We’ve seen course packs written with inappropriate font faces, confusing layout, clashing colour schemes, and much text squeezed into a small space. They are filled with hyperlinks that lead nowhere, images that are irregularly shaped.

We know students who’ve sat squinting in the back of the lecture hall, unable to view or comprehend PowerPoint presentations. We’ve downloaded PDF journal articles on our phone screen and had to scroll backwards and forwards every line. We've followed instructions, clicked on a link, and then got distracted by rabit holes with multiple browser tabs.

Accessible and usable

Analogue materials have commonly accepted conventions that are applied to make them accessible, to help the reader find their way around. Books have a preface and an index, are divided by chapters, have page numbers, importance is denoted by different sized headings with different weights. These conventions have developed over centuries of book production and help us understand the hierarchical relationships between elements.

Digital materials also require conventions to guide the reader through their design. For example, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) provides a single set of shared guidelines for web content accessibility. Each of these guidelines has testable criteria. Lecturers might think about using a similar set of conventions, such as Universal Design (UD) in their hybrid courses. Those who share these principles and adopt its guidelines will contribute towards designing a learning environment that is beneficial to the widest range of students, including those with disabilities, older users or who cannot afford heavy data costs