Infrastructural and Digital Accessibility

Digitalisation on the one hand contributes significantly to the reduction of barriers, on the other hand many new digital barriers are created. All people can encounter barriers and experience disability. People with impairments are hindered by barriers that can be removed:

• People with visual impairments by texts that cannot be (pre)read, by videos and images without descriptions, by insufficient colour contrasts.

• People with hearing disabilities due to videos without subtitles, audio contributions without text alternatives.

• People with cognitive impairments (speech, attention ...) due to complex (overtaxing) content presentation

• People with motor impairments due to poor usability of buttons, input fields, etc.

Task of the university

• The FH Aachen takes care of the accessibility of its online services (homepage, ILIAS, documents ...).
• At the bottom of all online services of the FH Aachen you will find the "Info Barrierefreiheit".
• You will find a contact point for digital accessibility in the help centre: Accessibility. This will take you directly to the relevant page in the Help Centre.
• Information and addresses on the topic of inclusion and accessibility at FH Aachen can be found on these subpages.

Creating Accessible Content

• When creating and revising digital contents and offers, all members of the FH Aachen should contribute significantly to the reduction of barriers by considering the legal requirements.
• Teaching and learning materials must be barrier-free or an equivalent barrier-free alternative must be offered.

Enabling disadvantage compensation

• Compensation for disadvantages during studies is essential for students with disabilities or chronic illnesses.
• The prerequisite is an individual application by the student concerned.
• The design of the disadvantage compensation takes place individually in dialogue and is limited in time.
• Counselling for students with disabilities or chronic illnesses Representation of the interests of students with disabilities or chronic illnesses (vBecks)

Note the 4 digital accessibility requirements of the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). These requirements are the basis of the legal obligations for digital accessibility.

Principle 1:

• Perceptible - Information and user interface components must be presented to users in a way that they can perceive.
  

Principle 2:

• Operable - user interface components and navigation must be operable.
  

Principle 3:

• Understandable - Information and operation of the user interface must be understandable.
  

Principle 4:

• Content must be robust enough to be reliably interpreted by a wide range of user agents, including assistive technologies.

• Always take into account that most disabilities or impairments are not apparent to others.
• Inform your students that they will receive support in their studies due to an impairment and that
• barriers can also be reduced individually through disadvantage compensation.
• Check your Office and PDF documents for digital accessibility (e.g. with the check options from Microsoft and Adobe).
• Design your teaching/learning materials with a clear structure (e.g. the correct order of headings enables readability for screen readers.).
• Offer equivalent alternatives for people with visual or hearing impairments for all content-relevant media (alt text, subtitling).
• Encourage your students to give you feedback on the digital content you offer and act on it.