Higher education continues to face challenges in meeting students’ accessibility needs for course content, including assignment instructions and reference materials. Furthermore, the complexity of accessibility concepts raises significant barriers to making necessary improvements. This work introduces Iris, a course content management system that focuses on presentation, interactivity, and accessibility improvements, with minimal effort required from authors. Iris provides accessibility, usability, and customization features, including font and spacing settings, reading rulers, and heading-based navigation, to readers throughout the platform. Additionally, using a large language model (LLM), Iris provides language-based accommodation through three strategies: hinting, simplifying, and explaining. This feature uses a simple one-click interface to uphold interactions with course staff. In line with universal design (UD) principles, Iris’s features are designed for all students, but especially target students with disabilities and, for the LLM-based features, nonnative English speakers and students unfamiliar with the topic. Iris uses a custom document format and editor to enable its various features, prevent semantic HTML errors, and leave flexibility for future enhancements.

Iris can distribute text-based content for any course. To evaluate Iris, we deployed the platform to display assignment instructions in two introductory computer science classes, then surveyed the students. For the first survey, students chose between Iris and the previous system used in the course for one assignment. For the second survey, students used Iris for all assignments. Both surveys indicated positive reception of Iris but identified room for improvement. We implemented these improvements for a main study comparing Iris to a previous system.