Intro notes

 Introduction 

#The legal digital accessibility remit

Equality act and reasonable adjustments living in a digitally focused world so we have an obligation to educate our next generation.

Facts about those with impairments that digital accessibility can help/ address 

Social and society model of disability means it’s the environment that causes the barriers.

Web regs that have been introduced only account for websites and that’s a small amount of our everyday digital content. Currently this is driven by compliance rather than a wider culture of digital accessibility maturity. 

It’s interesting because the equality act and applying it to the world in 2022 as apprised to 2010 when it came into existence is different, the world has moved on. The momentum of the digital age and everyday practices is just not accounted for, or it is but because the web regs appear to be ticking that box the everyday digital contexts get overlooked. This is the much wider digital content that everyone makes and digital accessibility really should be a skill set and responsibility of everyone in society. This is about wider culture beyond that of just websites, and certainly beyond just the public body websites remit of the web regulations.

Addressing wider culture and culture change in society comes from wider education and awareness and to embed it into the fabric of what we do and how we do it in society.

#The school curriculum 

The ICT school curriculum is dated 2013 (ref) and does not account for digital accessibility, yet the workplace needs and is missing these skills (Ref). Yet digital is everywhere, digital is the platform for most resources in our society as well as in the educational context so is it still fit for purpose with that omission? We even teach digital literacies in schools and post compulsory education courses, yet even this education doesn’t account for digital accessibility, even on computer science or media production programs where these are now vital in the workplace to meet regulation requirements.  

Currently those from digital professions don’t contribute to the digital literacy frameworks or curriculums for school (Ref) ADD TO THIS BIT.

#The context of wider skills updates  

Awareness is the starting point we need to focus on to introduce this at primary and secondary level, not the full wider WCAG. Basic principles need to become a recognised skill set or at least knowledge base. 

On top of that teachers in schools potentially will need these skills, basic knowledge and awareness as it’s potentially never been a leg  requirement they have had to adhere to. This not only does that impact the learners they teach who may need these adjustments but the added possibility of teaching and embedding it into their curriculum as well as resources.

This needs to change to meet the growing demand for accessible material so that reasonable adjustments are applied. 

#Basic skills principles to underpin awareness 

Some basic principles need to be identified as a baseline for primary and secondary education so at the very least the simple adjustments that everyone can do are fundamentally acknowledged and underpinned within society. The basic principles are simple (Ref) yet the assumption it that digital accessibility is complex.

Currently people assume this complexity because of the web regulations and the WCAG some informations. Search digital accessibility in Google and you are instantly presented with off putting results saturated with technical specifications and guidance for web developers full of jargon and code. Rarely do you get presented with the basic information to simply show you how to name and describe a hyperlink, basic colour contrast considerations or how to easily add headings properly in a document, all of which are very simple to learn and adopt. These basics get missed and overshadowed by technical specifications. It is these simple basics we need acknowledged in society and our education curriculum to ensure we all know the simple things we can do to make a difference, be more aware and act as advocates for digital inclusion even in its basic form. The more detailed specification can be reserved for specific courses and training relating to web development, media production and professional development.

The basics apply to the everyday, the documents we create for school assignments, the presentations we deliver as a class based task or content we upload to social media. All of this content has the potential to be a binary to include or exclude people digitally if the basics of accessibility aren’t applied. 

This isn’t a case of adding new skills on top of old or extra workload or time, it’s just adjusting the existing skill set to teach it right for accessibility from the offset. For example someone adding in a hyperlink in their document to a YouTube of this geography fieldwork and naming it ‘click here’ would simply get taught to name their link to where it’s going e.g. ‘YouTube video of my geography fieldwork’ instead. Or when adding a heading style it with a heading style instead of clicking to just made it bold and bigger. These adjustments taught like this from the start would become routine, and not skills taught one way and then relearned. Adding in some context when these skills are taught would normalise considering others, such as ‘don’t forget good colour contrast on your poster means it will standout to everyone including those with poor sight’

These basics becoming routine are fundamentals that already make a difference and also add to the themes of citizenship and good practice everyday ICT skills. As young people this embeds some normality to digital accessibility.

For teachers the basics would not add extra burden but for them become routine of demonstrating good practice and wider consideration. Of course, these skills don’t fully address all digital accessibility needs but at least add the early foundations of its need in society and digital content.

This is the basis and basics of reasonable adjustments taking shape and at a simple enough level to be introduced in primary and secondary sectors of education. It gives a foundation of awareness to build upon as learners progress into further and higher education as well as the workforce.

#Researching the school context

Theoretically this is an ideal for the future, but as yet this has never been tried or explored in school education. The actors in this school context have never explored or been introduced to such skills, nor exposed to this subject so we need to understand the current landscape in order ascertain if this is possible, or indeed what the true level of understanding, openness to learn or resistance there maybe to this being developed. They may or may not come with preconceptions, they may have personal experiences or they may or may not know anything and want to find out more. This research is intended to explore the current ‘where are we now’ scenario in schools to inform the ‘where do we want to be’ and ‘opportunities and challenges’ to make that happen if it were to be introduced into the curriculum.

Both teachers and learners would be impacted if this were to be introduced so as key actors in the setting it’s crucial all of their input is represented. 

I have chosen to explore this using three participant groups to get a varied picture of schooling and for comparison as children gain more experience and develop. I’ve chosen the following:

Last year primary
Last year secondary
Teachers in both settings.

The reason behind this is to get a reflective account of both primary and secondary education from both contexts. In the last year of primary children are also old enough to be capable of empathy and understand the concept of fairness and social justice (Ref) which is a crucial skill and to understand why digital accessibility is important to meet others needs (Ref). 
The final year of school will identify what they currently know as they leave school to their next level of education or into the workplace, as this currently is described as potentially lacking (Ref)

It has been identified in literature that teachers in higher education, even though they have to apply the wider remit of accessibility adjustments still lack knowledge (Ref) but this is in relation to wider WCAG specifications and the regulations. It would be interesting to understand how this compares with teachers in schools and their awareness and understanding of more basic knowledge or principles of accessibility. 

#Asserting the need for change through this research 

BLAH (YEAR) has argued that ICT should now be on the same needs level as English and Maths (Ref). The legal remit and reliance on digital technologies has changed significantly in the last 5-10 years.

I therefore believe this research is a vital starting point to update and explore adding digital accessibility principles into the wider school curriculum. This is especially pertinent if we are currently not preparing our young people with skills for the workplace (Ref) and not developing them as inclusive citizens and advocates for digital equality (Ref) or the legal requirements (W3C, 2018; Equality Act, 2010) in our ever increasing digital world who have the skills and ability to empathise with others (Ref).