Accessibility, Safety, and Accommodation Burden in U.S. Higher Education Syllabi for Blind and Low-Vision Students

TL;DR

This study audits U.S. higher education syllabi to assess accessibility for blind and low-vision students, revealing disparities in machine-readability, safety information, and accommodation framing across institution types.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of syllabi accessibility and governance, proposing an accessible master syllabus template to improve equity for BLV students.

Findings

Logistics are often machine-readable and selectable.

Safety procedures are partially accessible.

Accommodation language varies by institution type.

Abstract

Course syllabi are often the first and sometimes only structured artifact that explains how a class will run: deadlines, grading rules, safety procedures, and how to request disability accommodations. For blind and low-vision (BLV) students who use screen readers, independent access depends on whether the syllabus is machine readable and navigable. We audited publicly posted syllabi and master syllabi from five U.S. institutions spanning an elite private R1 university, large public R1s (including a UC campus), a large community college, and a workforce focused technical college. We coded each document on five dimensions: (1) machine-readability of core logistics, (2) readability of safety critical procedures, (3) accommodation framing (rights based vs. burden based), (4) governance model (instructor-authored vs. centralized "master syllabus"), and (5) presence of proactive universal design language. Across the sample, logistics and many safety expectations are published as selectable text. Accommodation language, however, shifts by institution type: research universities more often use rights based wording (while still requiring advance letters), whereas community/technical colleges emphasize disclosure, documentation, and institutional discretion in master syllabi that replicate across sections. We argue that accessibility is not only a PDF tagging problem but also a question of governance and equity, and we outline implications for HCI, including an "accessible master syllabus" template as a high leverage intervention.