Defining Forward Paths for Improving Accessibility: Insights from Ann Gagné

Imagine: A student discovers that a required open educational resource for their course, which relies heavily on visual imagery to instruct, has images with missing alt text. In order to learn effectively, the student requires this content to be accessible. The instructor didn’t create the resource—they adopted it from another institution. Who should address the accessibility gaps? The instructor? The accessibility office? The library? The original author, who may have moved to a different institution entirely?

This scenario illustrates a persistent challenge in educational accessibility, and one that surfaced in a recent interview with Ann Gagné, Senior Educational Developer for Accessibility and Inclusion at Brock University. When a learning resource isn’t accessible, finding someone to fix it can become its own barrier.

In our conversation about how inaccessible learning materials affect learners, Ann drew on more than 15 years working at the intersection of teaching, learning, and accessible course design. Her insights reveal both how far higher education has come and how much work remains to ensure clearer paths to accessibility solutions.

The “Who Fixes This?” Problem

When Ann talks with students, faculty, and staff about accessibility barriers, one theme emerges again and again: it’s not always the inaccessible resource itself that causes the most harm. It’s the confusion about what to do next.

“Sometimes when you find something that’s inaccessible, the biggest issue is who do I talk to?”

This confusion multiplies when instructors use resources they didn’t create. If a professor adopts an open textbook from another institution and a student identifies an accessibility issue, the chain of responsibility becomes murky. Is the resource being maintained? What if the original author moved institutions? Who has the expertise and access to fix it? These moments of uncertainty can slow down accommodations precisely when students need them most. 

Ann encourages instructors to think through these scenarios before the semester starts. That means anticipating common accessibility issues, identifying who on campus supports what types of accommodations, and building a “Plan B” for situations where a resource becomes temporarily unusable. Proactive planning doesn’t eliminate every barrier, she notes, but it can reduce the scramble. 

The Limits of “For All” Thinking

Many accessibility advocates use the phrase “accessibility makes things better for everyone.” Ann understands the spirit behind this message—accessibility features often do benefit broad groups of learners—but she also urges caution.

A universal “for all” approach can flatten meaningful differences between learners. It can suggest that everyone needs the same supports, when in reality equity requires individualized attention. It can also give content creators or technology providers a false sense that once they’ve added a few broadly helpful features, their work is done.

“A “for all” narrative can actually be problematic in some ways. Because the more that we say that we’re doing a thing for everyone, it kind of assumes that we’re robots, and that everyone needs the same thing.”

The challenge is balancing universal design principles with recognition that some learners will always need specific, individualized accommodations. As Ann puts it, 

“I want to make our learning spaces as inclusive to everyone as possible, but I think some of that requires an awareness that at some point some individualization is needed.”

Automation Can Guide, But Can’t Replace Judgment

Accessibility tools have improved dramatically in recent years. Automatic captions, as Ann describes, can help students who are deaf or hard of hearing, multilingual learners, and anyone accessing content in environments where audio isn’t practical. But these tools may still misinterpret discipline-specific terminology or introduce inaccuracies that change meaning and therefore they still need an element of human oversight. 

Ann highlights how the same is true of accessibility checkers. They’re valuable for flagging issues, but fixing them requires some human judgment and context. Some faculty may have the knowledge to address problems independently, while others will need support from instructional designers, IT staff, or accessibility specialists.

Training on accessible document creation—covering headings, alt text, color contrast, and captions—can help faculty not only wield tools like accessibility checkers more effectively but also anticipate and prevent common barriers.

Learn more about the Pressbooks Accessibility Authoring Tool

The Importance of De-Siloing

One of Ann’s strongest messages is the need to break down institutional silos around accessibility work. 

Too often, accessibility gets treated as someone else’s responsibility. IT may say it’s a content problem. Teaching and learning may say it’s a technical problem. Ann invokes the Spiderman meme (the one where multiple Spidermen point at each other) to describe this dynamic.

“We need to stop being the Spiderman meme where everyone’s pointing at each other. Front end or back end, faculty or IT—responsibility for accessibility has to be shared.”

Accessibility requires holistic thinking. Everyone who creates, adopts, or maintains educational content shares responsibility for ensuring it’s accessible. She gives the example of VPATs (Voluntary Product Accessibility Templates). 

When she tells faculty to check a tool’s VPAT, they respond: “Am I supposed to know how to read a VPAT?” The answer is usually no. A psychology professor shouldn’t need specialized knowledge to evaluate whether a tool works for their students. De-siloing means connecting faculty with instructional designers or accessibility specialists who can interpret technical documentation like a VPAT.

The Promise and Pitfalls of Open: Trickle-Down Inaccessibility

Ann has studied how accessibility plays out specifically in open educational resources. She co-authored a book titled Accessible Open Educational Resources Adoption Considerations, which examines faculty experiences adopting OER and the accessibility challenges that arise.

Open textbooks evolve, get reused, revised, and remixed across institutions. This flexibility is a major strength of OER, but it introduces new challenges, including:

• How do faculty ensure adopted OER are accessible?
• Who maintains accessibility when authors move to new institutions?
• How do students cite resources that iterate or change frequently?
• How do we flag revisions so users know what’s different?

One major theme from this work is what Ann calls “trickle-down inaccessibility”—the assumption that if one institution or organization vetted a resource, it must be accessible. But due diligence doesn’t transfer automatically. Just because one institution used a resource doesn’t mean they thoroughly evaluated its accessibility, or that it will meet the specific needs of students in a different context.

Training and institutional support are critical. As Ann’s research emphasizes, faculty need professional development on accessibility fundamentals, discipline-specific guidance on evaluating OER, and access to on-campus support services—whether that’s instructional designers, educational technologists, or accessibility specialists—who can help review resources and troubleshoot issues.

For OER creators, sustainability planning matters. For example: consider how materials will be maintained when you move institutions, establish version control systems to track changes, and ensure content can be accessed both on-screen and in print or Braille formats.

It Takes a Village

Ann’s insights highlight a simple but powerful truth: accessibility often fails not because people don’t care, but because the path forward isn’t clear. Fixing that requires more than tools or policies. It requires shared responsibility and a mindset that sees accessibility as ongoing, collaborative work rather than a one-time task.

When institutions support faculty with relevant training and connections, build sustainability into open resources, and break down the silos that slow problem-solving, accessibility stops being a scramble and becomes a predictable, shared process. By pairing universal design with individualized support—and ensuring that human judgment remains central even as automation improves—institutions can create learning environments where no one faces barriers alone.

Ann Gagné is a Senior Educational Developer for Accessibility and Inclusion at Brock University, where she works with faculty and campus partners to design accessible, inclusive learning experiences. She co-authored Accessible Open Educational Resources Adoption Considerations and hosts the Accessagogy podcast. She was interviewed by Jenn Martin, Manager of Content Marketing at Pressbooks.

Lead Photo by Jordan Nicholson