Introduction
This report outlines a planned intervention aimed at improving cognitive accessibility of the Virtual Learning Environment within a fully online Graphic Design course at University of the Arts London (UAL). As a lecturer having taught across BA and MA levels in residential settings for the last then years, my positionality is shaped by a commitment to equity and the everyday observation of barriers that students face in accessing and engaging with academic content outside the taught live sessions. I want to test how course material for a solely online course is written and structured within Moodle—from complex, jargon-heavy texts to content that is inclusive, comprehensible, and purposefully designed for diverse learners. This intersects with my academic practice by directly influencing the pedagogical strategies I employ in online environments, where design and clarity are crucial to student learning experience.
Context
The intervention will take place within the context of developing teaching content for two units for a fully online Graphic Design course at UAL, namely the Unit 3 – Critical Perspectives and Unit 6 – Systems Thinking and Society. Online learning environments, while offering flexibility, often place greater cognitive load on students due to increased textual content and reduced real-time interaction (Cinquin, Guitton and Sauzéon, 2019). This course is being designed from the ground up, giving me the opportunity to embed accessibility principles at the structural level. The intervention will consist of piloting a plain-language and content structure framework by redesigning one week’s worth of course content. The goal is to make content more accessible to students who are neurodivergent, have learning differences, or speak English as an additional language—although the benefit extends to all students. The long-term utility is the development of a toolkit or checklist to apply this framework consistently across the course and potentially beyond.
Inclusive Learning
Inclusion is central to contemporary design education. Graphic Design as a discipline increasingly demands critical awareness of audience, accessibility, and ethical communication. If we expect students to design inclusively, we must model inclusive practices in our own teaching. The rationale for this intervention draws on the framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which encourages proactive design that accommodates variability in how students learn (CAST, 2018). Principles such as providing multiple means of representation and minimising unnecessary complexity align with the intervention’s goals. Additionally, plain language principles have been shown to improve comprehension and reduce cognitive overload (Redish, 2010). Seymour (2024) highlights how applying UDL in online research methods teaching significantly enhanced engagement, especially for learners with access needs. Similarly, Cinquin, Guitton and Sauzéon (2020) argue for integrating cognitive accessibility features into MOOCs to improve participation and learning outcomes.
At the same time, there is a balance to be struck. Within Graphic Design education, the use of discipline-specific terminology plays an important role in enabling precise and critical discussion. Rather than removing such terminology entirely, the intervention promotes the use of accessible definitions and contextualised and interactive glossaries to support student understanding. This approach aims to retain the richness of academic discourse while removing unnecessary barriers to entry. Applying these combined strategies in course design supports a learning environment that is both equitable and intellectually rigorous.
Reflection
My thinking has been shaped by both pedagogical theory and lived teaching experience. Conversations with colleagues on the PgCert in Academic Practice affirmed the need for clearer content and highlighted potential for broader application. Starting with a single week of content will allow me to test the intervention without overextending its initial scope.
In an early version of the intervention, shared through a peer presentation (Figure 1), helped clarify my goals and sparked valuable feedback, helped articulate design intentions more clearly and allowed me to gather useful visual references from the Moodle pages from another unit which is in development but indicative of how my content will look within the VLE (Huber, 2025).
Fig. 1
I also drew inspiration from colleagues working around Moodle’s limitations. A compelling example was Adrian Allen’s Miro-based visual overview of a course (Figure 2) which offers an intuitive content map to replace Moodle’s rigid structure. This approach helped me reimagine navigation not just as technical infrastructure, but as pedagogy (Allen, 2025).
Fig. 2
Looking beyond UAL, the interface of the University of Warwick’s “Literature and Mental Health” course on FutureLearn (Figure 3) provided an example of strong UX principles in practice—especially its consistent pacing, visual hierarchy, and accessible layout (FutureLearn, 2025). It reinforced the idea that digital environments are not neutral but deeply pedagogical.
Fig. 3
Each of these examples shaped how I approached my intervention: the importance of clarity (Figure 1), spatial and narrative logic (Figure 2), and inclusive interface design (Figure 3). Together, they affirmed that visual design is not decorative, but foundational to accessible and effective online learning.
I began my intervention design by only looking primarily at plain language and content structure. However, after being prompted by my peers and tutors I am now interested in expanding the intervention to consider technical tools and APIs that could enhance accessibility—for instance, the ability to adjust type size, toggle colour modes for contrast sensitivity, or integrate plugins for sign language or screen readers. While these go beyond the immediate scope of the unit redesign, they point to a wider ecosystem of accessible practices that could transform how we approach online learning.
There is, however, significant institutional resistance. There are licensing constraints, technical limitations, and competing priorities that impede more ambitious innovation. This project is not intended as a critique of past or current design decisions—which have necessarily been shaped by the limits of time, technology, budget, and institutional style guides. Rather, the intervention is intended to imagine what the future of accessible online learning could look like, and explore UAL’s potential to lead in this area.
Action
To deepen the intervention’s relevance and usability, I plan to involve a small group of students in a participatory design process. Drawing on “deep data” methods (peer feedback, 2025), this process will surface detailed insights from a diverse group—some with access needs, others representing more typical learners. This balanced group can identify pain points in the current content design and test the revised materials. As the EDI Champion of the LCC Design School, I also have access to UAL’s EDI student forum, a potential recruitment space for this pilot cohort.
This kind of inclusive co-design aligns with well-established UX and inclusive design principles and would allow me to move from assumptions about accessibility to co-created solutions. It also would enablesthe development of clear case studies and redesign examples—evidence that can be shared with colleagues and advocates to support wider institutional change. I hope the toolkit would then ultimately inform internal training or form part of a practical accessibility guide, complementing broader initiatives like UAL’s digital accessibility campaigns (UAL, 2025) or the ALT’s ethical learning technology framework (ALT, 2024).
Initially, I will pilot the intervention by redesigning one week within a unit in the MA online Graphic Design course, but I could envision the framework becoming a shared resource across UAL’s Design School—something accessible to other course teams seeking to embed accessibility from the outset. At its core is a framework for plain language and structured content that I will refine and document as a practical toolkit. This intervention could hopefully become not only as a one-time hypothetical redesign of course content, but could form the basis for a sustainable shift in how online learning materials are produced.
Evaluation
This process has already illuminated several key lessons. First, I’ve learned that accessibility interventions require institutional negotiation. While individual course leaders may advocate for inclusive design, the limits of platforms like Moodle (e.g. inflexible navigation, poor visual affordance, lack of responsive design) can undermine these intentions. The feedback from peers underscored that many of these issues are shared across courses with several courses pivoting to other platforms to compensate for the shortcomings of Moodle, as well as several colleagues offered examples of local Moodle redesigns.
Second, the process has helped me clarify what kinds of evidence are most impactful. Quantitative student satisfaction data may not capture the nuances of exclusion. By contrast, qualitative insights—user journeys, quotes, screen recordings—can make visible the frustrations and cognitive effort required to navigate poorly designed systems. These “deep data” methods provide a compelling case for change.
If implemented, I would measure success in three ways: (1) through student feedback on usability and clarity of the revised content, (2) through changes in student engagement (e.g. completion rates, interaction with materials), and (3) through feedback from academic support specialists or EDI stakeholders. Over time, if other course teams began adapting the toolkit or requesting guidance, that would be a further marker of success.
Conclusion
This project has brought into focus how my positionality is shifting – from a face-to-face lecturer to an online course designer, and from individual practitioner to potential advocate for structural change. Teaching online alters the terms of engagement; without the nuance of classroom interaction, the written word, visual design, and navigation become primary pedagogical tools. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity; course materials can either be a barrier or a bridge.
The move toward digital education has intensified questions around access and equity. Students who are neurodivergent, have learning differences, or come from linguistically diverse backgrounds are disproportionately affected by poor content design (Cinquin, Guitton and Sauzéon, 2019; Seymour, 2024). Yet these same students often lack the power to shape how content is delivered. My intervention is a small but strategic step toward rebalancing that dynamic.
The feedback I received was affirming but also critical in the best sense – challenging me to deepen the participatory element, consider wider institutional applicability, and balance the needs of “extreme” and “average” users. I now see this not just as a personal practice shift but as a potential catalyst for a larger conversation around inclusive digital pedagogy. As such, my goal is not perfection but transformation: creating a culture where cognitive accessibility is a shared, embedded practice rather than an afterthought.
References
Allen, A., 2025. Course map for Central Saint Martins programme [Miro board], 27 June. Available at: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVLZHWM8Y=/ (Accessed 25 July 2025).
ALT (2024) New Resources: ALT’s Framework for Ethical Learning Technology. Association for Learning Technology. Available at: https://www.alt.ac.uk/news/all_news/new-resources-alts-framework-ethical-learning-technology (Accessed: 25 July 2025).
CAST (2018) Universal Design for Learning Guidelines Version 2.2. Available at: http://udlguidelines.cast.org (Accessed: 5 June 2025).
Cinquin, P.-A., Guitton, P. and Sauzéon, H. (2019) ‘Online e-learning and cognitive disabilities: A systematic review’, Computers & Education, 130, pp. 152–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.12.004
Cinquin, P.-A., Guitton, P. and Sauzéon, H. (2020) ‘Designing accessible MOOCs to expand educational opportunities for persons with cognitive impairments’, Behaviour & Information Technology, 40(11), pp. 1101–1119. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2020.1740485
FutureLearn (University of Warwick), 2025. Literature and Mental Health course interface [online screenshot], FutureLearn. (Accessed 25 July 2025).
Huber, A., 2025. Intervention Design (PDF presentation), delivered online on 27 June 2025. [Online]
Lasekan, O.A., Pachava, V., Godoy Pena, M.T., Golla, S.K. and Raje, M.S. (2024) ‘Investigating factors influencing students’ engagement in sustainable online education’, Sustainability, 16(2), p. 689. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16020689
Redish, J. (2010) Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works, 2nd edn. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.
Seymour, M. (2024) ‘Enhancing the online student experience through the application of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to research methods learning and teaching’, Education and Information Technologies, 29(3), pp. 2767–2785. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-023-12357-z
UAL (2025) Quick Tips to Improve Accessibility in Miro. UAL Teaching and Learning Exchange Blog, 15 May. Available at: https://support.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2025/05/15/quick-tips-to-improve-acces