Making a course accessible appears to be a complex and time-consuming task, especially if no attention has been paid to it so far. It is not necessary to aim to fulfil all requirements at once.

A recommended first step is:

To communicate your willingness to adapt your teaching if this creates barriers for individual students.

What is meant by this? – Here is an example read more

Encourage your students to express special needs at the start of the semester – whether in person, by email or via an anonymous survey. This will give you concrete indications of whether, for example, hearing-impaired students are taking part in your courses in the current semester. This would then mean that you would need to check that you are not providing any materials that only provide auditory information – e.g. a podcast should also be accompanied by a text transcript. This would also be an opportunity to consider recording your courses and making them available with subtitles if you are not already doing so. This would also be very helpful for foreign students, for example. (Tip: you can create video subtitles automatically in Panopto).

During your lectures, you should also make sure that you speak facing your audience, i.e. looking directly into the lecture hall or camera. This, as well as speaking clearly and not too quickly, makes lip-reading easier for affected students and is also helpful for all students.

Finally, it is advisable to simply get in touch with the affected students to find out what they need.