Accessible e-learning: WCAG, obligations and practice

A course that not everyone can use excludes people from learning, and in the case of compliance training even from meeting their obligations. It is not only people with permanent disabilities who are affected. Anyone learning in a noisy place, on a small screen, in a language that is not their first or when tired benefits from clear structure, captions and good readability.

Accessibility is therefore not a niche topic but a quality feature. A well-structured, understandable course with captions is better for everyone.

The W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines group their requirements under four principles. Each requirement has a level: A (minimum), AA (the usual target, also in legal requirements) and AAA (enhanced).

Public sector bodies in the EU must make their websites and mobile applications accessible under Directive (EU) 2016/2102. Member states transpose this into national law; in Germany, the federal government does so with the Barrier-Free Information Technology Ordinance (BITV 2.0) and the federal states with their own rules. This also covers the learning platforms of state universities and public authorities. Requirements include an accessibility statement and a way to report barriers.

For the private sector, the European Accessibility Act, Directive (EU) 2019/882, has applied since 28 June 2025; in Germany it is transposed by the Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG). It covers certain products and services for consumers, including e-commerce services. Whether an online course offering falls under it depends on the case, for example whether courses are sold to consumers. Micro-enterprises providing services are exempt. If in doubt, have applicability checked legally.

Even the best platform cannot rescue an inaccessible course. Authors should therefore know a few basic rules and apply them from the start. Making something accessible afterwards is always more expensive.

Automated checkers find missing text alternatives, insufficient contrast or unlabelled form fields. But they miss many problems: whether a text alternative really explains the content, whether the focus order makes sense or whether a screen reader reads an exercise out in an understandable way. That requires testing by people, ideally including people who use assistive technologies themselves.

So do not just ask vendors whether their product is accessible; ask what was tested with which method and what is still open. An honest answer with open points is worth more than a blanket yes.

For your own courses, a simple self-test often goes a long way: operate the course once using only the keyboard, watch it once with the sound off and open it once on a phone with greatly enlarged text. Whatever trips you up also trips up people who work this way every day.

Universe offers captions in the player, narration and interface in fifteen languages, adjustable slide text size and right-to-left display for Arabic and Hebrew. To be honest: the statically checkable rules show no findings, but contrast, focus order and screen reader behaviour have not yet been tested by a person. The handbook says so too.