Teaching with ADHD: Making Online Course Material More Readable

Online courses put a lot of responsibility on students to organize themselves: finding materials, tracking deadlines and reading long pages alone. For students with ADHD, that's where things often fall apart. Small changes to how material is presented can make a big difference, and help every student.

Start with consistent structure

• Use the same layout for every week or module: overview, materials, tasks, deadline.
• Name files and pages consistently, such as "Week 3 – Reading – Chapter 5."
• Keep everything for a week in one place in your learning platform.

Put deadlines in one place

Scattered due dates are a common cause of missed work. Keep a single course calendar or list with every deadline, and make sure it matches the learning platform's dates.

Chunk the content

• Break long readings into sections with headings.
• Split long lecture videos into shorter segments, each on one idea.
• Start each section with what students will learn, and end with a short summary.
• Use lists for steps and requirements.

Make instructions crystal clear

• State exactly what to submit, in what format, by when.
• Give a checklist for multi-step assignments.
• Show an example of good work where possible.

Offer more than one format

The Universal Design for Learning framework, developed by the nonprofit CAST, encourages offering several ways to take in material. Provide captions and transcripts for videos, readable documents that work with text-to-speech, and slides alongside recordings. See why captions and transcripts help everyone.

Reduce visual clutter

Plain, well-spaced pages are easier to read than ones packed with banners, colors and widgets. Use clear fonts, left-aligned text and enough spacing. See how layout affects neurodivergent readers.

Build in check-ins

Short weekly quizzes or reflections keep students on track and show you who's falling behind early. Reminders a few days before deadlines help too.

Tools students can use

Let students know about tools that help with reading, such as browser reader view, text-to-speech, and ADHD Reading Focus, which shows one paragraph at a time in larger text. Reading Progress Bar shows how far through a long page they are.

Follow accommodations

Work with your institution's disability services on formal accommodations such as extra time. See ADHD accommodations for online reading.