Accessibility often gets addressed too late. A learner requests an accommodation, the team rushes to update a course that’s already live, and accessibility becomes a last-minute fix.
Amy Beard makes the case for building accessible eLearning from the start. In this episode of Coffee with Genially, she shared how her team handles accessibility day to day. Amy is a senior instructional designer at The College of Health Care Professions, with more than a decade of experience designing accessible online learning.
Watch the full conversation:
Key takeaways
- Three quick wins: add alt text, use heading levels in order and check your colors. None requires rebuilding the whole course.
- Captions: captions burned into a video are open captions. Automatic captions can be closed captions, but they still need to be reviewed and edited for accuracy.
- Structure: selectable, searchable text is a start. Headings, paragraphs and proper coding give a document its structure.
- Mindset: planning accessibility from the start means less scrambling when a learner requests an accommodation.
- Deadline: under the DOJ’s 2026 interim final rule, the ADA Title II compliance date is April 26, 2027, for state and local government entities with a population of 50,000 or more. Entities with a population under 50,000 and special district governments have until April 26, 2028.
Two accessibility mistakes that make learning harder
Two issues Amy sees often are relying on burned-in or unreviewed automatic captions, and assuming that selectable, searchable text is accessible. Both can create avoidable barriers for learners.
1. Captions that need a second look
Amy points to a common assumption that embedded or auto-generated captions are the same as closed captioning. If you don’t rely on captions yourself, as the host pointed out, the difference is easy to overlook.
Captions burned into a video are open captions. They’re part of the image, so learners can’t switch them off and a screen reader can’t read them. Auto-generated captions can be closed captions. They still need a review.
When captions fall short, learners who depend on them have to work out what’s being said and what matters. That adds cognitive load for exactly the learners who need captions.
Amy’s team uses the caption tracks available in YouTube. These can be turned on or off, edited and downloaded. The team also uses AI to help prepare and upload caption files. A separate transcript gives learners, including those using screen readers, another way to access the content.
2. Selectable and searchable is only a start
Another common assumption: once a document’s text can be selected and searched, it’s ready to release. Amy calls that a start. It doesn’t make the document accessible.
What’s missing is structure. Amy points to heading levels, paragraphs and semantic structure as essential for people navigating a document with assistive technology. Before you release a file, check it with a screen reader or your tool’s accessibility checker: are the headings real headings, and does the reading order make sense?
Three quick changes for accessible eLearning
Amy Beard proposes three quick changes that don’t require a full course overhaul: add alt text, use heading levels in order and check your colors. You can start on any of them today.
1. Add alt text to meaningful images
Alt text comes first on Amy’s list. Most LMS content editors already flag images without alt text, so the warnings show you where to begin. Work through them one by one. Purely decorative images can take empty alt text.
2. Use semantic headings, in order
Bold text isn’t a heading. To a screen reader, a bold line is just another line of text, so the learner gets no sense of structure.
Semantic headings (heading 1, heading 2 and so on) let someone using a screen reader understand how the content is organized and move between sections. Apply your editor’s heading levels in order, without skipping one. Learners then know where each part fits.
3. Check colors and contrast
Amy still sees plenty of inaccessible colors, and she calls out one habit in particular: rainbow-lettered announcements. She points to two ways to check.
Most LMS content editors check color for you, and Amy mentions that Canvas and Blackboard both do.
Online checkers work too: enter a hex or RGB value and they flag it as accessible or not. They compare foreground and background colors and indicate whether the combination meets the required contrast ratio. Always test both colors together.
Those are the quick wins. Over time, Amy adds, you’ll also need to review your videos, and AI can help with that. For the wider principles, see our guide to eLearning and accessibility.
From reactive to proactive accessibility
Amy frames the change behind the new rules as a move from reactive to proactive accessibility. Reactive means waiting until a learner requests an accommodation, then rushing to provide it. Proactive means planning accessibility from the start, so fewer learners have to ask and wait.
Each accessibility option also gives learners another way into the content. Amy sometimes reads along with transcripts even though she can hear fine. The host used to write down what she saw in YouTube videos so she could recall it before a test.
Needs vary. So do the places people learn. Options let learners choose how they work through the material. If many of yours study on their phones, our guide to mobile learning covers designing for small screens.
Amy ties this to the three kinds of interaction in online and blended learning: learner to instructor, learner to learner and learner to content. Learner to content is the hardest to get right, because every learner arrives with different needs. Offering more than one way in is how you plan for that.
How Amy’s team uses Genially for accessible courses
Amy’s team uses Genially to build interactive certificate-level courses for healthcare programs such as medical assisting and dental assisting. In Genially, their accessibility work comes down to a few habits: AI voiceover with a transcript, alt text, a clear structure and reading Activity data as a signal of use.
AI voiceover with a transcript in a window
To add audio quickly, Amy uses AI voiceover in Genially. She pastes in the text, picks a voice she likes and sometimes retypes a passage so it sounds the way she wants. The voiceover is a starting point. She still reviews the result.
She then places the transcript in a window that opens from a small interactive button. Learners listening to the audio can open the text whenever it isn’t already on screen. Sound and text sit on the same page.
Alt text, layers and structure
Amy notes that when her team started with Genially, they didn’t add all their alt text, because the tool was new and fun. Now they’re going back to fill it in, which takes more work than doing it from the start.
She and the host also flagged a learning curve. With so many layers and options, such as windows, tooltips and captions, there’s some cognitive overload at first.
“There’s so much I can do, but I shouldn’t do everything.” — Amy Beard, senior instructional designer, The College of Health Care Professions
According to its accessibility documentation, Genially includes accessibility features that help creators structure and describe their content:
- Keyboard navigation and compatibility with screen readers
- Alt text for visual elements, limited to 125 characters for some elements
- Semantic heading structure
- A custom reading order
These functions help you build accessible content. Conformance still depends on how each genially is built and reviewed. For the steps in the editor, see how to make your geniallys more accessible.
If you use AI to draft alt text, check it. AI can get details wrong.
Activity data as a signal of use
Activity data gives Amy signs of how a course is being used. When a new semester starts, she can see learners opening the genially in that course and coming back to it.
Activity patterns show when learners access the content, while page visits and interaction data can suggest which parts they return to or engage with most. Attention and learning need other evidence.
Plan before you build
Amy’s production advice is simple: start with a storyboard.
“Storyboard. That’s really it.” Amy Beard
A quick storyboard helps the team choose the right formats, divide the work and keep production on track. For reusable templates, Amy recommends including a finished example, mapping where each part of the content should go and giving every slide a descriptive name.
For a broader look at planning learning experiences, explore our guide to instructional design models.
What the 2026 ADA Title II update changed
Under the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2026 interim final rule, the compliance dates for web content and mobile apps provided by state and local government entities depend on the entity’s population and status. The technical standard remains WCAG 2.1 Level AA.
| Entity | ADA Title II compliance date |
|---|---|
| State and local government entities with a population of 50,000 or more | April 26, 2027 |
| Entities with a population under 50,000 and special district governments | April 26, 2028 |
In the episode, Amy refers to April 2026 as the deadline her team had been working toward. The 2026 interim final rule later extended the compliance dates by one year. Her team had already started preparing years earlier, treating accessibility as part of the design process rather than a last-minute compliance task.
The full conversation also explores how Amy’s team combines playful storytelling with serious healthcare content, and how storyboards and reusable templates keep production on track.
