Episode 25- International Accessibility
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:32 Welcome to episode twenty-five. In this episode, I want to talk about the real need to internationalize our accessibility frameworks, and how our discussions about accessibility need to take into account the different geographical and socio-political contexts of our institutions and the learners we engage with on a regular basis. I want to address some considerations around the assumptions that are often made when we talk about accessibility and disability in higher education, and how those assumptions tend to close off conversations to so many who want to engage in awareness raising and supporting disabled learners.
1:14 I will explore three aspects about accessibility conversations that need to be reframed in order to be more holistic and inclusive in our accessibility work, because we truly have so much to learn from each other and we could if we simply stopped closing off these discussions through assumptions that tend to be geographically bounded.
1:37 So point one, we really need to stop with the assumption that every accessibility conversation that happens in hashtag HigherEd spaces is necessarily an American conversation. Often folk don’t even stop to look and see where those that are having a discussion online are actually from, before others come charging in with comments like “that’s an ADA violation, you should get a lawyer” or “you should ask your institution about how that’ll impact 504.” Both of these things mean absolutely nothing to people outside the United States, and yet people keep talking about the ADA and 504 in their comments on other’s posts on social media, or in the keynote presentations that they present to international audiences.
2:28 We need to approach accessibility conversations and work in a more holistic manner. We need to get to the foundational barriers that are impacting users and learners, and using legislation and codes that mean nothing to an international audience does not advance that conversation. Instead we can have conversations about physical barriers, or sensory barriers, or organizational barriers, or systemic barriers. There’s no need to complicate it with geographically specific legislative framing. The same thing happens when folk try to reference the WCAG standards or by number or like the UDL guidelines by checkpoint. These numbers and often the wording mean nothing to others and especially those that are not well-versed in these frameworks, but they are still committed to doing that accessibility work and reducing barriers even if they don’t know what WCAG standard 2.1.1 means.
3:29 This is similar to the conversation that we had in episode 13 about plain language use. It’s about modeling the kinds of inclusive language that we want to see in the discussions that we’re having so that we can open up the possibility of those discussions going further than our smaller geographical areas and then learn from each other and each other’s lived experiences.
3:51 Two, in the way that we want to make sure that language and references that we use are not geographically exclusive, we also need to think about the tools and the way that we communicate with each other around accessibility. Some social media platforms are not accessible to some folk who are doing critical disability theory, accessible pedagogy, or even digital accessibility work. As well when we share resources or ask for feedback on a resource we need to make sure that the tools and that platform that we’re using can help support that resource sharing and that feedback in an accessible manner.
4:29 I will give you an example. So when CAST asked folk for feedback on the new UDL guidelines they put the draft UDL guidelines and the means to provide feedback into Google products. Eventually many people told them hey Google products are in fact not accessible to a lot of people in certain geographical regions and therefore they were kind of limiting the kinds of feedback they could receive from the same geographical regions that informed the 3.0 guidelines in the first place. They eventually provided another platform for folk to provide feedback, but this is an example of how geographical or geo-political or economic power dynamics determine the ways in to conversations.
5:11 There has been some discussion about the accessibility of generative AI tools lately, but again not enough of the focus on the accessibility of those tools from an assistive technology point of view, and much more about the economic access of the tools instead. The tools we choose to use and promote have just as much impact on how we engage in accessibility conversations as the conversations that we’re having themselves. I know that I talked about how many had been excluded from important pedagogical or higher ed teaching and learning conversations when everybody did the mass exodus to BlueSky which only recently stopped being gatekept as invite only.
5:56 so this leads me to point three which is, there needs to be more opportunities for folk in different countries and areas of the world to discuss and connect in a synchronous manner. And I acknowledge that one of the biggest barriers to this happening is of course time zones. I also would like us to think about how we can sometimes be more open in our scheduling practices to include more folk in our conversations, our webinars, and our resource sharing. Having Eastern time zones or Greenwich time being the automatic default for high profile accessibility events is not very inclusive. And yes we can record the event, and that’s a good accessibility practice, however I’m talking about the need to be in the same space as others at the same time to ask the questions and bounce ideas off of each other.
6:44 Having the recording is a good point to continue the conversation. But if we had more conversations and more opportunities to actually be in dialogue simultaneously, that would allow for more interaction and engagement around lived experiences, differences in those lived experiences, and areas of need that we can support each other with because maybe you have had experiences with that particular barrier or issue and then we can learn from each other and think about things in different ways.
7:14 Today I had a great conversation about how some accessibility and disability terms just simply do not translate well into English from other languages and as a result some people may be using terms that could be seen as offensive or even out-dated. The more opportunities we have to share these discoveries around language and translation in accessibility conversations, the more we can have a rich lexicon of terminology that is meaningful to a larger group of folk.
7:46 So that’s it, that’s episode 25 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of how we expand accessibility conversations to have more international frameworks and respect and acknowledge the many lived experiences of disability and fighting for accessibility awareness that happens throughout the globe.
8:06 Remember as well I want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I mentioned here, or anything else that you feel that I need to discuss when trying to internationalize our accessibility conversations please do let me know.
8:22 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you would like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I will try to include as many of these suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 25 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a great week!