Experience CS Accessibility Reference

Why this matters: the student's experience

Every decision in this curriculum traces back to one question: can a student actually reach the learning? Accessibility is how we answer it. For learners with disabilities, the difference between an accessible lesson and an inaccessible one is the difference between reaching the material and being shut out of it. That is the constant this work holds onto.

The audit behind this reference found a curriculum full of intentional, thoughtful design. What follows are refinements that build on strong work, made with accessibility information that was not part of the original picture.

How it fits together: UDL, accessibility, and WCAG

Today's work sits inside a set of nested goals. Each one lives inside the next.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL): The broadest goal: building content that every learner can access and engage with, whatever their abilities.
Accessibility: Part of UDL. It helps everyone, and for learners with disabilities it is what removes the barrier between them and the content.
WCAG: The specific, testable rules for digital content. These are the primary focus of the accessibility work.
What we can do in Slides now: The center of the work: the WCAG items the team can address directly in Google Slides today, without waiting on larger decisions.

One thing to hold onto: WCAG is the floor, not the ceiling. The criteria are targets we have to hit, and the organizing move described later carries the work past the bare minimum where the content needs it.

How the audit worked

The audit looked at three units, 3.1, 6.2, and 8.3, chosen to span grade bands and content types. Every lesson was read against every criterion in the UDL framework: three principles, twelve sub-categories, and roughly three dozen guiding questions ranging from engagement to accessibility.

Each criterion received two ratings: presence, from 0 (not present) to 2 (strong), and barrier risk, from low to high, with notes as evidence. The reliable findings are the patterns that repeated across lessons and units; those became the cross-unit findings and the prioritized recommendations.

These ratings are structured professional judgment, not precise scores.

What the audit found already strong

The curriculum has a strong pedagogical foundation. Four strengths held across all three units:

Real-world grounding: CS concepts tied to meaningful contexts in every lesson.
Scaffolding and persistence: worked examples, "Stuck?" hints, and task breakdowns embedded throughout.
Vocabulary defined and reused: student-friendly terms, consistent across lessons, calibrated by grade band.
Calibrated collaboration: explicit structures for younger grades, a lighter touch for older learners.

These are intentional design choices. The recommendations that follow build on them.

The four highest-barrier findings

Four patterns carried a high barrier risk across all three units. They are mostly tool and process gaps, not gaps in the teaching.

Digital accessibility gaps: missing alt text, reading order, and color contrast block screen reader, keyboard, and low-vision learners.
When the image is the lesson: in visually reliant units, a missing description is not just an accessibility gap, it is a content gap.
Animated content: animations with no description and no way to pause exclude learners who use assistive technology or have vestibular sensitivity.
Motor and technical access: no accommodation pathways are documented for learners who cannot use a standard mouse, keyboard, or device setup.

When the image is the lesson

Unit 8.3 builds lessons around specific works of fine art. The image is not decoration; it is the substance of what students are meant to learn. A learner who cannot perceive that image cannot engage with the lesson at all. For content like this, a rich description gives equivalent access, not identical access, and writing it is a design decision, not a finishing step.

Why accessibility goes in the first revision pass

Each unit feeds a pipeline: translation, copy edit, and peer and subject-matter review. Anything that is not accessible when it enters that pipeline gets carried forward and re-broken at every stage. Doing the accessibility work first means it is built in once, rather than retrofitted repeatedly.

The standard we aim for: WCAG 2.2 AA

The working target is WCAG 2.2 AA across the curriculum: a bar the team can meet and measure against. The playbook aims higher, at AAA, but AAA is not a realistic conformance target for a whole curriculum, and the materials do not yet meet AA. Specific AAA enhancements are worth adding where they bring real value, once AA is solid.

A note worth keeping: meeting the letter of a criterion is not always the same as full access. A one-line alt text can satisfy the rule while still leaving a learner without the lesson. AA is the verifiable floor; the organizing move below carries the work past it where the content demands.

Every recommendation, by principle

The audit produced twelve recommendations across the three UDL principles. The four highest-priority items are all about access, and each priority level is named in words below.

Engagement

Offer challenge levels and stretch goals. Medium priority
Document the developmental calibration already in place. Low priority

Representation

Close the digital accessibility gaps: alt text, reading order, contrast, and captions. High priority
Build content accessibility into visually reliant units like 8.3. High priority
Add descriptions and pause controls for animated content. High priority
Tell teachers to share the slides with students. Medium priority
Create reusable vocabulary cards. Low priority

Action and expression

Build motor and technical access pathways. High priority
Make product and response options explicit. Medium priority
Add assessment labels and student-facing rubrics. Medium priority
Cue teachers to model accessible practices live. Medium priority
Integrate the teacher accessibility guide. Medium priority

Not a checklist: one organizing move

It is tempting to treat these recommendations as a checklist of separate fixes. The trap is that solving each one in isolation does not reassemble into a coherent accessible lesson. One move holds them together:

Put the lesson's meaning where every learner can reach it: in the words and the structure. Images, motion, and color sit on top as enhancements, never as the only place the meaning lives.

This is a decision about the user's experience, not the format. Every learner reaching the meaning is the constant. Which format delivers it, and where it is built, are technical choices still ahead, and they change how the lesson travels, not whether it can be reached.

The decision that recurs is about motion:

Incidental motion (the animation only illustrates): convert it to a described static sequence, which can be done in Slides.
Essential motion (the motion itself is the lesson): it needs a captioned, described video, built outside Slides.

The test is the same every time: does the meaning stay reachable? Three of the four highest-priority items are this exact move. The fourth, motor and technical access, is the same shape on a different channel: never let interaction be the only way to act.

What the audit brings, and what we decide together

Naming roles protects everyone.

From the audit: The barriers, who they exclude, what an accessible version has to achieve, and the principle that holds the fixes together.
Together: How each fix gets built in the team's tools. The team knows the stack and the constraints best.
Leadership: The canonical accessible version and the format strategy: decisions that sit above the lesson work.

Where we focus first

Of the twelve recommendations, four carry the highest barrier risk. They are the priorities for the accessible version:

Close the digital accessibility gaps: alt text, reading order, contrast, and captions.
Apply content accessibility awareness to visually reliant units like 8.3.
Add descriptions and pause controls to animated content.
Build motor and technical access pathways into the curriculum.

The work begins with the parts that can be done in Slides; the rest is flagged and routed elsewhere, which the next section describes.

The hands-on work: in Slides, and flagged

The accessibility work splits by where it can happen. Hitting a wall the tool cannot handle is expected, not a failure; those items are named and routed, not forced.

What we can do in Slides now

Alt text and rich descriptions for images.
Color contrast that meets the standard.
Cues that do not rely on color alone.
Descriptions for animated content.

What we flag and route elsewhere

Headings and true reading order, which Google Slides cannot set.
Pausing animated content.
Captions, which live on the source video.

Writing alt text that teaches

Alt text is the short description that makes an image accessible to a student who uses a screen reader or cannot see it clearly. The question for every image is simple: what does a sighted learner get that a screen reader user would miss?

A weak alt text names the file or the object, such as "blocks.png". A strong one conveys what the image teaches. For a Scratch script, that means describing the blocks and their logic, for example: "A Scratch script: when the green flag is clicked, repeat ten times, move ten steps, turn fifteen degrees."

When the image carries the lesson, write a full description, not a label. When an image is purely decorative, mark it as decorative so assistive technology can skip it.

Where this lives in your playbook

These fixes attach to structures the team already has. The image and video stubs marked "to be determined" in the playbook become alt text plus extended descriptions, and captions plus transcripts. The UDL principle steps and review criteria are where accessibility becomes standing practice rather than a separate task. Built into the process the team already runs, it does not depend on anyone remembering.

Who owns each piece

Accessibility should not depend on one person remembering. These are three ways to give every task a clear owner and a home. The right fit is the team's decision.

Three ways to assign ownership of the accessibility work
Ownership model	How it works	Best when
By unit creator	Each person makes their own unit accessible, end to end.	Content knowledge stays with the person doing the fix.
By specialty	One owner per task: alt text, contrast, and producing the accessible version.	Consistency across units matters most.
Hybrid	Creators do source fixes; one owner produces the accessible version.	Both context and consistency matter.

Access you build in once

Building access in once, at the source, reaches every student who comes after: the one with low vision, the one using a screen reader, the one you will never meet. That is the difference between fixing a lesson and changing who it is for. The curriculum is already strong. This is how every learner reaches it.

Resources and follow-up

Working Reference handout: the one-page desk companion with the organizing principle and the steps you can take in Slides. Available from KShep Creative.
UDL Audit and Recommendations report: the full set of findings, including the medium and low priority items. Available from KShep Creative.
Contrast checking: the WebAIM Contrast Checker for verifying color contrast as you work.
Experience CS Teacher Accessibility Guide: the delivery-side companion to this design-side work. Forthcoming.
Office hours with KShep Creative: drop-in sessions to bring real examples as you implement.