[Athen] The accessibility issues nobody's discussing

Deborah Armstrong armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu
Fri May 8 08:52:02 PDT 2020


****Rant Mode on ******


As I take my Spanish class and talk with students using online platforms, there are a few accessibility issues that keep coming up. I see all sorts of training a bout equity and preventing racism, but what about people who can't work in a synchronous class as fast as able-bodied folk? I think we are being ignored in all this talk of equity!

Issue No. 1: shared screens. It's obvious that it's a problem for people like me who use screen readers, but traditional online classes don't use this feature so much. In a traditional online class, the instructor typically has slides, videos and handouts that a student can download and study ahead of time. So when class is in session, even when it is synchronous, the student has the slides-handout-whatever to look at separate from the zoom window. And it is assumed they studied this material.

In my Spanish class and in many other courses where the instructor is more comfortable with face-to-face instruction, much of the in-class effort revolves around a shared screen. The instructor plays a video that's not available to download. Or he puts a handout up onscreen for the class to discuss together, and of course it isn't offered anywhere else. Or, my Spanish teacher flips through all the handouts she's got on her PC , randomly putting one up onscreen for us to discuss together. I keep telling her I need to know ahead of time, so now she tells me about two minutes before the handout is displayed. Then I have to frantically scramble through my email where she's helpfully attached the file 15 seconds ago, open the attachment and find where she's pointing in her shared screen!

Shared screens aren't accessible to me, but even when I have the handout in another window, I have a problem shared by many of our students. And for many it causes great anxiety. Luckily I take courses for personal enrichment but if I was depending on a good grade, I'd have anxiety too!

You have to look at the material, then flip back to the zoom window, find the mute/unmute button, press it, make your aural contribution, remute yourself, flip back to the handout - it's exhausting! And if the instructor calls on you, you have to unmute, find the passage he's referring to, make your comment, re-mute, and do it all with everyone waiting!

This just doesn't happen in traditional online classes where it's expected you've reviewed this material before and won't have to constantly look at it while discussing it. I know, I've taken a ton of online classes.

So can you remind instructors that having to keep multiple windows open and flip back and forth constantly muting and unmuting while trying to concentrate on the learning is nerve-wracking! It's not just my problem, I'm hearing from lots of students with varying disabilities who are having the same issue.

Issue no. 2: How-tos. I get email from students who can't find their class recordings, can't figure out how to play recordings, can't figure out how to submit an assignment, can't figure out how to post in a discussion etc. And I know we're seeing that everywhere. Only a small subset of folk cope well with written instructions. They need to see a video of people demonstrating the task or better yet, have someone help them.

I know here in the CA community college system, our local online ed and the CVC-OEI have some great videos on these topics, but how to find them? What instructors really need to do, especially for visual learners is to always post a link to a video demonstrating how to perform a Canvas task. So if the instructor says "use conferzoom to join my class" then they need to follow it with a link to a captioned and clearly explained video that shows that task. If the instructor says "post your comments about this chapter on my discussion board for chapter 3" they need to include a link to a how-to video showing justhow.

Often instead, the instructor links to a generic site like the college's student portal for online learning. There, the student has to sort through lots of text and links to find the one video they need that shows them how to perform a specific task. I'm good at this sort of thing, finding information and following instructions. Few students are.

Issue no 3: Expectations. I think having low expectations leads to lazy learning. One reason so much is done in-class in synchronous fashion is that instructors expect that people haven't done their homework. It would be better to assume they have, and if they have not, they snooze they loose. This doesn't mean you don't offer help, but you keep your expectations high. For example, one assignment could simply be for everyone to post questions about the previous assignment: "tell me one thing you didn't understand when you were preparing the homework". This invites people not to be perfect but to still be engaged. If you expect people to get their work done you can spend class time reviewing the work rather than actually trying to do it!

Issue no. 4: Organization: the more organized an instructor is, the better learning experience. I know many faculty are just trying to keep up now, but being organized is more important I believe than anything else. If that means one less quiz is posted because the instructor spent his time creating a class calendar for the entire quarter, or that one assignment is graded late, I still think that being organized is the best accessibility tool that an instructor can offer. This means having a calendar that shows what is due when. It means posting every piece of material that will be used in class a few days before the class meeting. It means having a forum on Canvas for questions students can ask the instructor. It means organizing everything in modules according to each instructional week rather than posting the entire course content as a ton of announcements. It means offering a consistent format for assignments and handouts. It means being consistent with message threads - for example, not having the class all respond in one single long thread to a variety of posts.

It means having multiple short handouts rather than something as long as this email!

***Rant Mode OFF***
P.S. feel free to forward!

--Debee



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman12.u.washington.edu/pipermail/athen-list/attachments/20200508/fee5a2a5/attachment.html>


More information about the athen-list mailing list