Read Seale Chapter 6 Planning and developing accessible e-learning experiences: the lecturer’s perspective.
Seale refers to ‘lecturers’: in other contexts this might include ‘faculty’, ‘teachers’, ‘instructors’ or anyone whose main role is teaching.
- On page 70, it is suggested that accessibility is frequently framed as a technical issue rather than a pedagogical (learning and teaching) one.
Can you think of any arguments, evidence or examples from what you have read, or from your experience, which could help lecturers or those with a similar teaching role to see accessibility as a pedagogical issue?
Accessibility could be seen as a pedagogical issue too regardless of the technical issues that is consisting of and this is because teachers need to make their resources available and accessible to each and every student according to their own needs. For example, when this year in October, I went to teach into a class and there was a student with severe problems but the most important one was the hearing impairment. I have seen that not all the teachers take into consideration this disability and they just leave the student in a corner with very few attention. I suppose that if I was their teacher there every day I would have change this attitude and when I am there once a week in that class I am trying as much as I can to offer to the student resources that are as accessible as I can. It might not be with technology however but it is mainly with printed material.
- Some of the key principles that underpin different design approaches include: inclusivity, equity, holism, proactivity and flexibility.
How are these principles defined in the literature?
Inclusivity: Inclusive design involves designing curricula that aim to include studetns with disabilities from the outset.
Equity: The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
Holism: According to Schenker and Scadden (2002), holistic design means starting with the pedagogy first, in their case the pedagogy of collaborative learning, and then addressing accessibility as it relates to collaborative learning.
Proactivity: It involves thinking about the needs of students with disabilities at the beginning of the design process rather than making a multitude of adaptations once the course is up and running.
Flexibility: It involves thinking of the appropriate ways to offer equivalent and alternative access to the curriculum for students with a disability, which may or may not involve e-learning.
Are they sufficiently clear and consistent so that lecturers can apply them to their own practice?
I believe that they are sufficiently clear and consistent as far as I am concerned but in order to apply them into practice there might be a need to consider not only ourselves but learning technologists too who are more into the theme and take also their advice.