Creating Accessible Online Classrooms is a pedagogical technique that opens the online classroom to all learners, regardless of background or abilities. Designed specifically to assist students with disabilities, this Effective Practice benefits all students when they have the ability to interact on an equal playing field during a Web-based course. It does this through two methods: diversified instruction and accessible class content. The first method exposes students to historical materials through a variety of means--visual and auditory--that target different learning styles and offer creative ways to make the past come alive. The second method involves the creation of accessible PDF files that students with disabilities can use to hear written course materials.

In the democratized world of online teaching and learning, we should ensure that our classrooms are truly open to all. Online educators have a responsibility to create learning environments that invite all participants to benefit from the education they seek. This point is especially true for students with disabilities. Because a large amount of Web-based instruction is communicated through written text, individuals who require assistant to process this type of course material need to know that they have equal access to the syllabi, lectures, and readings of their peers.

Creating Accessible Online Classrooms meets this goal in two important, and interrelated, ways. The first is through the instructor's use of diversified instruction in the online learning environment. Instead of presenting course content through one means, such as lectures or discussion boards, a professor who creates Accessible Online Classrooms delivers content in a variety of ways. For example, when teaching an online version of the Civil War and Reconstruction, I integrated audio lectures with visually stimulating PowerPoint presentations that I captured using Camtasia. In addition, I required students to react to daily readings on an organized discussion board. The class also integrated film clips, such as the scene of the New York City draft riots of 1863 from Gangs of New York or the PBS Documentary, Reconstruction: The Second Civil War, alongside with a four-page paper about how the sectional conflict affected everyday Americans. When showing film clips, I ensured that closed captioning was turned on. These approaches targeted different learning styles and offered all students a greater chance to succeed because all students could find an instructional method that worked especially well for them.

The second critical component of Accessible Online Classrooms is the creation of accessible PDF files for all content posted to the course website. Of the two components of this Effective Practice, this one is the easiest to do. Before the class goes live, instructors can save all of their documents as PDFs and use Adobe Acrobat Pro to ensure that the program's "Read Out Loud" function works for the documents. For professor's who want students to read scholarly journal articles, databases, such as JSTOR, have most of their articles accessible already. It is only a matter of verifying that the document is, in fact, accessible.

This practice is effective because it gives all students equal access to our courses. It also saves time because once an instructor creates an accessible PDF, she or he is free to use it again in the same or a different online class that she or he will teach. If we, as instructors, adopt this practice in our online teaching, we fulfill an important educational mission. Namely, to create open, diverse, and productive learning communities that allow all to have an equal chance to become part of the conversation.