In Their Own Words (Part 2): Key Takeaways From Presenters at the University of Guelph’s 2021 Virtual Accessibility Conference

In May, I had a chance to join another member of the Sakai community, Shawn, to participate in a virtual accessibility conference hosted by the University of Guelph.

The 2021 Annual Accessibility Conference featured 30 concurrent sessions, bonus workshops, plenary panel discussions, and a keynote presentation over three information-packed days.

In part 2 of our conference recap, Shawn and I continue to highlight some of those sessions that we were able to experience first-hand, and subsequently wanted to share with other members of the Sakai community by including a few of the key points, quotes, and other excerpts from the presenters/sessions that really stood out to us. The following is a compilation of key takeaways from each of those sessions, based on our combined notes. We’ve resisted trying to editorialize or paraphrase the presenters’ comments, and are instead presenting the information “as is”, as a series of transcribed sound bites so you too can experience some of the knowledge and expertise conveyed by the various subject-matter experts, in their own words. Enjoy!

If you missed the first installment in this 4-part blog series, you can view Part 1 here… 

Deciphering Essential Requirements in the Post-Secondary Setting 

In this self-described “unconference” session, speakers from the University of Waterloo, Christine Zaza (Center for Extended Learning) and Trevor Holmes (Center for Teaching Excellence) described how a project to develop a teaching resource for explaining essential requirements, challenged their team to re-examine conventional thinking about the relationship between essential requirements, learning outcomes, and accommodations, especially as institutions grapple with how to apply these often complex, and sometimes contradictory concepts in a post-secondary learning environment.

Christine: “Essential requirements are the knowledge and skills that must be required or demonstrated in order for a student to successfully meet the learning objectives of that course or program. So the key word here is “must”. Simply put in education, essential requirements are the knowledge and skills that all students must demonstrate with or without using accommodations. So, keywords here are, must be able to demonstrate these knowledge and skills, regardless of whether they're using accommodations or not. The accommodations are used to help people to be able to meet the essential requirements. So, the potential requirements themselves have some key characteristics […] they are described as the bona fide requirements of a course or a program [...] we're looking at the program level as well. And they are the same for all students. They're not altered or compromised by the use of accommodations. That's really important. And I think that's something that some instructors might need reminders of, that accommodations don't make things easier. The essential requirements are the same for everyone in the course.”

Trevor: “essential requirements might feed into how one constructs learning outcomes, rather than being the same as the learning outcomes. So, a few key differences, we have a table here where we compare, on the left-hand side, the essential requirements, to on the right-hand side, maybe the learning outcomes of a course. So essential requirements are must have, learning outcomes could be must have, as well as some nice to have elements. Essential requirements, as Chris said, are not fundamentally altered by the accommodation. So, they need to be achievable, whether accommodated or not. Now, learning outcomes might be achievable in more of a variety of ways. So essential requirements must be fully met by all successful students with or without accommodations, not meeting them implies failure. Learning outcomes can be met to varying degrees and in various ways. And by that, I mean, we do have ... Most of our grading is done on a scale rather than a pass or fail system. So, at the end of the day, you can have an average in your degree program or your diploma. You get a 55 or you get a 95 in a course or a 75. How does that relate to learning outcomes? Have you met the learning outcomes mostly? Have you met them all? Whereas essential requirements are really a go, no go kind of bar. So, that, in our minds, was one of the ways that we thought through the differences.” 

Christine: “That leads to the question, how are essential requirements assessed? And I think this was maybe the most murky area that we came to, because there’s really not a clear guideline to navigate this question. In fact, we ended up having more questions than answers at the end of the day, when we were looking into this. Here are some of our questions. Are essential requirements used for setting the bar for a minimum grade required to pass the course or stay in the program? We don't know. We don't know if curriculum designers are using essential requirements in that way. Second question, are essential requirements used in course design? Again, is this something that is on an instructor's radar when they are designing their courses and writing their learning outcomes? Are they making that distinction between learning outcomes and essential requirements? Or do they consider them one and the same? Do instructors consider essential requirements when they write intended learning outcomes for a course or program? As Trevor mentioned, from what we've gleaned from reading the literature, as best as we could derive, it seems that essential requirements are directing the learning outcomes, but is that the way it happens in practice? We don't know. How and when our essential requirements communicated to students? And I think one reason that we have that question is that we both are familiar with the situation where a student in the middle of a program, second or third year, came across an essential requirement that that student could not meet and there was no appropriate accommodation that would help enable that student to reach that essential requirement. Did that student know what the essential requirements were before enrolling in a program? Well, probably not. Otherwise, they wouldn't have devoted two or three years to that program. So, when are these communicated to students? When should they be? I would argue they should be presented before a student enrolls in a program so that they know what is expected very clearly. But again, what we've learned from the literature and what we see in practice are perhaps two different things.”

Trevor: “I want to pick up on this idea of, do people even use these or think of them or communicate them well? And it goes back to that question of genuine and good faith engagement with learners, and learning, and outcomes, and so on. I do find that sometimes when we talk about essential requirements for jobs and workplaces and for courses in higher ed, it can have a negative valence to it in the sense that it can become a gatekeeping thing. If I identify the essential requirements correctly, I can keep out, and keep excluding differences. And from a disability studies perspective, I think that's one of the ways that institutions maintain their norms. And what we're suggesting on the other hand instead, is to have a genuine conversation about what kinds of affordances we can have for that difference that enriches us, and make sure that the essential requirements are there as the right kind of gatekeeping in a discipline, rather than a negative kind of gatekeeping in a discipline.”

Trevor: “[…] the investment of this time and effort, often done through some kind of teaching grant or through some kind of partnership with IT services or whatever, repays all of the investment beyond this single accommodation. We've noticed this in our pivot to online or remote teaching, and that some of the investment we've made to make learning objects or things that are like, really richer, multimedia wise, will pay off for many more than a single accommodated student. So even if you're designing for one, which I often recommend, rather than universal design, it seems to me that this will have an unanticipated benefit later if you can convince the right people to help you make these kinds of interventions.” 

Key Takeaways:

#essentialRegardlessOfAbility

#goOrNoGoBar

#knowBeforeYouEnroll

#accommodationsBenefitTheMany

Expressing Differences in User Capability 

In his presentation, Bob Dodd from Frontier Accessibility introduced the concept of expressing differences in user capabilities, and drew on experiences from his professional career and research conducted during a PhD in Self Adapting User Interfaces to show how these differences can actually be used to “drive the adaptation of a user interface to match user needs and preferences.”

Bob: “We need to know so much about the user to really optimize these interfaces to work properly for people, particularly those with mobility impairments. And you don't really get that out of the configuration that you get in assistive tech these days. If you look at ... If you go to Windows and look at the accessibility settings, if you go to a browser and look at the accessibility settings, they're very functional based. They're not about the person. There's very little that's going into the configuration on Windows that would help work out how to optimize the wheel for a particular individual, at all.”

Bob: “You can't really have a profile that's based on individual applications, because people keep finding new applications to add. But now that you've configured it, now it's in that profile, and the profile will just grow, and grow, grow, whilst their capabilities as a human being, haven't changed one bit. And that's always the problem with this configuration-based approach to accessibility that we have, that we keep saying, ‘Oh, well, how do we configure this machine?’ And it's all about function. It's never about the person. What we want is for the system to adapt to the user, to come in to understand the user, and do stuff. Why does the user have to understand the algorithm and set all these minor little settings, just to make the app work? The system should be able to do that based on its understanding of that.”

Bob: “So, I have a model of how a game operates, and the information that's inside it. I have tables that describe the properties of the user. We've come up with the idea of having audio metaphors that maybe can be applied to the interaction concepts that are going to be used for the game. Somehow you need to bring those together to build an individual application. So, that's what I would call a content driven modality selection. So, with that, we're going to describe the content and behavior independent of implementation. That's my system model. We're going to identify appropriate metaphors and modalities for each part of the content. We're going to describe the capabilities of users, and that's those tables that we were talking about. And then, we're going to describe each metaphor or modality that the user interface understands in terms of those needed capabilities, so that the runtime system can take the required metaphors and modalities needed for the game and match them to those modalities that the user is capable of using based on their capability model.” 

Bob: “Hopefully it's given you a feel for the difference between configuring an application to a particular assistive technology. And that's still important to know. It's still important to know that a user likes to use a screen reader, and what the settings of the screen reader are. And also, you need the other side. You need to know more about the user themselves, if you're going to use all of the user's capabilities. Because […] if you're low vision, that means you do have some vision, and you want to maximize the use of that user's vision. If you're hearing impaired, if you have some hearing, you want to be able to use that hearing, presumably. So, to maximize the fact that there are these interfaces that are available, you have to understand the user, and that requires a different type of modeling”

Key Takeaways:

#humanFocusedConfiguration

#contentDrivenModalitySelection

#tetrisForTheBlind

#designedToMaximizeAbility

If Your Eyes Could Speak

In this session, audio description pioneer Joel Snyder from AudioDescribe provided a hands (and “ears”) on demonstration of how the practice of audio description can be used to convey the visual world to those who are not able to see it, and how the addition of spoken word can actually enrich the experience for all, beyond just those people with sight impairment.

Joel: “At the bottom of the slide, American Audio Description symbol, and there is a logo there, a white square within which are two letters in bold, black type, an A and a D. The left side of that A is tilted just a bit to the right, and to the right of the curve in the D, three curved lines. Period. Ah, why do I say that? Well, because many beginning describers would tend to, perhaps, go on and add something like, ‘They represent sound waves,’ you see. True enough, but there's nothing on the slide here that indicates that for sighted people. Why would you add that in the audio description? Perhaps as a simile, ‘Oh, they resemble or they look like a sound wave,’ something like that, curves, but the idea that you would add something to teach the people listening, no, no, no. We don't teach. We do, but as a byproduct. We describe, we don't explain. We show. We don't tell. At best, adding something like that could be, it's just unnecessary. At worst, it could seem condescending or patronizing. Why wouldn't a person who is blind, low vision know about curved lines? Sure, they would. They grew up in the world, and they know all kinds of things that all of us know. They are us. They will be us at some point in our lives.”

Joel: “Audio description is a literary art form. It's about words. I think of it as a kind of poetry. In fact, I'll narrow that further, a haiku, maybe. I say that because we use as few words, I believe, to provide a verbal version of the visual. The visual is made verbal and aural, A-U-R-A-L, he points to his ear, an oral, O-R-A-L, he points to his mouth. Using words that are succinct, vivid, and imaginative, we convey the visual image that is not fully accessible to a segment of the population. Just in the United States, new estimates from the American Foundation for the Blind put that number at over 31 million Americans alone who are blind or have difficulty seeing even with correction. That's 8% of the population. That would be comparable in Canada as well, I'm sure. Of course, it's for the rest of us, the rest of us sighted folks who don't fully realize the visual image. Sighted folks who see, but don't observe. By the way, disability, what does that mean exactly? I'm an all-sighted guy. I'm the guy who if the lights go out, I'm looking for a blind person to be with. I have a disability. I am light-dependent. Yeah. So, something to think about. It's useful, then, for anyone who wants to truly notice and appreciate a more full perspective on the visual, especially helpful as an access tool for people who are blind or have low vision.” 

Joel: “As you watch through the excerpt, consider the words used and why certain images were chosen for description and some singled out. Would you have singled out others? Description is often about what not to describe.”

Joel: “I have a true story for you. A blind fellow was visiting a museum in the United States with some friends. A sighted woman had the temerity to approach him and say, ‘Excuse me, but what are you doing in a museum? You can't see any of the exhibits.’ Well, he was a little taken aback, but his response, ‘I'm here for the same reason anyone goes to a museum. I want to learn. I want to know and be a part of our culture.’ His inability to see shouldn't deny him access to culture, and I believe it's the responsibility of all arts institutions, all public institutions in the US, in Canada, wherever, to be as inclusive as possible. It's all about access to culture. That's everyone's right. What it comes down to is there's simply no good reason why a person with a particular physical disability must also be culturally disadvantaged.” 

Joel: “We've been around 41 years, and we're still trying to catch up to captions. People know about captions. The video players that were created from the get-go had a toggle switch to turn captions on and off. Most video players do not have that toggle for audio description, but it's something we're lobbying for and having some success on, actually. But the solution has been to post two versions. Here is the regular version, and then here, if you want audio description, you click over here. Separate, but equal. That's the solution currently, but there are at least three, four video players out there that I think are getting greater prominence. All we need is for YouTube, Facebook and others to begin using those video players, and that'll do so much to spread the word about audio description.”

Key Takeaways:

#audioDescriptionIsALiteraryArtForm

#verbalVersionOfTheVisual

#lightDependentDisability

#descriptiveAudioEverywhere

#catchingUpToCaptions

Improving the Accessibility of Remote Higher Education: Lessons from the Pandemic and Recommendations

In their review of key findings from the HEQCO (Higher Education Quality Council) survey about accessible remote learning, speakers Jackie Pichette (Director of Research Policy and Partnership) and Sarah Brumwell (Senior Researcher) focused on some of the trends observed during this research project that could help to guide and inform the changes that will need to be implemented by higher-ed institutions and their faculty to ensure an accessible and equitable educational experience for all learners, including those with accessibility needs.

Jackie: “Around May of 2020, when we decided to embark on this research project, the impacts of COVID-19 on our post-secondary system were still evolving. At the time, we knew that, in general, vulnerable groups with intersecting identities including disabilities had faced disproportionate negative economic and health effects. There had been little investigation, though, into how the shift to remote delivery was affecting the learning experiences of post-secondary students from an accessibility standpoint. We sought to understand how students, and those with accessibility needs in particular, were experiencing the shift to remote learning.” 

Jackie: “Our study was focused on the winter semester of 2020, so the months following that initial shift to remote learning. The research questions guiding our work were, one, how did the shift to remote delivery affect the learning experiences of Ontario post-secondary students with accessibility needs? And secondly, what challenges have students, particularly those with accessibility needs encountered since the shift to remote learning? We later adapted this research question to include advantages, as we saw a number begin to emerge through our surveys and interviews.” 

Sarah: “One of the major challenges that we heard about had to do with students' uncertainty about how to access support, and also around course expectations. Now, it was particularly pronounced for students with disabilities once courses moved online, but students without disabilities also reported experiencing some difficulty in this area when courses moved to remote during COVID.”

Sarah: “This is a quote from one of our interviewees, a professor from an Ontario university. Hence, this professor really hits the nail on the head as to why students may have had some issues around certainty and uncertainty. This quote is in response to the question of what we can do to alleviate some of that uncertainty of the fall 2020 semester which was to occur online. The professor said, ‘It's crucial to be upfront and tell students what the course will be like, as many of them are struggling with uncertainty. If students are going to thrive, they need to pick courses that work best for them. What is the etiquette? What does the professor expect to do? Their whole experience has been blown out of the water, so for students to make their best choices, they need that information.’ For instance, is the course going to be synchronous or asynchronous? What platform will be used and how do students use it? This type of information is especially important for students, particularly with accessibility needs in order to make empowered choices about their education.”

Sarah: “Students said there's a lot of different reasons why it may have been difficult to access materials. For instance, for instructors, adapting your course format online quickly could be quite challenging, but there was also the issue of access to certain accommodations that may have been present in a physical space. Some of the staff we interviewed also highlighted just how difficult it was to arrange accommodations as things were moving online, especially if students hadn't previously registered with disability services. This was something we were particularly interested in. Some students may have discovered over the course of the shift to remote learning that while they did not necessarily need certain accessibility accommodations during in person classes, all of a sudden in a new remote environment, their needs suddenly changed and they had to figure out how to deal with that.”

Sarah: “Likewise, both students with and without disabilities experienced increased difficulties in communicating with other students when things shifted online. This proportion, again, slightly higher for students with disabilities than those without when we're looking at the proportions who disagreed and strongly disagreed and that's very understandable, whether you think about the fact that instead of having face-to-face conversations with your classmates and working in small groups, suddenly you're in this new environment and now it's bouncing ahead on its own…this is another thing that staff described as a challenge for students, that they needed to connect with remotely or for counseling. This was particularly challenging for students who have had to return to the family home, maybe they had a loss of privacy, they couldn't communicate as openly or as freely as they might have done in a school setting, or they may also have loss of access to certain resources like interpreters and such that may have made a difference in their ability to communicate.”

Sarah: “The thing is there are as many different difficulties as there are people who need access to disability accommodations. Everything is going to be different for each person and it will come down to their own needs and preferences. That is, of course, just going to be more pronounced for people with definitive accessibility needs.”

Jackie: “In our surveys and interviews we heard from students, instructors and staff about the many opportunities to improve the accessibility of higher education brought to light by the pandemic. To illustrate these advantages, we've chosen a selection of quotes from our interviews in the survey. Some of the individuals we spoke with have spent years advocating for more accessible education, asking for things like recorded lectures and the removal of participation grades, things that are now in many cases available as a result of the pandemic. One individual we spoke with graduated from an Ontario university prior to the pandemic and has since become a community advocate. They shared some examples of how inaccessible their education was. One of their classes, for instance, took place in an older building with an elevator that was regularly out of service. They often missed or were late for class and were docked participation grades and had no option to catch up on the material they missed because lectures were not recorded. This individual is hopeful that perhaps as a result of this pandemic and the advantages it's presented […] their story will be less common in the years ahead. This community advocate is quoted saying, ‘All of a sudden, the world became more accessible for people with disabilities because able-bodied people needed it too.’ Flexibility came up often as a major advantage of remote learning. We heard from staff in accessibility and counseling services that they're reaching more students than ever before as they deliver services by phone, video and even text. Many instructors are now recording or allowing students to record their lectures, something the student representatives we interviewed had advocated for long before the pandemic. Some instructors have also changed their approach to grading participation, moving away from awarding credit for showing up at a specific time. Some students who experienced mobility issues said that prior to the pandemic, they felt penalized by participation grades that were based on being physically present in class. Some students we spoke with also appreciated that instructors are now providing multiple options to demonstrate learning.”

Jackie: “Prior to the pandemic, students who may have preferred online courses had fewer options to select from. Some of the interviewees we spoke with hoped that post-pandemic, students who prefer online learning will continue to have a range of options to choose from in their programs.” 

Jackie: “We reminded students that post-secondary institutions are doing their best to support students during this incredibly uncertain time, but that does not mean that they will always get it right. Students need to advocate for themselves, to their representatives, their instructors and the staff offering support services. While we encouraged students to advocate for themselves and their peers, we also noted that this should be done tactfully and with empathy. Students need to know that their instructors and staff and institutions care about them and they're learning and that no one was prepared for this massive transition to remote learning.”

Key Takeaways:

#pandemicDisruptedLearning

#uncertaintyAffectsAllStudents

#setExpectationsUpfront

#advantagesToRemoteLearning

#newOptionsPostPandemic

Stay tuned for parts 3 & 4 of the conference recap…