Episode 52- Checklists and 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 fifty-two. In today’s episode, I want to talk about the obsession that folk have with the concept of a checklist when it comes to doing any kind of accessibility work or talking about accessibility. I want to reflect on the possible whys that motivate a checklist response to accessibility, and provide some options in ways that we can disrupt that frame so that we can have a more holistic understanding of how we view accessibility and how we support accessible pedagogy in higher education.
1:07 I am thinking about checklists now, but to be honest I think about checklists a lot, because it has come up a lot in the conversations that I’ve had with folk both inside and outside of my institution, and also in community spaces. I have some suspicions as to where this need for a checklist comes from, and I think part of it is deeply embedded in the unknown. If people are asked to think about accessibility or accessible pedagogy, but they’ve never reflected on what inclusive design could look like or did a review of the barriers that could be in their educational spaces, the reaction will of course be, well can you provide me a checklist of things that I should be looking for?
1:54 And this is of course is a valid reaction, especially if you don’t know what you are looking for. You need a place to start, you can’t expect people to just randomly know what to look for or how to approach a barrier to design and to design things more inclusively if they’ve never done this before. So where the issue lies though is when there is more of a belief that somehow if they get through the checklist, that they can randomly call it a day and say that they’ve successfully become inclusive or accessible in their thinking and their work. And of course that’s not true.
2:31 So there’s different pressures that are at play here. One pressure is to learn about something that you may not know anything about and then try to implement that because some one is telling you to do a thing. And of course it has to be the right someone right? Some folk will not act on accessibility barriers unless the right person tells them they have to do it. This is where this stereotype that is very much centred around well conversations around well if I get sued or fined then you know I’ll do a thing, but until then I won’t. Instead of a desire to want to make things more inclusive so that things open up and we can open up that educational space to more folk.
3:14 So that is one pressure, right? So the pressure to kind of learn about a thing they don’t know. But also connected to that pressure is this idea of getting it “right” in quotation marks, or in air quotes, because of this deep perfectionism that seems to be present in higher education. So a checklist can in some ways help support this work for people who are approaching this for the first time. It can be a guide on what to look for, and what I’m advocating for here, which I will get to in a moment, is more of a reflection piece as opposed to a checklist. So it’s not like, getting it right, so much as let’s reflect on some things we can change.
3:54 And the pressure here of course time. Time is always a pressure, right? But time as a pressure works in different ways. One time pressure is connected to this checklist idea is that the checklist will highlight what needs to be done in a more immediate fashion and then it’ll get it done, maybe, and then they can go back to the other things they need to do because in austerity times a one and done model is pretty much all that we can acknowledge in terms of workload conversations.
4:26 The other side of the time pressure, though, is of course for folk who are experiencing the actual accessibility barrier, that the longer it takes for something to be reviewed, and something to be changed, the longer it means that they cannot engage in the space or in the ideas or in the work that they’re having a barrier to.
4:44 The other origin story for the checklist obsession I think is honestly from Universal Design for Learning framework. Originally the pieces of UDL were identified as checklist items, and this gave folk the impression that this was something that needed to check off, and they needed to do all of the things, which was of course was incredibly overwhelming to those new to UDL. And also kinda misunderstood the philosophy and the pedagogy behind UDL. And Tobin and Behling, I’ll link to their book in the show episode notes, supported a more realistic approach to UDL with this plus one thinking model, that we should add one more choice or one more idea or one more UDL element to the course design, instead of thinking of checking off all of the things on a list. But I think that even the visual structure of how the principles and the guidelines are presented like a chart, for example, can give folk the impression that this is checklist work.
5:39 So what do we do about this vibe that everyone wants a checklist? Well One, I think the first thing that needs to happen is that folk need to be told that accessibility is not one and done work and it never will be. There needs to be more conversations about the dynamic nature of disability, and that if you’ve met one disabled person you have met one disabled person, and that even folk with the same diagnoses may have accessibility support needs that are different each day. We are not robots, at least not yet. So the more we emphasize that this is continual work, the more we can then start to dismantle the primacy of this need for a checklist.
6:19 Two, we need to reframe asks for checklists as actual open ended formative reflection questions. Instead of saying look at the font type, look at the alt texts, the captions those kinds of things we first need to get folk to reflect on how they themselves interact with materials, resources, and conversations. What do they need as learners? Do they assume that what they need is going to be same as what everyone else needs? Have they ever had a time where they needed something that wasn’t present? Has the modality of delivery ever impacted how they could engage, and if so why?
6:58 These kinds of reflective questions need to be there first before any sort of checklist document is provided because these kinds of questions open them up to possibilities, and possibilities that different resource needs exist why. Folk need to know why they are asked to do something, or the impact of what they are doing, before you can expect them to change or bring in choice. And this allows us to bring in those why conversations beyond opportunities to talk about legislation, and because the legislation says so, because sure it does, but this is also about the day-to-day interaction and how we are actively excluding folk with the choices we make, and sometimes we don’t even know that we’re doing it.
7:42 And three, and finally, it’s only when those formative questions are there, and that the reflection has been done that we can even get to a conversation about anything that vaguely looks like a checklist, and then reinforce how again that this of course high level things they could look for, and that there will always be folk that they meet that may need something that is actually even being considered right now in that conversation and so they need to be open to that as well.
8:09 So basically what I’m trying to emphasize here is that I totally get this want for a checklist, and it absolutely is motivated by a lack of knowing about a thing, or a fear around time pressures or constraints or getting right. But that also means that they want this sometimes to be one and one work and that’s not great. What I’m emphasizing here is that we really need to have a conversation about scaffolding this a bit more. To remind folk that this is and never will never be one and done work, and I know that could be incredibly frustrating for folk to hear, in high efficiency KMPG times, but that’s the truth. And it’s only when folk know that this work has to be foundational, that these are considerations that are part of all the work that we do, that any guidance or support that they may need from a checklist, will be provided because if the people are not immersed in accessibility space or accessibility work, then I can see how something like that could be valuable.
9:09 So that’s it, that’s episode 52 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of how everyone wants a checklist, but maybe what we need to ask first is where this desire for a checklist comes from, and how we can reframe that conversation.
9:22 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 checklisting, and conversations, and about the need for a checklist, and this kind of one and done work, please ask.
9:36 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 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 52 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a good week.