Reframing Digital Accessibility in Post-Secondary Education For Educators
Full Title
Author(s)
Centering Voices
Year of Publication
Media Type
Media Access
Free/OPEN version of this article has digital accessibility issues. The formatting of the PDF relays content elements out of sequence order to digital readers rendering the text audibly illegible, and title and headings are not voiced. The text is perceivable to digital readers when highlighted, e.g. Apple’s built-in “speak selection.”
Usefulness to Educators
In combination, this brief paper and presentation at the OTESSA conference, 2021 put a social justice / digital justice lens on digital accessibility in education. It illustrates what facets of digital accessibility are relevant for educators, and introduces the concept of “accessible digital content literacy skills,” skills specifically related to reading, identifying, curating, and writing/creating accessible digital content.
Premise
In order for educators to critically engage with digital accessibility practices, accessible course content, and digitally accessible technology-mediated learning environments, they first need to see what aspects of digital accessibility are in the educator’s domain.
Purpose
- To offer various points of entry to consider digital accessibility in praxis
- To introduce the concept of “accessible digital content literacy skills” as a missing literacy
Research Methods
Normative argument based on secondary sources and personal experience.
Conceptual or Theoretical Frameworks
- Liberatory pedagogy
- Social justice
- Disability justice
- Digital justice
Reference with Published Abstract (when available)
Points of Connection
It is my work.
Points of Contention
NA
Findings
Recommendations for future research:
Drawing from web accessibility, literacy, learning theory and pedagogical literature, more research is needed to identify interventions that might satisfy the following four criteria: (a) respect the lived-experiences of learners and educators with disabilities; (b) pedagogically support learning and inclusion; (c) technically comply with WCAG; and (d) are typically within educators’ control. This reframing would have implications for course culture, course content curation, online collaboration and co-creation practices, information design for learning, archive, search, digital knowledge sharing, and other digital accessibility considerations in education.
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