Episode 29- Accessible EdTech
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.
0:34 Welcome to episode twenty-nine. For this episode, I changed my idea a few times in an attempt to find out what the nugget or kernel of what I wanted to talk about was. And then I had the opportunity to modify a bit again since my neighbours have not allowed me a moment of quiet in the last week to record this episode. So ultimately, I knew what I wanted to chat about and what I wanted to chat about was educational technology and educational technology use that’s accessible, yet there was something more to this and I think I want to go a bit deeper into the idea of accountability and who is accountable for the accessibility of the educational technology that we use.
1:18 So working in higher education does come with some benefits. And one of the benefits is that you are not necessarily alone to make these difficult decisions when it comes to the different kinds of technology, and testing those technologies to make sure that those choices align to your course or even the program that your course is part of. So some of the things that I want to distill in this episode are reflection points but also people and resources that you could call on when it comes to using educational technologies in an accessible manner. I will try to organize them in a series of steps to help support a workflow and your decision-making process. This can be applicable to those that are just starting on this decision process but also maybe reviewing a course design or maybe even thinking about tools for future semester use.
2:10 So Step one. Think about where you feel the educational technology can support what you are doing in the class. Is this something that you’re thinking about in terms of content delivery, maybe adding more multimodal elements to your course or to the learning management system shell, or maybe this is something to add a little bit more engagement or different kinds of activities for learners. Having an idea where, if any, the educational technology can support the class is definitely a first step so that you don’t end up with a spackled use of technology, where the tech use is here and there but it doesn’t seem to be cohesive and is only there to kind of fill in the holes.
2:54 Step two. Once you have a bigger idea of what the educational technology could be used for, for example, do you want digital annotation practice for reflections or maybe even note taking assistance, this would be a great time to reach out to your teaching and learning centre, or your educational technologist, or instructional designer on staff and to talk about the ideas that you have.
3:18 If you happen to be at a college or a university that doesn’t have someone who does that kind of work or even a place like that, then you can definitely reach out to the HigherEd community and float your questions. Now before the place to ask those questions used to be Twitter; and people would go on there and say hey have any of you used insert name of cool tool here or insert name of software here and then gave a bit of the context of their course, and then they would wait for the answers to come in from peers. Now some of those places that you can ask questions can be LinkedIn, depending on what area of LinkedIn you seem to be in or other social media platforms that you find yourself on. There also could be microcommunities like webinars or asynchronous discussion forums where you can ask those kinds of questions. Folk will guide you in different ways and maybe give you a suggestion for something different that you haven’t even considered.
4:16 Step three. Check the accessibility of your options and think of a plan B for learners where this tool use will simply not work for them. Basically, what I’m asking you to do here is to think bigger picture and realize that you will not be in a situation where you will always have a classroom of learners that will use and be able to use every technology that you ask them to use. Every tech has limitations and as the instructor you need to be aware of what those limitations are.
4:48 Now I know that technology is hard to think about in terms of all the permutations and combinations and so that’s why step two is important. But you don’t have to do this alone; there are a lot of folk out there that would be happy to talk about contexts where things didn’t work for learners, and maybe support you in lines of thought that you haven’t even considered. An example of a use case that comes with learning barriers, is that infinite scroll that some white board applications have and that can give learners vertigo. And that’s just one example.
5:20 Step four. Look for the VPAT and read it. VPAT stands for voluntary product accessibility template, and it is something that every technology or tool should have. And if you have trouble finding one for the tech you are using or thinking of using that is probably not a great sign. I have heard of companies gatekeeping VPATs behind log ins or giving folk trouble to actually get it and I am of the mind that if it’s really that difficult to see how accessible their product is or if there is something that they really want to hide then chances are their product isn’t accessible.
5:57 Usually your educational technology or IT folk at your school would be the people that would go through the VPAT and read through that documentation when they’re thinking of having a technology be part of the suite of tools at your institution. The VPAT is an important part of the procurement process. And so I guess you’re asking yourself, okay so why am I suggesting that you should read it too? And it’s because it’s important for you to know what those documents say and get used to kind of language around accessibility and compliance.
6:30 It would make it a lot easier for you to use a tool with confidence and again give yourself more accountability for those pedagogical choices than to offload that responsibility to other people. One of the things that I’ve discovered about accessibility work is that it’s really easy to offload responsibility to other people and then the work never gets done. The deliverable and accessibility itself is perpetually down the road, or off the screen.
6:55 It’s not my responsibility some of you will say. Well actually it is, it’s all our responsibility, and it would be lovely if we start acting like that in HigherEd and in different eduspaces, like in conference or webinar planning. I know we’re all really stretched thin in many many ways and time and money constraints mean that we don’t have time for these kinds of things, but part of being an inclusive pedagogue is looking at this work holistically, and that means knowing or at least reading what’s under the hood of some of these technologies and making informed decisions so that you know the whys to the what that you would like to use.
7:36 Step five. Have fun. And I’m going to end with this step because I know that the other steps really seem serious and actually the opposite of fun but I think that being creative with your course design can be a really inclusive choice, and there needs to be some sort of fun reason as to why you’re thinking of using the ed tech in the first place, besides well well because it’s there, right? Will it increase engagement? Will it allow for feedback or sharing of information in different ways or for learners. There has to be really pedagogical sound reasons but also fun reasons to make these decisions. I just would like them to be accessible reasons too, and so, and I am sure the learners would love for you to make those accessible decisions as well. And you know who else would love that? The accessibility folk at your institution. So have fun but make accessible pedagogical choices around your ed tech.
8:37 So that’s it, that’s episode 29 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of educational technology and the kind of steps that you can consider to make sure that the tech that you’re bringing into the classroom is accessible to learners and appropriate to the context of your course and your learning outcomes.
8:53 Remember 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 in specific around educational technology and accessibility that you’d like me to talk about, please do let me know.
9:08 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d 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 29 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a great week!