2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The accessibility of digital course content is vital for the learning experience and success of students, especially for students with disabilities (SWD). Approaches for ensuring accessibility have been adapted and implemented in higher education. For example, the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework provides guidelines to align instructional design with multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression. Also, the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) standards contain guidelines on the accessibility of web content (WCAG), using four key metrics: perceivable, operable, usable, and robust (POUR).

One of the primary features of digital instruction is lecture content, which is often delivered through slides. Although previous research has evaluated the usage of several UDL approaches in courses, it is still unclear about the needs and perspectives of students when it comes to lecture slides, including details such as format, usage, style, content structure, and handwritten vs. typed content. Previous UDL research demonstrated that providing accompanying digital notes containing lecture content and transcriptions improved levels of perceived learning, self-efficacy, and belongingness for students with accessibility needs. Further survey-based UDL research showed the perspectives and needs of students in making mathematical content more accessible, including preferences for LaTeX-formatted math. In addition, previous UDL research explored open source computer vision models to perform processing tasks such as detecting and transcribing math content from slides in STEM courses. Drawing from this research, we take a UDL-based approach to providing an additional resource to lecture slides.

Our goal is to evaluate possible changes in perceived accessibility and learning outcomes before and after the usage of an additional UDL-based resource. This resource serves as an extension to lecture slides, by using an open source model to detect and convert math content into its formatted LaTeX representation, which is then provided to students. Our research questions are designed to evaluate the changes in student outcomes (POUR metrics, self-efficacy, belongingness) in connection with this additional resource, how students use and interact with lecture slides, and insights into future design or implementation features for existing digital tools. Furthermore, we aim to understand student perspectives and needs in the conversion of handwritten content.

We surveyed and received 236 engineering student responses across 3 courses at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in two surveys before and after providing the extra UDL lecture contents. The first survey evaluates the perceived accessibility of lecture slides using POUR metrics and metrics for belongingness and self-efficacy, and investigates student perspectives on the usage and format of lecture slides, especially their needs in the conversion of handwritten content. Also, the survey asks for students’ demographics and lets students with mental, physical, and/or emotional disabilities to self report as SWD. Additionally, we identify students with accessibility needs (SWAN) as those who reported having conditions that prevented them from attending instruction without having an officially recognized disability by the university. The second survey was conducted to record the changes in the aforementioned metrics after providing the extra UDL lecture resource, as well as gather quantitative and qualitative feedback.
Post survey statistical analysis was conducted on student responses to measure changes in perceived accessibility (POUR), self efficacy, and belongingness. We also analyzed student responses regarding lecture slides, needs for conversion of handwritten content, and interest in additional features to improve lecture accessibility. Additionally, we evaluated if there are any similarities or differences in responses across different demographic groups.

We find that after using the additional UDL lecture resource, students overall experienced a statistically significant positive increase in robustness and self-efficacy. We identified mostly consistent patterns in how students engage with lecture slides, with the top two use cases for slides being exam preparation and homework/problem solving. Also, we identified important needs for the formatting of handwritten content, such as math content, in alternative formats. Finally, there was an overall need to make handwritten content more accessible and to create additional accessibility-related features in the future.