State of practice in accessible instructional material policy in public post-secondary settings

Abstract

For many students, easy access to instructional materials is an expectation of course enrollment. However, for students with disabilities, obtaining instructional materials may involve hurdles such as transcription, captioning, and requesting a braille or large-print version. In order to explore themes related to accessibility and services for students with disabilities, the goal of this study was to examine the similarities and differences between publicly communicated policies related to accessible instructional materials in public post-secondary educational settings. To that end, this study consists of website-provided accessible instructional materials policy of 60 higher educational institutions, representing five American geographic areas and four institutional types in order to discover common themes in the presentation of findings. While high resource institutions presented the largest breadth of findings, duplication of purposes meant that some institutions with lower resource levels presented materials in a more comprehensive grouping manner. In addition, evidence exists that institutions are presenting an incomplete picture of accessibility requirements and despite the prevalence of resources, service regarding accessible instructional materials is uneven across institutional types and locations.