Important Perspective
Remediation removes barriers so certain students aren't burdened with needing to seek separate accommodations. Corrections and improvements to files that benefit the student who uses a screen reader also benefit the entire class. Keep this in mind as you learn ways to change your own considerations when developing learning material.
For instance, a properly tagged PDF is easy to search, skim, translate, and read on a phone. Meanwhile, an untagged, unstructured PDF is unreadable to screen-reader users and hard to navigate for anyone using assistive tech.
Similarly, a properly structured Word file is easy to skim, navigate with Find, translate, and convert cleanly to PDF. Meanwhile, a Word file with no real heading structure or list formatting is unreadable to screen-reader users and hard to navigate for anyone using assistive tech.
A slide deck with real titles and clean structure is easy to navigate, convert to notes, and follow along for any student, not just those using assistive tech. Meanwhile, a slide built from loose text boxes with no real title or reading order is confusing or unusable for a screen-reader user, even if it looks polished on screen.
Lastly, captions help students studying in a loud dorm room or a second language. Good alt text makes an image searchable. A transcript lets a student skim a lecture in seconds instead of scrubbing through video. Meanwhile, an image with no alt text is invisible information to a screen-reader user. A video with no captions is inaccessible to a deaf or hard-of-hearing student, and unusable in a quiet room for anyone else.
In addition to equity and efficiency, there's legal compliance. Accessible course materials are a requirement, not a courtesy, tied to WCAG standards and federal accessibility law for higher education. Panorama helps give you a documented, repeatable way to meet acceptable standards.