Very often, yes. With an untenable workload, educators have to prioritize. Those priorities can reflect both the ableist values of the institution and the precarity many educators feel. The development of accessible practices within HE relies on faculty and other staff having the knowledge and skills necessary to change and improve what they do; therefore,…
The ad hoc accommodations model renders learners an inconvenience.
Typically, a learner is responsible for informing the educator at the start of term, if they have been granted academic accommodations.
The current academic accommodations model forces individual learners to prove they are eligible for academic accommodations. And yet, learners are the ones patching up the institutions’ digital accessibility shortcomings.
Unfamiliarity with how to read and write for digital accessibility represents a form of illiteracy whereby the disservice…
This brief paper 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.
A poem about nervous system overwhelm, research overwhelm and new beginnings. ( 2min)
“Throughout the world, many [governments and non-governmental] organizations–universities, schools, and private companies–are recognizing that accessibility is a moral and business imperative; many are adopting policies aimed at making Web resources accessible to the more than six hundred million people with disabilities worldwide.” (2002, Rush and Slatin) Recognizing something is a moral imperative … adopting policies…
In this video, people with diverse experiences of disability share practices that help them to perceive, understand and engage with others in the video conferencing environment. (3 min read, 9 min video)
In this video a learner explains the skills and technologies he uses to perceive, navigate and engage with peers and educators in post-secondary. (4 min read, 9 min video)
An individual learner may experience digital inaccessibility in learning environments, activities, materials and assessments, all within their learning community.
This is a foundational text from the Disability Justice movement and a must read.
This book is a compendium of contemporary thinking and scholarship on the past, present and future digital practices in post-secondary education relative to learners with disabilities.
Is teaching care work? A pathway to social justice? This book isn’t specifically about either education or digital accessibility but it is a raw, evocative work that dives into lived experiences of care and support within (and without) the disability community. It’s relevance here is as a foundational text on Disability Justice.
This easy-to-digest podcast outlines things educators need to consider when thinking about what makes a learning environment or a pedagogical approach accessible in post-secondary.
This article is included here with my “points of contention” annotations to illustrate how the UDL framework and much UDL literature ignores digital accessibility and accessible social learning experiences, and how uncritical application of UDL principles to address the needs of disabled learners can inadvertently marginalize disabled learners in post-secondary.
