Ever since ninth grade, all of the history classes I have ever taken have been online history classes because I find it easier to access information on my computer or tablet compared to larger lecture settings where it can be challenging to view information presented at a distance— probably because I’ve been taking online history classes with low vision for such a long time. One of my friends who is a history professor recently asked me to update my post with tips for making history classes accessible for visually impaired students in high school and undergraduate/community college settings, so here is an updated list of ideas and strategies for taking online history classes with low vision, incorporating feedback from instructors that have shared their own ideas.
About my online history classes
I live and attend school in Virginia, and I had to take four classes/pass four standardized history tests to graduate with an advanced high school diploma, including:
- World History 1 or World History 2 (either)
- Geography (I took this in-person)
- US History
- US Government and Civics
Originally, I planned to take AP U.S History as an in-person class, but I had difficulty getting accessible materials for the class so I switched to an online and non-AP US History class two months into the semester (AP history credits wouldn’t have been accepted for my degree anyways). All of the history classes I took in high school were offered through my school district’s public virtual high school program hosted on Moodle, and I took World History 2 as a summer virtual class so that I could take Honors Band during the school year.
When I started at George Mason University, I was required to take HIST 125: Introduction to World History as part of my degree— AP credits and CLEP credits could not be used as a substitute. I took HIST 125 online as an asynchronous course on Blackboard so I could take vision breaks when reading and taking notes more easily compared to in-person classes.
Related links
- Tips For Taking Online Classes As An On-Campus Student
- SOL Test Accommodations And Low Vision
- How I Use Moodle With Low Vision
- How I Use Blackboard With Low Vision
- How I Use Canvas With Low Vision
- How To Schedule College Classes
- My Experience With Virtual Classes in High School
- CLEP Exams and Low Vision
- How To Get Disability Accommodations In Community College
What to expect when taking an online history class
While each class covered different material and topics, each of my online history classes in high school and college consisted of the following components:
- Assigned readings and required readings to be done each module. These would come from the assigned textbook, PDFs that the instructor would post online, links to websites, or text embedded in modules.
- Discussion board posts: Students would be expected to respond to required readings and discussion posts from other students, writing 2-3 paragraphs on a given topic.
- PowerPoint slides that contain information from lectures, sometimes re-posted from in-person sections of the same class. Many instructors would post a recording of them presenting information from the slides.
- Video lessons that cover a topic in-depth and include images, interviews, or lectures. Some videos would be posted with transcripts to help with following along.
- Weekly quizzes on readings posted on the course website.
- At least one or two weekly assignments, which could include answering questions, writing an essay, completing a scavenger hunt, or reading information from other sources.
- Projects and essays that students were expected to write on a specific topic— most of my classes required 2-3 of these per course.
- Tests and exams that would be proctored in-person at a testing center or taken with test proctoring software.
Similar to an in-person history class, I would spend about three hours each week working on readings and assignments for each of my online history classes. I never had any group projects and didn’t interact with other students in my class, but one of my best friends and I were both taking online history classes at our respective colleges and would often “parallel study” and work on our assignments together on videochat, talking about what we had learned from our readings.
Related links
- Ten Tech Skills Every College Student Needs For Virtual Classes
- Low Vision Assistive Technology For Discussion Board Posts
- Recording Video Lectures For Visually Impaired Students
- How I Take Notes During Video Lectures With Low Vision
- How I Receive Accessible Quizzes and Tests in the Classroom
- Tips To Stay Organized In Virtual Classes
- The Best Study Tips For Visually Impaired Students
Reading history textbooks with low vision
When it comes to finding accessible history textbooks, I would use the following strategies:
- As a student attending public schools, I received accessible history textbooks through my state’s NIMAC organization, which provides accessible educational materials for students with visual impairments and print disabilities; this organization is known as AIM-VA in Virginia.
- Another option for finding accessible history textbooks is Bookshare, which is a free online library for people with print disabilities. However, some Bookshare books do not contain images, which can make it challenging to access maps, tables, or other graphics.
- In college, I would rent textbooks from Amazon Kindle or Chegg eTextbooks, which would have images, adjustable font sizes, and options for enabling high contrast text.
- My college’s online library database has several HTML and EPUB textbooks that students can access
- Some courses use OEM or OpenStax for history textbooks, which can be read online with HTML formats for free.
Another option for college students is to request accessible textbooks through Disability Services or the Assistive Technology office, but this is not something I had to do for any of my history textbooks.
Related links
- Receiving Accessible Educational Materials With NIMAC and AIM-VA
- Ten Cool Things You Didn’t Know About Bookshare
- Reading Chegg eTextbooks With Low Vision
- How To Request Accessible Textbooks In College
- A to Z of Assistive Technology for Reading Digital Text
- Online College Library Resources For Digital Access
Reading articles and excerpts posted by the instructor
Sometimes, my instructors would post copies or articles or excerpts from offline sources like books or research journals, which would be challenging to enlarge or read with low vision. Access strategies that I would use include:
- If the professor uploads a scanned PDF of pages from a book, I would ask what book/pages were posted and find a copy on my own. The Anthology Ally tool can sometimes convert scanned PDFs to OCR, but I personally would not rely on this for graded work.
- Bookshare has thousands of books on a variety of topics, and I located many required readings for history classes in their library. Another source for finding accessible materials is the Louis database from APH.
- My college library database hosts thousands of articles, books, and digital copies of materials. If I had trouble reading a PDF or scanned article from my professor, I would look up the citation on the college library website.
- Libby/OverDrive is an eBook service available through public libraries, and I found a required book for history that I couldn’t find anywhere else on that platform.
- A better option for instructors who want to ensure students can read excerpts is to copy the text into a Word document (DOC/DOCX), which can be enlarged or read with screen readers and is more responsive than a PDF.
Visual assistance applications that support OCR can also be used to recognize text, though students may need to scan pages one at a time to have text read out loud or displayed with large print.
Related links
- How I Find Research Sources In Accessible Formats
- How I Read Research Sources With Assistive Technology
- Using Anthology Ally With Low Vision
- Reading Magazines With The Libby App And Low Vision
- Designing Accessible Documents With Microsoft Word
- Reading Bookshare Titles With Microsoft Word
Finding accessible primary source documents with low vision
In my post “How I Access Historical Documents With Low Vision,” I provide in-depth information about how I access various types of primary source documents. Other strategies that I have used in online history classes with low vision include:
- Reverse searching for high resolution images by using Google Lens to sort for different sizes of an image, which is especially helpful for art or other artifacts
- Requesting a transcript of historical documents or primary source documents from my professor, or searching for a transcript online from another source.
- Watching content on a larger screen or using tools like Google Chromecast to mirror my display.
- Using pinch-to-zoom or digital magnifiers on touchscreens to explore images by touch. Using a tablet makes it easier to adjust the viewing angle of my screen and position it either close to my face or under my lined bifocal.
- Instead of using 2-D images, I would search for 3D models of artifacts or objects in a picture because these were often shared in a higher resolution that I could enlarge.
- Google Earth Timelapse and Google Historical Imagery provide free copies of digital maps that can be used with existing Google products
- The Library of Congress offers several thousand high resolution images of historical maps, which can be used with screen magnification.
Quizzes and tests were modified to remove questions about pictures that used phrases such as “what document is in this picture?”, “who is this?”, “identify which photo shows a person/object”, or “what is going on in this picture?” as it was challenging for me to enlarge images in the testing software and I often struggled to identify subtle differences in images or would have the page become distorted if I tried to enlarge the text alongside non-essential graphics. I had to self-advocate for this modification after I missed every question on an exam that had an image, and asked my instructor if they could remove the images so it was easier for me to enlarge content.
Related links
- How I Access Historical Documents With Low Vision
- How I Use Google Lens With Low Vision
- How To Run Effective Web Searches
- How I Use My eReader For School and Online Classes
- How To Write Alt Text And Image Descriptions For Photojournalism Images
- Learning to Self-Advocate
Reading text in the web browser
Online history classes often have a lot of reading involved, and I would often take breaks when reading or do readings at a time when my eyes felt rested so that I wasn’t straining to read. Strategies that helped me a lot with completing readings for my history classes would include:
- Using a simplified reading display to apply a consistent background color, font size/style, and single column layout to text.
- Sideloading readings onto my eReader or another eReading application using a tool like Send-to-Kindle or saving files directly to the eReader.
- Enabling reading extensions that incorporate assistive technology like text-to-speech or enabling dark mode/high contrast mode
- Using an inverted display to improve color contrast on color-coded maps.
While I often would try to read as much as possible in one sitting, setting reminders to take breaks or enabling extensions or accessibility settings helped to keep me from straining my eyes too much or getting burnt out.
Related links
- A to Z of Assistive Technology for Reading Digital Text
- Model UN Disability Accommodations For Low Vision
- Simplified Reading Displays and Low Vision
- Sideloading and Low Vision
- How To Use Invert Colors With Low Vision
- Accessing The News With Assistive Technology
- Ten Ways To Reduce Eye Strain From Screens With Technology
Accessing videos for online history classes
My online history classes incorporated a mix of different videos, including video lectures from the professor, videos from other sources, YouTube videos, and excerpts from TV shows. I have a neurological condition triggered by strobe and flashing lights, so my instructors would screen videos in advance and let me know if there were any lights in the videos. If a video had a lot of lights, I would either read a transcript instead or complete an alternate assignment.
Strategies for accessing videos for online history classes with low vision can include:
- Casting videos to a larger screen using tools such as Chromecast or AirPlay
- Watching videos on a tablet, which can be positioned at an angle and may be easier to see/read from compared to information at a distance
- For a different class, I would use the Kanopy app to watch assigned videos for class since they were in a higher resolution compared to the documentaries my professor would post on the course website.
- Searching for videos with audio description
- Watching a video with a sighted partner who can answer questions about what is happening on-screen. When one of my best friends and I were both taking identical history classes, we would watch videos together and I would ask them questions about what was happening if I had trouble following along.
Another potential alternative assignment for students with visual impairments would be to listen to a podcast, which is designed with nonvisual access in mind since the format is audio-only. I used this strategy for a student taking a high school history class and it worked really well for helping them to develop visual models of the topic.
Related links
- How I Use Google Chromecast With Low Vision
- How I Use Kanopy With Low Vision
- How To Check Videos For Flashing Lights
- How I Talk To Professors About Photosensitivity
- How To Describe Primary Source Videos For Visually Impaired Audiences
- How To Make Classroom Videos Easier To See
- How To Create Accessible Videos and Narrated Images With Clips
More resources for taking online history classes with low vision
- Wondering how I would write discussion board posts and research papers? I share some insight in Low Vision Assistive Technology For Discussion Board Posts and How I Outline Research Papers With OneNote
- Some of my classes would incorporate virtual resources from museums- learn more in How To Make Virtual Museums Accessible For Visual Impairments
- For Government/Civics, I had to learn about voting in elections but never learned about accessible voting machines for people with disabilities— I write about those in How I Use Accessible Voting Machines With Low Vision
Published June 8, 2020. Updated January 2025