every K12, higher ed, education consultant, and Department of Education I work with ensure that all content is accessible.

When I talk about accessibility, we’ll get into it a little bit more, but my background is that I was a Learning Management System (LMS) administrator for Moodle LMS. I was on the receiving end of content that was going to go live to the public. I had been through some extensive training with WebAIM, who are amazing. I learned a lot from them about accessibility and the web accessibility guidelines.

When I would review a course, I would have to push back on the designer or do a lot of fixing. My thought was—what if we learned about accessibility from the start? What if we designed with accessibility in mind from the beginning and scaled up, so we don’t have these hard conversations eight weeks after a course is built?

That’s what I wanted to solve—ensuring accessibility is built into the process from the start rather than being an afterthought.

‍Frustration in Education

‍Nicole: Education often operates on a "build the plane while it's in the air" model, which creates frustration, especially in K12 and the Department of Education. Being reactive rather than proactive has been a challenge throughout my career as a teacher, principal, and consultant.

For instructional designers, this can be particularly frustrating when they put so much effort into building courses or documents, only to be told that they need to redo their work to meet accessibility requirements. My approach is to offer training and support early on, so accessibility is not an afterthought.

Example of a Project

‍For instance, an education consultancy that supports K12 and professional development providers might approach me for assistance. I start with a needs assessment, understanding their goals and the learning management systems they use. I conduct an audit using tools like Wave, Arc Toolkit, and ANDI.I prioritize issues as significant, moderate, or recommended and provide a report. The next step is training—large group sessions, small team training, or one-on-one guidance. Accessibility checks are then integrated into their design process.

‍Compliance

Some clients come to me for legal compliance, while others genuinely want to make their content more accessible. Educators often feel a moral obligation to be inclusive, while organizations may be more focused on meeting legal standards. Regardless of the motivation, accessibility benefits everyone. Even those looking to simply "check a box" end up making their content more inclusive.

Uniqueness

As a runner, I apply the same discipline and drive for improvement to accessibility work. My goal is always to reach the highest accessibility standards (double or triple A). Accessibility is an ongoing process, always striving to be better.

Tag Order

A standout feature of this tool is its ability to check and fix tag order in PDFs—a capability missing in other tools. Previously, I had to use expensive software like Adobe Acrobat to manually remediate PDFs. Now, I can ensure proper reading order within the tool itself, making accessibility more intuitive and less technical.

Case Studies

Beyond course design, accessibility is essential for case studies, white papers, and reports. Many institutions struggle with making their reports accessible. With this tool, they can create fully accessible documents from the start, ensuring compliance when they publish.

PDF Remediation

A feature I’d love to see in the future is the ability to import an existing PDF and fix accessibility issues directly. Remediation is currently a time-consuming process requiring multiple tools, and a single solution would be a game changer.

Trends in Accessibility

One major trend is making accessibility guidelines less jargon-heavy and more user-friendly. There's also growing interest in AI and automation for accessibility—can AI automatically reorder headings, fix contrast, or adjust layouts?

While some automation exists, human review is still essential.

Less Manual Work

As AI improves, some accessibility fixes will require **less manual effort**. AI could potentially restructure documents for better accessibility, reducing the workload for designers.

Human in the Loop

That said, human oversight remains crucial. AI-generated alt text, for example, still needs to be reviewed for accuracy. AI lacks full context, making human review necessary to ensure quality.

Canva vs. This Tool

At first, I thought this tool was similar to Canva. But after using it, I realized it’s much more robust, especially for creating accessible documents.

Canva focuses on visuals, whereas this tool is dedicated to document creation and accessibility compliance. For PDFs, newsletters, and reports, this tool is the better choice.

Conclusion

This has been a great conversation.

For those interested in learning more about my work, visit my website LEtoile-Education.com or connect with me on LinkedIn. I work with K12, higher ed, education consultants, and departments of education to improve accessibility. Thank you for having me today!

Luke Hobson: Dr. Luke, here. And today we are talking all about accessibility at the timing of this podcast recording. It just so happens to be global accessibility awareness day. And certainly when it comes to learning experiences, accessibility is an essential detail that we should absolutely be paying attention to. And it just so happens that I have a friend who specializes in thinking about accessibility and online learning experiences and that is who you're going to be hearing from today.

We are going to be joined by Dr. Nicole L'Etoile. She has been working inside of this space for quite some time and I really wanted her to be able to come on thisshow and to share more about how to make our online learning experiences accessible for all people. Nicole was actually a recent graduate over at Instructional Design Institute and a part of the Instructional Design Institute's program is that the students have to be able to create their own type of course at the end of everything. And she chose to be able to make a course about how to make content accessible, especially within the online space. And as I was going through this course, I was looking at it and I was like, this is amazing. I want you to come on the podcast and talk more about this because certainly she has many different types of tips and strategies that you're going to be hearing about inside of this episode. So we're going to be hearing more from tools, from resources, even going back to the basics of defining accessibility and what we really mean.

How can we go above and beyond to make our accessible types of learning experiences really for all people and also talking about the challenges with accessibility. We bring this up and certainly I have worked with some subject matter experts before in the past and they kind of pushed back against me with accessibility. And I was like, that's kind of weird. So we talk about this to be able to figure out different types of ways and strategies to get around these types of barriers, if you just so happen to be facing them inside of the workplace.

So today is all about designing learning experiences for all people. And of course, be sure to go down below inside of a show notes folks because this episode, This is a show notes episode for sure. Lots of resources, lots of tools. Nicole also has made her course that she created into a public version of this course for online learning experiences and making them accessible for all people. So that course is actually going to be launching soon as well, so be sure to go down below inside of the show notes and check out everything. But with all of that being said, I'm not gonna waste any more time. Here is the one and only Dr. Nicole L'Etoile. Nicole, welcome to the podcast.

Nicole: Hi, Luke. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Of course, happy to have you. 

Luke: Nicole, for the folks at home who don't know who you are, could you please introduce yourself? Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what is that you do? 

Nicole: Absolutely. My name is Nicole L'Etoile. I am a white female in my late 40s. I have brown hair with some blondish highlights. It's pulled back right now in a ponytail and I'm in my home office with my headset and my new podcast microphone and I'm ready to talk. Of course.

Luke: Of course. Now, Nicole, you are here on a very special day, which somehow happens to magically align from when we scheduled this podcast, which happens to be Global Accessibility Awareness day. And wouldn't you know it? We are talking about how to make online content accessible for all people. So once again, I didn't plan that.. And when this was planned, I thought, wow, he is just, and he was so cool about you were just so cool about it because

you're like, let's do it Thursday. And I was like, he must know. He must know it is. So yeah, it just really worked out. But he doesn't. And he's got very lucky.

It worked out that the stars align with this podcast episode. But from knowing you, Nicole, because now I have known you for over the last year. You're a recent graduate over at Instructional Design Institute. You also created a fantastic course project that really was all about today's theme with talking about accessibility and being able to educate all folks as far as this goes. So clearly, you're very passionate about this area. And I'm kind of curious about where your passion comes from? How were you introduced to accessibility, especially inside of the online learning space?

Nicole: Yeah. Well, thanks for the question. And I'm just going to back up and give a little bit to context about my role and my background and then lead into that question. So I'm in my 23rd year career, all within the K through 12 space. If you were to ask me what my title was, I would say professional development specialists, learning development specialists. I don't know these days. I think there's so many things that I could call myself founder of my local education LLC, an LMS specialist. But really, you know, I started out, I'm a technology and business educator who went up the ranks and became a school principal and a consultant and did some PD. And I, you know, I think what happened was I kept thinking, "What is next for me? Where am I going?" And I ended up deciding to really focus back on how I put all this together. I'm a teacher. I'm a school leader. But I love technology. I love creating courses. And so I took a role as an LMS administrator instructional designer. And I think when you asked the question of when did this become a passion, it became a passion when it became my everyday work, and I took on this role. And one of the key responsibilities of the job was that I had to do what we call an admin review for a course. 

So every course designer, every instructional designer on the team would create the course and I would either provide support along the way or I would receive the course at the end and I'd have to put it through a rigorous admin course review and say whether it could go live or not. And it would end up being a back and forth between me and the designer or the subject matter expert and their designer. Sometimes there were three of us working on that course. And I, what was happening was as I was getting more confident and comfortable and learning about accessibility, because that was a key part of that review. I started to realize that we were not meeting standards, that we were not doing a great job. So. educators so that they could support their students. And we should be the gold star.

We should be the model. Because if we're not doing that, how can we ask others to do it? - Exactly, and I'm sure you made so many friends by calling them out saying that things are not accessible and they just loved your comments. - Oh, yes. I was gonna say a couple of times was referred to as the accessibility police. We had a Copyright police, and we also had accessibility police, so sorry about that. - Yeah, you're like, "You're sorry, but you're not." You're like, "Kinda should be definitely doing this." You know, that, yeah. So, 'cause I've been there before too, so I'm like, "Oh, I know that, I know that all too well." So it's always a good time to try to be able to do those things, but as you were saying, extremely important, essential, crucial, we should be obviously doing all these things. So before, and I kept on saying all of these things, but I wanna break that down for a second because when we're thinking about from accessibility, I know that as soon as we say that word, folks are immediately thinking about a couple of different things as far as for what exactly are we talking about when we're saying we're trying to be able to make an online learning experience accessible.

So I'd love to dive into that and to get more of a clearer definition and perception about when you hear the word accessibility, what comes to mind as far as what's inside of that space? Yeah, so when talking about accessibility in the context of online learning, referring, say, to design or delivery of educational experiences in a way to ensure that all learners, regardless of their physical impairments or cognitive, if we break down the different disabilities, but impairments and disabilities that they can fully participate and engage with the content. And then it goes broader than that. Can everyone access the content beyond visual impairments or cognitive impairments and disabilities? And so we're talking about content accessibility, ensuring the materials are accessible. We're talking about the platform. Is the LMS, can we navigate it? Is the learning management system itself accessible?

Are we making sure that communication within our courses is clear? Do we have assessments and activities that are adopting UDL principles? And so I think it means a lot of things. I think we start with the checklist. We start with the WCAG standards and saying are we meeting the standards? Are we within compliance? And I don't know about you, but I don't like it when anyone gets left out. I especially feel that when we're designing experiences, it's our job. It's our responsibility to make sure that we include all people, all learners. And so, regardless of an impairment or disability, is this content accessible to everyone that wants to participate? Yeah, of course. Of course. And yes, we shouldn't be leaving people out, especially in education, of all the places. Let's not have this be an education for thinking about leaving people out for everything. So that is a excellent definition and very textbook, very impressive. You're able to say that. So when thinking about with this, I would love to actually start with a success story because I know that we are talking about from accessibility as far as for like being accessibility police and some people I know can have like, oh, there's that person who's always going to flag me down. But however, there's like, for superpowers, as far as we're having your learning experience is accessible for all because now they serve all people. So to me, that's like a massive win to be able to go into that direction. So I'd love to hear an example about a time where you saw an opportunity to be able to take something, to make it more accessible. And in turn, that actually made the project like 10 times better. Story to share. Of course.

Yeah. And there were a few that came to mind as you're asking the question and there're real concrete examples and then there's some more of the emotion, the personal side to it. I think if we're looking at a concrete example, you know how to see those accessibility overlays some nowadays that are on sites and you see the little accessibility icon and they're everywhere and we, an organization that I was at was using it on our Moodle LMS and quickly come to realize that that's not the way to go because for those who are using screen readers and assistive technologies and have certain disabilities and impairments, that overlay actually makes it worse. So the overlays themselves can prevent screen readers from reading certain things it can mask, it becomes about, you know, a CYA as opposed to is it really making it accessible. And so we, a project that I was on and what we led, decided to do what we call an accessibility review. So it was putting together a team of five people who take our courses and asked them to review a course from Accessibility Lens. We had somebody there with a visual impairment, a hearing impairment, motor, so I could only use the keyboard. And so had different lenses to go through courses and then provide some feedback.

And that was truly one of those experiences where again, it was just great to go through it and provide this opportunity but to hear from the participants who said, "Thank you. Thank you for thinking of us. Thank you for making the effort and it'll never be perfect and we know that but we just want to appreciate and we feel seen and thank you." So I would say that that went a long way and a project that I'm proud of. Absolutely. Why would you not want to be able to get feedback directly from the users who are going to be experiencing this and to give be that. And I know that that's some standard practices for corporate organizations around us is like that is so brilliant to be able to do, especially like for products with apps and everything of a sort. But that's just a part of our standards to be able to say that if every person's going to be downloading this app, that we need to go right to the source, have them actually test it and to give us feedback to say, are we on track or maybe not so much and we got to figure things out. So that is a brilliant idea to be able to do. - Yeah, yeah, I think it just seems so natural, right? So you want to get feedback on any learning experience, mostly that you're providing. So I think what was happening is an admin review of the course, it's, well, I don't necessarily use a screen reader, I can test it with a screen reader and I use certain ones to do that with, but I'm not really getting the learner experience fully.

So in order to do that, I need to hear from someone who is going to experience this in that way. And so your, your post, I'll show up your message reminds me too about one post that I stopped because you and I are both very active on LinkedIn or using this thing, like, you know, on a daily basis. One of the things that I didn't think about when you post inside of LinkedIn is the way that you have the spacing in between the different types of sentences. So, you know, the ones that usually go viral, which is like a line, and then like enter, there's another line. And like, yeah, I was like, it just, it just goes forever and ever and ever. And I was following and a friend of a show, Bella Gitan, uh, made a post about how she has mobility issues. And she was like, when you do that, I am scrolling for an eternity to be able to read this post. It's not optimal to be able to do it in this way for folks like myself. And I was I had no idea and immediately as soon as she said that, I was just like, I will not do that. I'll make sure it's spaced accordingly so that that way people can follow along and it's not like a tremendous eyesore. Yeah, yeah. And it goes the same way with a course or within documents. So a lot of times you'll see documents embedded into courses and they're not necessarily using the heading structure. And it's the same. It's almost asking someone to open up the document and be like, it doesn't matter to me what you want to read in this document or not, you're just going to have to scroll through this entire thing and I'm not going to provide you any context labels or headings to stop you and say, "This is important. You might want to read this part." So it's the similar experience. You don't know until you're in that position of like, "Oh, this is really difficult for me." And I always say accessibility is when there is no barrier to the learning, but also when someone doesn't have to ask or bring it to your attention that that to me is a true perfect gold star of accessibility that someone can access and be part of a learning experience without having to even think about their disability.

Now that's an absolute win. So let's talk about a few types of typical challenges in regards to how you reviewed courses and you would try to be able to see what people did and try to be able to flag them and things of this nature. For the folks listening at home who are the educators, the designers, what are some of the common types of challenges in regards to what you would see, especially within the online learning space and thinking about it from an accessibility lens? Yeah, I think the first thing that comes to mind is cognitive overload. So if we're talking about neurodivergent and we're thinking about people that just, you know, just thinking about the content coming to you all overwhelmingly, I reviewed one course once, and it was, you know, all the bells and whistles, and this particular designer just loved to try every H5P that they could, and it was like a goal of theirs. Every week I'm going to insert this new interactive tool because it's fun for me to play and learn and put it in. And I think what, experiencing that cognitive overload of wanting to do too much, when sometimes it could be a simple text document that could get, you know, a simple text document or activity assignment that you can accomplish a deeper learning experience.

So I would say cognitive overload when it comes to, to courses is something that I've experienced often. Color contrast, believe it or not, is still, although basic color contrast is often I love my web aim color contrast checker tool to check those But yeah, if you, um, you'll see that and you know, we know the basics, there is no alternative text and still see that often, um, close captions and a transcript, audio transcripts is the requirement.  Sometimes you only see one or the other or none. Uh, so yeah, I think, um, I think still those basic ones are what I see the most, um, and, And Cognitive Overload is the one that comes to mind right now.

Yeah, but when you mentioned that too, I'm not sure if you saw, there was a series about the New York Jets on YouTube and they were showing about the coaches going up to the front of the room and giving their PowerPoint presentations like breaking down the different types of plays. Well, the Jets have an instructional designer on the staff and he took a picture of that and he was just like, - I promise I did not do this. - That's great. - Yeah, and especially too when thinking about the different color combinations for those who are colorblind and have those impairments. And it's just like, why are you making things like red and green? Like what? Why? 

Yeah, I get you want to make this highlight and make it bright and yellow, but it's not really the best way to get the message across. I think sometimes you still see folks relying too much on color for conveying important information. If I put something in red, but I don't put importance or notice here or attention, use some language and text, they don't know that it's important just by color alone. - Right, right, no, it makes sense. So you mentioned a couple of tools in that last answer and that's actually where I wanted to go next is to hear more since you are so fantastic inside of this space. What are some tools you can share with us in regards to things that we should just always have them in the background and always that hands to be able to make sure that we're running them for our learning experiences? 

Yeah, I like that. You know, I try to put my two hats on being that LMS administrator hat and then the instructional designer hat and knowing that there's slightly sometimes different roles, You know, the more you know, um, it was like, that was an NBC thing. The more you know, and every time I, the more you know, I did say that I was in my late forties, didn't I? Yeah. Um, so that's dating myself. So yeah, I think whatever I start with, the, what is it low, you know, kind of low effort, high impact and, and your accessibility checkers built in to your tools are a great place to start. Most have them. If you're using an LMS, you'll have them in all of the ones I've seen so far, canvas, bright space, Moodle. The ones inside Canva have them too.

If you're using Canva or a Venngage, Venngage is the other one that people use for diagrams and images. So anyway, so using your built -in tools. I use the Wave tool that's popular. It's free, you can get that on the WebAIM website. And the Wave tool, I keep that up and I run them. And after I design a course, I currently right now I'm designing something and I did, I built it out and I put out all the modules. And then I ran my Wave tool after just, I try not to look too much at everything. Start with the contrast, the, sorry, the critical items, and then I go from more critical to significant and look at the alerts. So Wave Tools 1, the Arc Toolkit is free. The Arc Toolkit is something that you can go if you're a little bit more savvy and familiar with code, and you're not uncomfortable getting into the developer tools. So it runs on your browser and then you go into your more tools, developer tools and you can go from there and it'll pull up and it does a little bit more checking of structure and headings.

It's one that I use often. Of course, if you're using Grackle for docs and slides, if you bet a lot of presentation content, I always refer to Grackle, free extension. So those would be the ones that I would suggest for day use. And then even when, before I go live, I run my own, I have a Mac, so I run the voiceover to make sure that, or a free screen reader, NVDA, I check that as well. I think sometimes that goes a little bit above and beyond. But if you're willing, I always say it's always worth designing from the start, where you keep it in mind from the very beginning. If you're going to write out the text, put it in Microsoft Word, use the heading system, use Grackle, check it first, then put it into the platform. But if you don't have the time for that and you're building out and you're okay with doing these checks before it goes live, then those are the tools I'd recommend to just give it a look over. Like I said, it'll be perfect.

It's just, the more you know. I mean, you absolutely just shared some tools I have not heard of before. Obviously, we're going to keep on learning more as we keep going, which is the whole point of this conversation and the podcast. Keep on sharing more insights and knowledge and being able to figure out what folks who are actually inside of this space are currently doing, what they are using, and everything of the sort. When you just say, you rattle off a ton of these different types of awesome different forms of products. If you are currently working with a SME, I'm trying to envision myself as an ID, and I'm going through a type of course, and I'm working with a SME or a professor, whoever it is. Then being able to say, "Okay, I just did all of my checks, I'm going through things. There's actually a few different types of opportunities here, but I want to be able to work on reshifting my focus."

And I know from past experience as well, that if I try to make a whole bunch of recommendations, I might get pushback. "It's going to take too long. It's going to do blah, blah, blah." And of course, I'm like, "That doesn't matter. It needs to be done this way."

Luke: How have you handled pushback as far as those types of common things, whether it's going to be from cost or from timing, deadlines, deliverables—whatever it is? How do you handle pushback while trying to make sure that you are going in the right direction from that design perspective?

Nicole: Yeah, that's a really great question and something that I lived through for quite some time. When I was working on a team, and it was my full-time job, it was actually more challenging than it is now as a consultant where I go in and do audits because people have asked me to come in, and they want me to tell them, and they want to make those changes. So it feels a little bit different in my approach to it. Whether you want the low-effort, high-impact approach, or if we're going all in, or you know, where can we start? I always say an extra bit of effort goes a long way. If it just means that I have to find a few of these to share and get started, and go over the trust of, "Look, we're doing this for everyone." I think there's definitely some empathy that needs to be a part of that conversation. Like I started out saying earlier, we don’t want to leave people out. How would you feel if you couldn’t experience that learning or you couldn’t access that learning? Sometimes there are those deep conversations around empathy, trying to put the mirror on the other person and say, "Try to think about how that might feel."

Luke: Where can they go to learn more about you, what you're up to? You also have a fantastic new course about accessibility as well. Like share with us, everything.

Nicole: Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn and It's Nicole, N-I-C-O-L-E. And my last name is L’Etoile, L-E-T-O-I-L-E. If you notice, L’Etoile in French means star, so that's why I am L’Etoile Education, Star Education. You can also go to my LLC business page if you'd like and check out more. But you can find the course, as soon as you go to my LinkedIn page, click on my website, and go to my courses. I would say that's probably the fastest way to do that. And then that'll take you to the course, and the course is hosted right now on Maven. We've talked a little bit about this, but I'm hosting on Maven, but it is a Canvas course, so it'll be all things accessibility, what we talked about today around the standards, but also more around designing for best practices.

So definitely going to have to talk about UDL for sure, but we're going to focus on as you're designing your course from the beginning, from the start, how to intentionally think about accessibility so that when your course goes live, we've done a good job. So I hope you join me. We start September 23rd. Of course, as a former educator and school principal, I was thinking, "I'm gonna give everybody the summer off. Let's not even try to start it soon." Also just thought it'd be a great time in the fall to kick it off. So we start September 23rd, and if you are interested, you can just contact me. I'd love to meet you and talk to you if you want more information. But yeah, that's where the course is.

Luke: Awesome, awesome. Well, I will of course include all the links inside of the show notes below for folks to be able to find this and the course to connect with you about everything we talked about today.

Nicole: Thank you for having me, it's been a pleasure. I enjoyed your course, and my course would not exist without yours, so I need to thank you for that. Much, much appreciated, and it's been a pleasure.

Luke: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that episode. Be sure to reach out to Nicole and just give her a big thank you for coming on here and sharing her words of wisdom. I learned quite a bit from this conversation—which is absolutely awesome—and of course, I'm sure that you learned a thing or two along the way. Once again, her course is going to be launching soon, so go down below inside of the show notes if you want to learn more about accessibility from her perspective and all the things that she shared with us today.

As I mentioned early on inside of this episode, she is actually a recent graduate of IDI Instructional Design Institute. And if you are looking to learn more about designing learning experiences, essentially from A to Z, that is our seven-week-long course, and that is going to be starting up again. The next cohort starts on July 15th, so only a couple of months away and we'll be diving in there. Be sure to put in your application today and I cannot wait to see you inside of a class. But hey, folks, that is really all I have for you today. Do the typical things, please, that I always say as far as subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show—all of those things. Your words for everything really do help out with the growth of this show.

And once again, I appreciate you, especially for dedicating your time to everything with this show. But hey, that's all I have for you today. Stay nerdy out there. I'll talk to you next time.