Episode 42 Season Three Recap and How To Keep Fighting For 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 forty-two, and the season three of Accessagogy recap. It’s hard to believe that I have done three seasons of this podcast already. When I decided to do this in the spring of 2023, I would have had trouble believing that 2 years later I’m still making episodes, but also have trouble believing the reach that this little wee podcast is having. I look at the statistics on my website and I’m shocked at how many teaching and learning centres, and accessibility inclusion pages at colleges and universities are linking to this podcast as part of their resources or professional development opportunities. I recently noticed an uptick in clicks from Québec in the last months and it’s nice to see that my home province is taking accessibility seriously in different spaces.
1:22 For the third season in a row the most popular episode was episode 3 from season 1, the one about accessibility and accessible pedagogy not being just UDL. This is followed by an episode from this season, which is episode 31 on access friction, and then episode 28 on accessible rubrics. Many of you also liked my 2025 accessible pedagogy resolutions, and that means you’ll probably like this episode too because this episode I want to talk about what’s happening in higher ed right now, and what we can do over the summer (or the summer in North America) to keeping fighting for accessibility. Because we’re certainly at a time where fighting for accessibility needs to happen.
2:06 So I keep saying to folk that my LinkedIn right now is such a sad indication of the failure to value inclusion and accessibility in higher education space. So many of my colleagues and friends are being laid off because of lack of funding and moving priorities away from anything that’s close to equity and inclusion. And this is having some pretty disheartening impacts in different ways besides folk just losing their job. What I’m seeing happening more and more, is that folk who used to be pretty vocal advocates for accessibility and inclusion are being very quiet, disturbingly quiet in the different spaces that they’re in.
2:46 I know a lot of folk are choosing to not say anything anymore because they feel that the more they are visible, the more chance they have that they’ll be the next to lose their job. And I understand that; some of have children and you know other life responsibilities and you need to decide what you can and cannot do with the privilege that you may have in different contexts. But what is discouraging is the silencing is exactly what they want, that’s what the systems want.
3:15 For example, I was in a session at a teaching and learning conference last week online and the chat was absolutely silence, crickets. No emojis, no lols, no ha’s, no nothing. It was like the very essence of the reason of folk get together had been forgotten. We are in different and difficult times for sure, but when you spend time on social media you often see memes that say things like, hey have you ever wondered what you would have done in the 1940s well you’re probably doing it now. And I mean yes. Difficult times are when you see what folk will do and the choices that they make around ethics and values that align to accessibility and inclusion for example. It’s when you see folk reflect on what is doable and possible within the spaces and the restrictions that we find ourselves in.
4:03 A lot of the conversations I have been having are about scaling up accessibility. And I’ll link to an episode page, a conversation that I had about scaling up at another, in another podcast called Podagogies (because we like clever podcast names Canadians). But in times when classes are getting larger, and teaching teams are getting smaller, how do we support accessibility? How do we still show that we care about inclusion? And there are definitely pedagogical design and curricular things that can be done to support this. But this is the thing, in our GenerativeAI world everyone is looking for a single solution to the issue, and that nuance and context means that a single solution is not going to work for everyone.
4:48 Accessibility design in a 1000 student large lecture hall, is going to necessarily look different than accessibility design in a 300-student lecture, or even a 40 person upper year seminar. And when you take signature pedagogies into account, the kind of this is how we do it in our discipline stuff, then it’ll look even more different. And this is okay, and in fact that’s how it should be. And as I’ve mentioned many times in many episodes, there’s this tendency towards one-size fits all, and that one-size fits all embeds even more accessibility barriers for learners.
5:25 And it’s this same tendency towards one-size fits all that we’re seeing right now. Apparently, the vibe is quiet, and apparently quiet is the only way that you’re supposed to do accessibility advocacy in 2025. And I’m here to say no, quiet is a choice, and yes there are times for quiet, but there’s are also times for real loud. And so I would like to give you a few things that you could do to keep fighting for accessibility in the spaces that you’re in and not be part of the wave of quiet.
5:59 So One. Vote, in everything that you can. If you are in the position for voting for a thing, vote in a way that is inclusive of accessibility and inclusion informed. So for example your union representatives, your city counsellors, your departmental representatives on different committees, your church wardens, your professional association boards, the pope (okay maybe not the pope, because there was one just elected) but you get the idea. The more we support folk who will not be quiet in those spaces, who will say the things in the chat that need to be said, who will say the things in the room when no one else will, the more accessibility will be pushed forward instead of erased.
6:42 Two. With every generative AI conversation that you’re having, have an equally robust conversation about accessibility. And if you don’t see how those two things are connected you need to go back to episode 36. Tech solutionism without conversations about accessibility and inclusion is one of the main motivators for the silence that we’re having right now. Folk think that the robots are gonna take over the things that ethical humans should be talking about and deciding. Have those conversations. Ask the folk that are coming to your space with their shiny new tech in the request for proposals demo all the hard accessibility questions that they probably don’t have answers for. Ask them about captions, ask them about keyboard navigation, ask them about colour contrast settings, and if they say hey we’ll get back to you that means no one is actually asking them those hard questions in the first place.
7:37 And Three. Attend your disciplinary meetings or conferences if you can and highlight the accessibility and inclusion barriers to the organizers. Not just in passing conversation over wine and cheese, put it in and email, in writing, with a paper trail, so they cannot deny being told this time and again so they can make it better for next year. And you can also put yourself on the organizing committee, not to do the heavy lifting for them, but to be the reminder of the things that are left to be done. And also if you happen to be giving a paper or facilitating a workshop in that space, make sure that you have those accessibility conversations as part of the paper, even if it’s not the topic. Accessibility is foundational, and when you make it foundational in the way that you present, others will see that.
8:26 I’m going to be at Congress this year, which is the big Canadian social sciences and humanities conference that happens every year. This is the first time that I’m going back to Congress in a long time because they had made it very clear for so long that accessibility was not a priority there. However, this year you can really see that they’re putting some work in making the whole event more accessible, from the supports that they have in place to the kind of questions that they’re asking folk when they register.
8:53 At Congress I’m giving a paper for CSSHE (which is the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher education), I’m also giving a paper for ACCUTE (which is the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English), and I’m supposed to be give a paper for OTESSA but I’m starting to doubt that that conference is even going to happen. So I’ll be in Toronto at George Brown College for a few days end of May beginning June, so if you’re around and you want to meet up or chat or you want to be on the look out for me and my mask – it’ll probably be black, or purple, or maybe my white mask that has a see-through window for lip readers- if you see me please say hi, I’d love to chat.
9:33 So that’s it, that’s episode 42 of Accessagogy, with a bit of a recap of the episodes that you liked this season and a bit of guidance on how to keep accessibility as part of the agenda in the spaces that you’re in over the summer.
9:46 I’ll be taking a bit of a break over the summer, as I attend some conferences and try to take some holiday time to recharge my batteries. She says hopefully. I hope to see some of you at Congress at the end of the month, but if I don’t please feel free to reach out. Because as always I want this to be a space where we can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that you would like me to focus on in season 4 when I start up again at the end of August or beginning September please ask.
10:15 You can send any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d like me to address in the podcast, in an email to Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I’ll 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 42 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along this season and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a great summer and I’ll be back in about three month’s time!