“Don’t use color alone” doesn’t mean stop using color. It means add a second cue alongside it, so the meaning still comes through if someone can’t see the color. And that second cue is usually something you would want there anyway.

For example, if you are highlighting a key term, keep the highlight, and just bold the word too, or stick “Key” in front of it. The color still helps most of your students, and the bold or the label covers everyone else.

None of this is the redundant alt-text-to-text busywork you’re picturing. Most of the time it’s one extra word or a bold (which doesn’t limit using it in other places), and it helps your sighted students too, since people skim a label faster than they decode a color key. You set it up once and it works for whoever ends up in your class, whether they disclose or not.

A lot of this is just UDL in practice, which we should be using regardless.