Why I CanDARE
When I began grad school in 2018, there wasn’t a lot of research into digital accessibility issues in post-secondary education. Dr. Jane Seale was, and remains a prominent voice. As is Catherine Fichten, co-director of Canada’s Adaptech Research Network, as are Technical and Professional Writing, and Communications scholars including Sushil K. Oswal and Lisa Meloncon, and Sean Zdenek. Their work resonates but we need more.
We need more voices. More experiences. More nuance. We need more people thinking and talking about the education system’s complicity in the silent marginalization of people with disabilities from the digital commons.
Digital Accessibility Research (DARE) in Post-Secondary Education
The global landscape of research in this field changed dramatically when the COVID-19 Pandemic forced the world to close our doors, and isolate.
Post-secondary institutions that could, made an overnight pivot online. As students with and without disabilities were forced into remote, technology-mediated learning environments 1, the pivot brought much-needed attention to digital accessibility and digital inclusion issues in post-secondary.
Millions of learners and educators collectively experienced the trauma of the pandemic, alongside the trauma of emergency remote teaching and learning.
Although circumstances were less than ideal, researchers in this field began swimming in data, and since 2020, research into digital accessibility issues in post-secondary has flourished.
Learner and Learning Experience Designer
During the pivot, I was both an Educational Technology grad student and a Learning Experience Designer, hired specifically to help educators understand and meet the needs of learners disabled by and in their new online learning environments.
My colleagues and I helped educators understand how certain pedagogical choices impacted learners with disabilities online, what steps they could take to be more inclusive in Zoom, how to add time extensions to online exams, and so much more.
It was a ground-shifting time for all of us, but I worked with a stellar team and I’m genuinely proud of the work we did to support educators and learners to get through the crisis as best we could.
Then, I got COVID.
In what is now being referred to as a “mass disabling event”, I became one of the thousands profoundly disabled by COVID. I lost 18 months learning to live with my new normal.
Unable to work, study or stay engaged with research in my field, I felt both grief and frustration over not being part of the digital accessibility discussions that flourished between 2021-2023.
And in a bizarre twist of fate, I found myself swimming in new experiences of learning and being with my new disabilities. After two years of re-learning how to learn, pace myself, and adapt, I’m very much back in the world and ready to begin making my contribution to this field.
Though circumstances were less than ideal, researchers in this field began swimming in data… I found myself swimming in new experiences of learning (and being) with my new disabilities.
CanDARE Research Project
Returning to this research with more disabilities than I had when I began, I feel immense gratitude for the contributions to the field that were made in my absence. That said, my research into digital accessibility in education has become more personal, more experiential and hopefully more relational.
The CanDARE project is my way of re-entering the digital accessibility research in education (DARE) conversation in ways that:
- Support community-building and showcase the work of researchers, activists and learners who are talking about digital accessibility and inclusion issues for post-secondary learners with disabilities.
- Add my voice to the conversations and share my unique perspective as a former post-secondary educator and learning experience designer, and as a person who lives and learns with disabilities.
- Engage with the lived experiences, specifically the learning experiences obscured by policies, checklists and legal frameworks.
Acknowledgements
Two months after being awarded a BCcampus Fellowship for my graduate research, my experience with disability became profound and complex. I thought I would have to give up the fellowship and let my graduate studies languish because I could no longer conduct the research I’d proposed.
With encouragement from the good people at BCcampus, and from my supervisor Dr. Michael Paskevicious, I decided that even though my abilities were not what they were when I applied for the fellowship, I could dare to contribute to digital accessibility research in education in new ways.
Knowing I’m far, far from alone, I conceived of this website to showcase how we – a community of learners, researchers and educators – can dare to make fundamental improvements to digital accessibility in education.
I also want to acknowledge the learners, scholars, and loved ones with disabilities whose experiences and teachings inform the flexibility and respect for multiple ways of researching and knowledge-sharing embraced by BCcampus, as well as my MEd educators Dr. Valerie Irvine, Dr. Mariel Miller, Dr. Todd Milford, Dr. Catherine McGregor, Dr. Jennifer Thom and Dr. Michael Paskevicious.
The CanDARE project is done in service of broadening our understanding of digital accessibility in education, and improving technology-integrated learning experiences for learners with (and without) disabilities.
I am able to pursue this path thanks to the knowledge shared with me by scholars, educators, activists, writers, artists, learners and so many people living and learning with disabilities. I don’t speak for them. I do speak with them.
I am also grateful to and appreciative of the Lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples whose historical and contemporary relationships with the human and the nonhuman world and specifically with the lands around my home in Victoria BC, inform my experiences of learning, sharing knowledge and being in community with others.
Footnotes
- The term “emergency remote teaching and learning” was used early in the 2020 COVID pandemic pivot by Educational Technology scholar Valerie Irvine and others to clearly differentiate the type of teaching and learning that occurred during the pivot from other, pedagogically thought-out approaches to technology-integrated learning.
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