Designed for Every Learner: Accessibility as a Universal Design Strategy (Sandy Gardener - Queensland Computers) #ANZsummit

This was the first workshop I went to, and I thought it was amazing, and wanted to share what I took from it.

Interesting to see how many people turned up to this session.  Accessibility is clearly something that matters a lot to people.  

Question - is accessibility a foundation for learning, or an add-on?  If not foundational, you’re going to encounter problems down the line.  

Students' brains run on three different “networks”, and what we ask of them will either run smoothly with their brains, or it will create friction.  When we worry about whether students are engaged in completing written work, or creating material to demonstrate their understanding, are we missing the most important thing?  If students don’t find the work threatening, and they believe that they can do it, they will turn up and they will engage.  That is the foundation.  Once we have the student a) there, in our class, and b) willing to engage, the rest will follow.  

Before we look at their networks, first consider these three questions: 

1 - Can students even access what we’re trying to teach / deliver? 

2 - Can they act on what they already have?

3 - Does the task feel possible enough to attempt?  

For 1 - it might be that we speak too fast and using live subtitles helps them to access the instruction in their own time rather than solely when we give the instruction orally. 

For 2 - Are we expecting them to act with no prior knowledge, or do they have the security of knowing that they have a strong foundation on which to build? 

For 3 - Cost / benefit.  It’s going to present challenges.  Are they surmountable, or is it a lost cause?  Analogy of going to the gym.  We know it’s good for us, we know that there are benefits to us, but we lack the motivation to go.  Why?  When we know the positives, why do we find it so difficult to do this?  Do we need some other kind of motivation to make the effort worthwhile? 

The 3 brain networks:

Network 1 - The Recognition network.  The WHAT of learning. 

Is our content being received the way we want it to be?  Perhaps live subtitles would help.  Students have the opportunity to copy and paste the text.  Be warned, it can make mistakes and the word that appears in the transcript isn’t always the correct one, and it also picks up EVERYTHING so if something around you / them is also talking, it will pick that up too. 

We need to be aware of assumptions.  We assume a lot about our students.  We assume that they are receiving instructions and understanding them.  We assume that they know what they have to do.  We assume that we are being clear.  We assume that we are doing the best for them.  We are all certainly *trying* to do our best for our students, but what we think we’re doing and what we are doing are not always the same. 

Network 2 - The Strategic network - The HOW of learning

Allow students the opportunity to express their learning in a way that works for them.  Personal voice takes quite a while to set up, but is useful for students who may be “selective mutes” i.e. talk a lot at home, but say nothing at school.  Using this does not change their ability or their contributions, just how they express them.  To me, this sounds like something that would work very well with younger children, but not so much in the upper years.  However, I think it could be good for use in class when students are given time to prepare (for example) opening sentences to exam questions.  Using it for prep where they are asked to do 60-second summaries is probably not a good use for it as it actually defeats the whole purpose of them.

Network 3 - The Affective network - The WHY of learning

Unfortunately, we ran out of time at this point so weren’t able to discuss this network in any great detail other than to suggest that there are writing tool options within the accessibility section.  These could be explored here, with an emphasis on they are not being used to lower our expectations of the students, they are being used to allow them to express their knowledge and understanding better.  

This session was incredibly insightful and it shone a light on aspects of learning that probably do not occur to the majority of teachers as they are not issues that we experience personally.  I came away from this session with - I hope - my eyes opened.  This has made me much more determined to consider ways in which I can help my students access my lessons more.  

Thank you, Sandy.