Designing for Everyone: Quick Wins for Digital Accessibility

Get your digital teaching resources ready for the year ahead with these quick accessibility wins.

With teaching just around the corner, staff will be updating materials, refreshing modules, and preparing Learning Central content. This is the perfect opportunity to build in digital accessibility so that every student can engage fully.

Accessibility at Cardiff University is part of our commitment to Inclusive Education. It supports students with diverse needs, whether they are using assistive technologies, balancing study with additional responsibilities, or navigating content in a second language. Accessible design creates a more inclusive and supportive learning environment for everyone.

Quick tips to get started

Small changes can have a big impact. As you prepare for teaching, try implementing a few of these quick accessibility wins to your digital resources and Learning Central modules:

• Use accessible fonts (sans serif, at least size 12)
• Add alternative text (Alt Tex) to images, graphs and diagrams
• Structure content clearly using headings and bullet points
• Write descriptive links e.g., “Assessment guide 2025-26” rather than “click here”
• Use the Microsoft Accessibility Checker, or Ally in Learning Central, to check content before sharing with students
• Enable captions and provide transcripts for video and audio content

New guidance from the Learning and Teaching Academy

To support you in this work the Learning and Teaching Academy has launched the new Digital Accessibility Guide to help you:

• Reflect on your current provision and identify potential barriers to learning
• Find quick tips to improve digital accessibility
• Explore guidance to make your Learning Central modules more accessible

Explore the Digital Accessibility Guide today and put accessibility and inclusion at the heart of your teaching and learning this year.

Discover how to identify and remove accessibility barriers in the Accessibility and Digital Education workshop from the Cardiff Learning and Teaching Academy.

If you need more support or have requests for new blogs, please contact LTAcademy@cardiff.ac.uk.