Intro and rationale notes

Intro

Young people are our future and our next generation. They are not just consumers, but creators and contributors to our digital society. This can be in the content they create for school work to the content they create or post on social media or those they interact and transact with online.

Student success is about educating them with the skills to be an inclusive digital citizen.
Statistics suggest that 1 in 5 people now have some form of disability 

More widely the remit is (perm, temp and situational).
Social responsibility to ensure everyone has full access and equal opportunities. The social model of disability. 
Universal design and digital accessibility.
Community impact - as a community we can be aware of what we can do look after one another’s needs.
This research sits within the backdrop of equality, diversity and inclusion and supported by Legal (equality act, WCAG, international similar legal requirements).
Business - future economy (purchasing power/segment of the market/society) and skills employers need for employees to be more aware to more diverse customer needs.
Without such awareness in society we still have barriers and potentially unintended discrimination or segregation.
This research is not about making digital content for our students but teaching students about digital accessibility so as a generation they can grow up for the digital world in which they live.
Digital awareness and skills can act as a vehicle to understanding others needs, inclusion in our society heavily reliant on digital processes and content and real-world inclusive behaviours to apply to everyday contexts.

Research aims

To inform the development of a primary school curriculum intervention that is aimed at teaching school children about universal design and digital accessibility awareness so they are educated and equipped to be inclusive for our future digital society. 

To develop and give teachers a toolkit to be able to teach the subject of universal design and digital accessibility principles.

The outputs and findings of this research may help inform ongoing education in the underlying principles of digital accessibility awareness, as well as it’s application throughout wider subjects and activities on the national curriculum.

The school curriculum 

Within the current school curriculum, concepts around digital skills sit within computing or ICT and disabilities or inclusion often sit within PSHE or citizenship.
Digital accessibility spans across all of these territories. Awareness such as this isn’t just about learning IT technical skills for accessibility, but about where these skills and needs sit in society as a social responsibility. 
The research rationale is framed by the argument that just like online safety is a social responsibility that teaches all pupils how to interact and be safe in the online environment, all young people should also be taught how to be inclusive as a creator of digital content or someone who interacts online.
Training our citizens for a digital future.
This research will explore where this intersection best sits within the teaching and learning curriculum.

Define the topics to be introduced 

Digital accessibility sits under the umbrella of universal design and with that it benefits everyone. Many things we see in the physical space - eg curb cuts, automatic doors etc.

Digital accessibility crosses over with print disability eg posters

It impacts a whole range of future workplaces and careers, such as product design, social care, customer service, public services and this is why it should be taught to all as a baseline set of principles to prepare and equip our next generation with knowledge about making the world without barriers.

Where is this teaching and training currently happening in society?

Currently training in this area is:

Digital accessibility- web devs, see list on AbilityNet…

Universal design - see/find out where…

Roles have been introduced in 2022 in government to recognise the importance of digital accessibility, but these sit specifically within web development teams due to web regulations. And an apprenticeship has been developed at level 4 to train people into these careers. However this is still specifically specialised around web accessibility rather than the fundamental principles of universal design that impacts all walks of life and environments.

This skills sector is growing but little is being done in terms of broader teaching of accessibility or universal design. There are small pockets of universities teaching digital accessibility but this is usually confined to specialist courses or specialist teachers with knowledge and expertise such as in web dev, computer science and ICT and primarily focused around the WCAG guidelines and technical aspects, not necessarily the wider principles of universal design. 

In FE there is very little being taught, but as you go back to the education where young people have early experiences of digital content creation or learn about society, this is not currently on the curriculum. This research therefore can only take guidance from studies done with those in workplaces or post compulsory education settings. However lessons learned in these areas should be able to highlight any challenges or successes both for learners and teachers alike.

Another useful area to explore would be online safety as this is taught to all school children as a social responsibility and research in this area could act as a guide to what works in the school context.

Literature review

The literature review will explore the following:

The teaching of accessibility and the findings from both a teacher and learner perspective.

The development and teaching of similar disciplines to act as a guide to inform the design and development of a curriculum.

Rationale/argument notes: after literature review…

Learning knowledge later and retrofitting:

 As Gu (2010, p.340) explains “a large part of human and professional knowledge can hardly retain its

 original meaning when it is divorced from the contexts in which it was constructed and produced.”

Why school - early lifelong knowledge to become part of norm and part of routine doing it like that from the start, not an add-on or retrofit later or away from knowledge already constructed.

Situational/everyday and Microsoft diagram they can relate.

Shift left- proactive 

Gu (2010, P.339) refers to Bruner (1996) and Blum (1966) who argue that the nature of knowledge

 and knowing (i.e., coming to know something) is both situated and constructed in social realities and

 maintains itself by being embodied in routines.