Episode 48- Towards Accessible Podcasting
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-eight. In today’s episode, which may be a bit of a mini-sode, I want to reflect on what accessible podcasting can mean in 2025. And it’s inspired by being in a Zoom meeting this week with Hannah McGregor and Brenna Clarke Gray. Two humans that I have not been able to interact with for a very long time because social media platforms have done its carefully calculated social media thing and all the places where we would interact almost daily are not the places where I find myself anymore and they are not in the places where I do find myself.
1:10 But being in that space with them listening to a conversation about podcasting and podcasting choices made me deeply reflect on what accessible podcasting means to me. And of course it’s complicated, and of course it’s not going to be the same for everyone, and I think that’s kinda the point. And it’s the point that I kinda want to put across in this episode, which is that accessible multimodal content creation has to be meaningfully accessible to the creator, but also meaningfully accessible to the intended audience.
1:45 And this is important to reflect on because we’re seeing some pretty innovative assessment design happening in relation to large language model use and generative AI, and this mysterious word that folk want to float around HigherEd right now because it wants to make it seem like a glorified insurance companies which is assurance.
2:09 So if you are planning on having students do a multimodal assignment, or some sort of scaffolded assignment which may include a podcast or something similar as one of the final parts of that scaffold to demonstrate their learning outcomes and skills and knowledge, what accessibility pieces need to be put in place beforehand? That’s what this episode is about.
2:34 So one, I feel the accessibility of the tech is an assumption and it is an assumption that is going to be sort of key to this. So, if you’re lucky to have a space like a digital or tech resource library or a makerspace at your institution where students can use the tech and the programs and the space to do the podcasting pieces, how accessible is that space? And also, how user friendly are those tools and software?
3:08 I say this because this connects to many conversations that I’ve had in relation to this podcast, which is I know that the sound could be soundier, (is that a word) but I’ve also explained why I do it the way that I do which is that I have tinnitus and that makes editing audio a little bit more difficult for me, and two I honestly cannot maintain that cognitive load and frankly the stress of having to play around with bobbles and trinkets to make my podcast sound like those NPR Delicious Dish Skit humans from Saturday Night Live. And if you have no idea what that super old cultural reference is that I’m making here, I welcome you to Google Betty White Dusty Muffin SNL. You’re welcome.
4:02 But I digress, which I guess is not good for accessible podcasting practice, but here we are. If the learners can have access to the tools is there support or clear guidance on how to do the recording and editing? These are important questions, and they are pretty foundational to assessment decisions involving podcasts.
4:24 Then two, are you expecting a certain kind of audio and are you grading them on that? Please tell me you’re not grading them on that. Because accessible podcasting can be a real way for some learners to express their knowledge and research in a way that’s meaningful to them, but it can also highlight their personality and who they are.
4:47 And so this takes me to three, which is something that I have thought a lot about after that Zoom meeting which is how does editing an episode happen? And do certain kinds of accessibility and inclusion work happen around that editing piece? And this can include the kinds of resources that are provided supplemental to the episode, afterwards and so on. It has me thinking about oral and aural culture and how those kinds of things are very contextual and personal and some may have an understanding of what “good audio” is in quotation marks and what “good audio” sounds like, but honestly that may not be good audio for everyone. In fact, that’s why so many folk are so happy to see transcripts for podcasts because those transcripts can then help supplement the accessibility of the podcast.
5:47 And then four, and finally, it’s important to reinforce the lack of perfection and how lack of perfection is okay. I mean there’s no such thing as a perfect podcast when it comes to audio or content, at least that is what I think. There’s always something more that could be added, there is always some different that could have been done in the editing process. And that is really important to reinforce, because we’re in a time where ed tech companies and tech companies in general want to sell folk a perfection machine as an app, erasing the humanity erasing the relationality out of the ways that we communicate. It’s important to emphasize that the relational is also often what makes it accessible. I’m not going to risk being in community with anyone or anything for that matter, that cannot relate back to the human in me, and that human makes mistakes and we learn from those mistakes and we will always make mistakes and that’s what makes us human.
6:51 Expecting perfection out of humans, creators, students, products, is frankly a capitalist trick that doesn’t have a place in ethical or inclusive pedagogy.
7:04 So that’s it, that’s episode 48 of Accessagogy, with a reflection on what elements can help make for accessible podcasting and how that is something to consider both for the creators, but also for the audience whether they are intended or wonderfully accidental.
7:22 Remember as well that 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, about accessible podcasting, both as content creation and sharing as assessment or knowledge sharing in academe in general, please ask.
7:39 As always if there is 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 48 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a good week.