In print materials, the display of information is fixed and permanent.  In properly prepared digital materials, the display of the same information is very malleable and customizable.  For example, a call-out box of background information may be displayed in a different location, or enlarged, or emphasized by the use of color, or deleted entirely. Such malleability provides options for increasing the perceptual clarity and salience of information for a wide range of learners and adjustments for preferences of others. While these customizations are difficult with print materials. They are commonly available automatically in digital materials, though it cannot be assumed that because it is digital it is accessible as many digital materials are equally inaccessible. Educators and learners should work together to attain the best match of features to learning needs.

Sound is a particularly effective way to convey the impact of information, which is why sound design is so important in movies and why the human voice is particularly effective for conveying emotion and significance. However, information conveyed solely through sound is not equally accessible to all learners and is especially inaccessible for learners with hearing disabilities, for learners who need more time to process information, or for learners who have memory difficulties. In addition, listening itself is a complex strategic skill that must be learned. To ensure that all learners have access to learning, options should be available for any information, including emphasis, presented aurally.  

Images, Graphics, Animations, Video, or Text (see below) are often the optimal way to present information, especially when the information is about the relationships between objects, actions, numbers, or events.  But such visual representations are not equally accessible to all learners, especially learners with visual disabilities or those who are not familiar with the type of graphic being used. Visual information can be quite dense, particularly with visual art, which can have multiple complex meanings and interpretations depending on contextual factors and the viewer’s knowledge base. To ensure that all learners have equal access to information, it is essential to provide non-visual alternatives.

Text is a special case of visual information. The transformation from text into audio is among the most easily accomplished methods for increasing accessibility.  The advantage of text over audio is its permanence, but providing text that is easily transformable into audio accomplishes that permanence without sacrificing the advantages of audio.  Digital synthetic Text-To-Speech is increasingly effective but still disappoints in its ability to carry the valuable information in prosody.

The semantic elements through which information is presented – the words, symbols, numbers, and icons – are differentially accessible to learners with varying backgrounds, languages, and lexical knowledge. To ensure accessibility for all, key vocabulary, labels, icons, and symbols should be linked to, or associated with, alternate representations of their meaning (e.g., an embedded glossary or definition, a graphic equivalent, a chart or map).  Idioms, archaic expressions, culturally exclusive phrases, and slang, should be translated.

Single elements of meaning (like words or numbers) can be combined to make new meanings.  Those new meanings, however, depend upon understanding the rules or structures (like syntax in a sentence or the properties of equations) of how those elements are combined.  When the syntax of a sentence or the structure of a graphical representation is not obvious or familiar to learners, comprehension suffers. To ensure that all learners have equal access to information, provide alternative representations that clarify, or make more explicit, the syntactic or structural relationships between elements of meaning.

The ability to fluently decode words, numbers or symbols that have been presented in an encoded format (e.g., visual symbols for text, haptic symbols for Braille, algebraic expressions for relationships) takes practice for any learner, but some learners will reach automaticity more quickly than others. Learners need consistent and meaningful exposure to symbols so that they can comprehend and use them effectively. Lack of fluency or automaticity greatly increases the cognitive load of decoding, thereby reducing the capacity for information processing and comprehension.  To ensure that all learners have equal access to knowledge, at least when the ability to decode is not the focus of instruction, it is important to provide options that reduce the barriers that decoding raises for learners who are unfamiliar or dysfluent with the symbols.

The language of curricular materials is usually monolingual, but often the learners in the classroom are not, so the promotion of cross-linguistic understanding is especially important. For new learners of the dominant language (e.g., English in American schools) or for learners of academic language (the dominate discourse in school), the accessibility of information is greatly reduced when no linguistic alternatives are available. Providing alternatives, especially for key information or vocabulary is an important aspect of accessibility.

Classroom materials are often dominated by information in text.  But text is a weak format for presenting many concepts and for explicating most processes. Furthermore, text is a particularly weak form of presentation for learners who have text- or language-related disabilities. Providing alternatives - especially illustrations, simulations, images or interactive graphics – can make the information in text more comprehensible for any learner and accessible for some who would find it completely inaccessible in text.

Information is more accessible and likely to be assimilated by learners when it is presented in a way that primes, activates, or provides any pre-requisite knowledge. Barriers and inequities exist when some learners lack the background knowledge that is critical to assimilating or using new information. However, there are also barriers for learners who have the necessary background knowledge, but might not know it is relevant. Those barriers can be reduced when options are available that supply or activate relevant prior knowledge, or link to the pre-requisite information elsewhere.

One of the big differences between experts and novices in any domain is the facility with which they distinguish what is critical from what is unimportant or irrelevant.  Since experts quickly recognize the most important features in information, they allocate their time efficiently, quickly identifying what is valuable and finding the right “hooks” with which to assimilate the most valuable information into existing knowledge. As a consequence, one of the most effective ways to make information more accessible is to provide explicit cues or prompts that assist individuals in attending to those features that matter most while avoiding those that matter least.

Successful transformation of information into useable knowledge often requires the application of mental strategies and skills for “processing” information. These cognitive, or meta-cognitive, strategies involve the selection and manipulation of information so that it can be better summarized, categorized, prioritized, contextualized and remembered. While some learners in any classroom may have a full repertoire of these strategies, along with the knowledge of when to apply them, most learners do not. Well-designed materials can provide customized and embedded models, scaffolds, and feedback to assist learners who have very diverse abilities in using those strategies effectively.

All learners need to be able to generalize and transfer their learning to new contexts. Students vary in the amount of scaffolding they need for memory and transfer in order to improve their ability to access their prior learning. Of course, all learners can benefit from assistance in how to transfer the information they have to other situations, as learning is not about individual facts in isolation, and students need multiple representations for this to occur. Without this support and the use of multiple representations, information might be learned, but is inaccessible in new situations. Supports for memory, generalization, and transfer include techniques that are designed to heighten the memorability of the information, as well as those that prompt and guide learners to employ explicit strategies.