My Accessibility Journey, Part 2: The Small Changes That Changed Everything

Author: Gabrielle Likavec, Teaching & Learning Consultant, Office of Curriculum & Instructional Support.

After I stopped viewing accessibility as a destination and began seeing it as an ongoing process, I found myself facing a new question: Where do I start?

It is one thing to accept that accessibility is a journey. It is another thing entirely to determine what that journey looks like in practice. For a while, I approached accessibility the way many academics approach a new area of learning. I read articles. I attended workshops. I explored resources. The more I learned, the more I appreciated the complexity of the field. At the same time, I continued to encounter the same challenge I had wrestled with from the beginning: there seemed to be so much to know.

Faculty work is full of competing priorities. We design courses, provide feedback, meet with students, conduct research, participate in service, and respond to the countless small tasks that fill our days. Most of us are not looking for one more thing to add to our to-do list. We are looking for ways to do our existing work more effectively.

What ultimately changed my approach to accessibility was realizing that I did not need to master everything at once. Instead, I needed to identify a few high-impact practices that could become part of my normal workflow.

The goal was not perfection...The goal was building habits.

Looking for the greatest return on investment

As educators, we make decisions all the time about where to focus our attention. We know that not every teaching strategy has the same impact, and not every course revision produces the same results. The same is true for accessibility.

Over time, I discovered that a handful of relatively small changes consistently made a significant difference. They improved accessibility and also improved clarity, organization, and usability for all students.

What surprised me most was that many of these practices were things I should have been doing anyway. Accessibility was not asking me to reinvent my teaching materials completely. It was asking me to be more intentional about how I created them.

The humble power of headings

If I had to identify one accessibility practice that transformed my thinking more than any other, it would be using heading styles correctly in documents. At first glance, headings seem almost trivial. After all, many of us already create section titles by making text larger, bolding it, or changing the font color.

The difference is that heading styles communicate structure. When we use built-in heading styles, we are not simply changing appearance; we are providing information about how ideas are organized and connected. Students using screen readers can navigate a document through its headings. Students reviewing a lengthy document can quickly locate relevant sections—even students who never think about accessibility benefit from a document that clearly communicates its structure.

Perhaps most importantly, using heading styles changed how I thought about document design. Instead of focusing solely on how information looked, I began paying more attention to how information was organized. That shift has improved nearly every document I create.

Accessibility and the art of reducing cognitive load

One of the unexpected lessons of my accessibility journey is that accessibility often overlaps with good instructional design. When we create accessible materials, we frequently reduce unnecessary cognitive load. 

Consider something as simple as a hyperlink. For years, many of us became accustomed to writing phrases like "click here" or "read more." From an accessibility perspective, these links pose challenges because they provide little information when found independently via a screen reader's scan feature.  But meaningful link text helps all students understand where a resource will take them and why it is relevant. It reduces guesswork and improves navigation. It makes information easier to find and use.

The same principle applies to document organization, descriptive titles, consistent course layouts, and clearly labeled resources. Many accessibility practices ultimately support something educators care deeply about: helping students focus their mental energy on learning rather than on figuring out how to access information.

Alternative text taught me to think differently about images

I will admit that alternative text was one of the concepts that initially felt intimidating. I worried about doing it incorrectly. I wondered how detailed descriptions should be. I assumed there must be a complicated set of rules I needed to memorize.

Over time, I discovered that the most important question is actually quite simple: Why is this image here?

That question transformed the way I approach alternative text. Some images are decorative and add visual interest but do not convey important information. Others communicate concepts, illustrate relationships, present data, or provide context that students need to understand.

Thinking about purpose rather than perfection made alternative text feel much more manageable. It also revealed something interesting about my own teaching materials. The process of writing alternative text often forced me to clarify why I had included an image in the first place.

In some cases, it helped me realize that an image was doing important instructional work and deserved more attention. In other cases, it helped me realize that it wasn't.  Either way, the exercise made me a more intentional educator.

Accessibility checkers became my colleagues

For a long time, I assumed accessibility required expertise that I did not possess. While expertise is certainly valuable, I underestimated the usefulness of the tools already available to me.

The accessibility checkers built into applications such as Word and PowerPoint are not perfect. They cannot identify every issue, nor can they replace human judgment. What they can do is provide guidance.

Today, I think of these tools, less as evaluators and more as colleagues. They help me notice issues I might otherwise overlook. They remind me to consider accessibility during the creation process rather than after the fact. More importantly, they help accessibility become part of my workflow rather than a separate task that happens at the end.

Blackboard taught me that consistency matters

As I spent more time thinking about accessibility, I noticed that many of the same principles applied beyond individual documents. They also applied to course design.

Students navigate dozens of digital environments every semester. Every course asks them to locate materials, interpret instructions, and manage information. While no course can eliminate every challenge, consistency can reduce unnecessary barriers:

• Clear module structures.
• Meaningful titles.
• Predictable organization.
• Logical navigation.

These choices support accessibility and, more broadly, student success.

One of the reasons I have become increasingly interested in course design over the years is that seemingly small design decisions often have outsized effects on student experience. Accessibility helped me recognize that principle in new ways.

What I know now that I wish I knew then

I wish I had known that accessibility is built through habits

For years, I viewed accessibility as a collection of tasks to complete. Today, I see it as a collection of habits to develop. Habits are sustainable in ways that projects often are not. Once practices, such as using heading styles, checking accessibility reports, writing meaningful links, and considering alternative text, become part of the normal creation process, accessibility requires far less effort than many people imagine.

I wish I had known that good design and accessible design often overlap

One of the biggest surprises of my accessibility journey has been how frequently accessibility improvements also improve teaching materials more generally. Clear organization, thoughtful structure, consistent navigation, and intentional design help all learners. Accessibility has made me a better course designer, not because it introduced entirely new ideas, but because it encouraged me to apply familiar principles more consistently.

I wish I had known that small changes can have a large impact

When we hear discussions about accessibility, it is easy to focus on everything that remains to be done. What I have learned instead is that relatively small improvements can significantly enhance the student experience. A document with proper headings, a captioned video, a clearly organized Blackboard site, or a meaningful image description may seem minor in isolation. Collectively, however, these choices create learning environments that are easier to navigate, easier to understand, and more welcoming to a wider range of students. 

Looking ahead

As valuable as these practical habits have been, they are not the most important thing accessibility has taught me. The greatest shift has been philosophical rather than technical.

Over time, I stopped asking whether my materials met a particular standard and began asking a different question: What barriers might my students encounter here?

That question has changed how I think about teaching, learning, and educational design.

In the final article of this series, I will explore how accessibility gradually shifted from feeling like a checklist to becoming an integral part of my broader understanding of what it means to create inclusive and effective learning experiences.

Ready to take the next step? Join us for our Accessibility in Action workshop on Tuesday, August 25 (register at cisevents.cmich.edu), or learn at your own pace through the Accessibility in Action Blackboard Self-Paced Training (CMICH login required). To access, select Workshops and Orientations from the left-hand menu on your Blackboard home screen, and the training will be listed there.  While instructors are automatically enrolled, if it does not appear for you, please contact cis@cmich.edu for assistance.