Masterplanning the digital campus to support learners with disabilities

Abstract

Organizations that deliver online learning must be strategic and holistic in their accessibility approach, ensuring all necessary structures are in place to support accessible and equitable experiences for learners with disabilities. Responsibility for accessibility must be distributed appropriately across all stakeholder groups. By adopting stewardship activities common in physical campuses, a more strategic approach can be applied to the digital campus. Masterplanning the digital campus means addressing near-term activities with a long view---one that takes into account the underlying infrastructure as well as the surface-level structures where people engage more directly in the learning process. This paper presents foundational activities around policy, process, programs, and practice that are necessary to support the creation of a sustainable, accessible online learning environment.