Accessibility in teaching, learning and assessment

First, think about education as a design exercise

When it comes to topics like access and inclusion, it’s helpful to view teaching through the lens of design. It’s true that only a subset of educators consider themselves designers of any sort (let alone educational designers), and it’s true that many other lenses can be applied, but let’s consider education as a design exercise for the moment.

Every design presumes some sort of abilities on the part of the user. When designing a service, it’s usual to assume that people have the cognitive abilities to interact with your organisation. When designing an information system, you again might also presume certain powers of cognition while also assuming people can interact with keyboards, mice, and the like. Even when designing a tea kettle, you probably assume that the user has the mobility and strength to lift the kettle and pour the water.

These presumptions are not necessarily morally wrong. For example, the design of a white cane often presumes that the user can walk, but cannot see the environment very well – and canes work very well for their intended purpose. When we design educational experiences, we presume that students can read, can speak English sufficiently, and have the prior knowledge necessary to learn more about the subject mater - biology, or accounting, or dance. We have to make these kinds of assumptions in order to design anything. The problem only comes when we don’t consciously examine the abilities we are assuming.

Next, get curious

While checklists and accessibility tips can help, a far more effective tool for access and inclusion is curiosity. With every assessment, activity or lecture you create, you can get curious: What abilities does this design assume?

When you remember that every design presumes some abilities – even something as simple as a tea kettle – you’ll start to see what abilities are presumed in your educational design. It can be valuable to compare those presumptions with the categories of disability covered by the Disability Discrimination Act.

Questions to ask yourself

When creating assessments

Does this design presume:

• The ability to see text in an untagged PDF document?
• The ability to bring together instructions from varying locations in slides, presentations and the LMS?
• The ability to sit in one spot for several hours without a break?
• Certain social abilities, such as comfort with eye contact?
• The ability to communicate in one particular modality, or to use one particular software tool? Is that restriction essential?

LMS accessibility guides can help you write instructions in accessible formats, but beyond that, inclusive assessment is a subtle art! We recommend perusing the recommendations from universal design for learning, and availing yourself of the learning design support on offer for your faculty. Many faculties have bespoke teaching and learning support, and all faculties have access to central learning design advice. You may like to chat with your Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning for your options.

When creating resources, or using external resources

Does this design presume the ability to:

• See images?
• Hear me speak?
• See text in an untagged PDF document?
• Find relevant resources in a complex, multi-layered LMS site?

The LMS accessibility guide and LMS subject design guides can help you create subjects that are accessible and easy to navigate. Free tools like The File Transformer can also help you convert PDF materials into LMS page format (HTML) quickly. You can also use our LMS page templates if you find them helpful.

When using external readings, it really is more accessible to link to web versions of readings than it is to upload untagged PDFs.

For lectures, seminars, labs and studios

Does this design assume the ability to:

• Walk up or down stairs, or walk a long way from the nearest parking spot?
• Focus for long periods of time without a break?
• See what’s on my slides?
• Hear me speak, even when I’m far away from a microphone?

We don’t always have the luxury of designing our teaching environment, or even choosing the room in which we will teach. However, we can acknowledge limitations such as stairs or long walks by mentioning them in the LMS. It can be a good habit to provide students with directions to the lab, studio, or lecture hall at the start of every semester, using maps.unimelb to help you. Getting into this habit will also remind you to notify students of accessibility challenges (like long walks) or accessibility features (like infrared or induction hearing loops).

For other challenges, try brainstorming solutions as you go. For example:

• If the lecture presumes the ability to focus for long periods without a break, you might consider building in a break or two, or encouraging students to stand up and move when they need to. Providing an agenda or slides ahead of time can also help students focus by giving them a roadmap of the activities.
• If a lecture assumes that students can see your slides, you could get into the habit of visually describing what is on each slide.
• If your lecture assumes that students can hear you – and most do! – consider roaming the room with a microphone close to your mouth, and repeating any questions asked into the mic. That way, hearing loops can pick up your speech, and auto-caption systems can transcribe it. Students can access hearing loops or request live remote captioning themselves, but if you’re in the habit of keeping your microphone close to hand, you’ll be one step ahead when those students do turn up.

Be bold

It would be easy to say, for example, that you could never have a blind astronomer because astronomical data is highly visual. However, one astronomer figured out how to turn her data into sound so that she could continue working after vision loss. The field of astronomy has also benefitted from her ingenuity because other astronomers now use that data format. Indeed, keyboards, audiobooks, and electric toothbrushes all have a similar story, arising from the need to “relax” those presumptions about what abilities the user may have. What creative solutions might be lurking in your subconscious that could benefit your students, or potentially benefit everyone?

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