Our Approach

​​At Lumen Learning, our approach focuses on making materials accessible so that faculty and students have a more successful learning experience. Lumen course content is updated regularly as part of our internal review and remediation process which targets common web accessibility issues.

Accessibility is considered upfront as an integral part of Lumen’s platform and product design process, ensuring an accessible user experience. Some of the steps we take to improve accessibility at Lumen are:

  • Testing new features and significant code changes using industry-standard tools.
  • Alt Text: Every necessary image is described for screen readers.
  • Color Contrast: Meets WCAG readability standards.
  • Desmos Accessibility in OHM: Integrated calculators meet standards for accessible math interaction.
  • Headings & Navigation: Structured for easy use with assistive tech.
  • Keyboard Navigation: Interactive elements display visible focus indicators.
  • Screen Reader Compatibility: We perform both in-house and independent third-party testing in JAWS (in Chrome) and NVDA (in Firefox)
  • Video Captions & Transcripts: Individually reviewed to ensure accuracy.

Lumen has worked with 3rd-party providers to perform full platform VPAT reviews (see linked below). We regularly review any issues reported by users or institutional partners and prioritize and resolve these issues as an integrated part of the team’s agile development process. Perkins Access has been contracted to provide user and expert reviews, inclusive design reviews, ongoing accessibility support, and expert standards guidelines.

Our current assessment of our accessibility

Lumen regularly assesses our progress toward inclusiveness using the voluntary product accessibility template (“VPAT”). The VPAT contains documentation on Section 508 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) (Levels A, AA). Our latest courseware introduction, Lumen One, has been evaluated with the most recent WCAG 2.2 criteria (Levels A, AA).

These are our current VPATS:

Our Partnership with Perkins School for the Blind

As part of our commitment, Lumen Learning engaged with Perkins Access, a division of Perkins School for the Blind, to ensure that our platforms conform to the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (W3C WCAG) Version 2.1 Level AA requirements to the maximum extent possible. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Perkins Access has been contracted to provide user and expert reviews, inclusive design reviews, ongoing accessibility support, and expert standards guidance.

What to do if you find a problem.

If you find something we’ve done that isn’t inclusive, we want to know about it. Please let us know by sending an email to support@lumenlearning.com. We promise to look into it and do our best to correct it.