Personal Blogs

Common to all post-compulsory education

• There is a clear need to find an effective way to gain access to all different kind of information provided to disabled students (either this is online or not)
• Disabled students need time to adjust to the new setting and be autonomous in their learning.
• In turn, teachers, tutors, designes, supporters etc should be informed whether there are disabled students in their class in order to be able to provide them with the necessary support and help if they need it.
• Reading, writing, watching a video, hearing a recording might be a barrier to some disabled students and other students with learning difficulties.

Learning disabilities affect learning skills such as spelling, reading, writing, speaking, listening and social skills such as memory, attention, organisation, processing speed, reasoning and focus.

Specific to campus-based courses

• The infrastructure of the buildings should be build with the necessary provisions for disabled students, like a physical access for wheelchair users, thus there is a need to have the same in the lecture rooms and residential areas.
• Lecture theatres might need hearing loops.
• When a lesson is fully offered to the students face to face, without recording the lecture, or have short breaks withing the course or offer transcripts to disabled students then it is a problem when you do have disabled students in your class.
• Many people-students when they see a disabled student they are provocative and prejudiced against them.

Specific to online learning

• There might be expensive equipment/hardware for disabled students in order to have it to assist them.
• More time is needed from disabled students in order to acquire the information, process it and produce a result asked from a question.
• If a website is not accessible or it does not have the necessary navigational buttons then it is a barrier for disabled students (design problem).

Related to particular subjects or contexts

• Maths.
• Foreign Languages due to the different accents.
• Science due to the experiments made and if a student's mobility is limited then the student will not be able to participate.
• Physical Education in which students with limited mobility will not be able to participate fully.

My role and context in education

I am a teacher in primary school, but not an active one yet. There is a big catalogue with names awaiting to get a job in the government as a teacher, thus I am in the waiting list for 2 years now and I am moving on to the third year.  I am working full time in a completely different job and at the same time I am helping kids with their homework everyday.

When I was in the University years we had to make our practice as teachers in various schools.  Taking into consideration that I would like to mention it as my current context as I am not having actually an active job as a teacher.  I would like therefore to refer to those experiences and to that specific context.

How they relate to accessibility and online learning

While I was making my practice, I did notice any matter for accessibility in my classes due to the fact that it did not happen to have any kid with impairments or any kind of disability.  However, it happened to me, to have one case with a kid I was helping with homework in the afternoons.  That kid is stil having a mental disability. Teaching in this case and trying to help the kid overcome some obsessions is really difficult!  Online learning is still a little bit behind in our country, as I am coming from Cyprus.  Online learning in primary school is still a "dream" here.  There is actually only 1 or 2 personal computers in each class and there are other classes that do not have at all.  Some schools have computer labs but still, there are many things that need to be done in order to make it work effectively and not only for disabled students but also for the rest of the students.

What I would like to achieve from the course

• to understand the various accessibility issues raised by the different roles in a school or organisation who are working online
• learn about educational policies issues as far as accessibility and disability is concerned
• take a look in the research area that covers the above aspects and develop an opinion in certain issues
• how to value accessibility in different organisations through particular technologies and assess it whether it does support the needs of the learners and the teaching staff