Sunbed Using videos and critique why

The purpose of literature to inform a design based research approach.

One of the most significant sets of guidance specific to digital accessibility is the web content accessibility guidelines. They are the framework that helps people understand what is required legally as a minimum standard. Teaching using the guidelines as a basis forms a part of many research papers. Understanding that these also form the legal standards helps to frame the wider societal real life relevance and importance of the need to address digital accessibility.

Technical checklist as a quantitative measure yes or no, versus the socially constructed nature and experience of disability. Hassell quote - knowledge of socially constructed understanding verses reduced to checklist.

Reliance on guidelines is not enough to provide an understanding of the needs for accessibility or the human impact. This is not only highlighted within the classroom context but within industry. Also upheld by Lethwaite when explaining that digital accessibility is complex to teach. It’s multidisciplinary and multifaceted and sits in several domains of understanding the world, the socio-cultural and the technical- both having different ways of measuring and understanding knowledge, checklist quantitative measure versus the socially constructed nature of disability.

Also deemed complex for beginners, interestingly the literature highlights that even those with a computer science background struggle to understand them. Studies to highlight the complex nature and what literature says about basic principles and how effective those are.

Quantitative studies verses interviews, the interviews offer insights into how learners responded to their experiences, whereas measuring WCAG or outcomes doesn’t offer the nuances of why these approaches are effective or helpful. Measure of technical skills verses awareness and anecdotes. Learning or pedagogy is the art, craft and science, surveys only account for one aspect. How interactions with tools or people have developed meaning are only accessed through personal accounts.

Even professionals don’t always have agreement e.g. 80%.

Automated tools also don’t account for the socio-cultural, they only reinforce digital accessibility as a checklist rather than a human user experience.

Simple and bitesize, low hanging fruit for beginners.

To understand digital accessibility is said to be made up of three core components, conceptual understanding of disability, procedural knowledge and technical skills, therefore WCAG only accounts for one aspect of the learning.

Like a mixed methods approach, digital accessibility has several knowledges that triangulate to grasp a deeper meaning.

Empathy alone not enough, and WCAG alone not enough.

It’s been highlighted that the teaching of digital accessibility covers some core learning objectives, again echoing that multidisciplinary approach. Paper that explored the learning objectives covered.

Different learning objectives also calls for different teaching pedagogies, with it being approached by delivering the topic through a mix of lectures, projects and other techniques.

Awareness and barriers.

Visiting speaker or working and collaborating directly with people with disabilities deemed one of the most effective ways to make learning meaningful and make learners more inclined to act upon accessibility in the future.

People come and speak examples, demonstrate the barriers they face, people collaborating examples. Seeing the barriers that are in society offers a great way to illustrate the social model of disability.

However, some researchers point out that learners are uncomfortable around people with disabilities because they don’t want to offend. 

Younger learners may not have the sensitivity to interact appropriately to ensure they don’t cause offence.

Scalability of having people with disabilities involved in a broad scale national curriculum.

Paid work and not exploitative, this would add cost to an intervention, but also gaining access to people with disabilities is often challenging. Not all disabilities could be represented.

Videos are a suitable alternative (refs) - add the specific paper about 10 minute videos being an effective way to raise awareness and shift mindsets. Early engagement is vital, so this study is encouraging.

Videos may not be able to open a 2 way dialogue or invite opportunity to ask more questions but they can raise contextual awareness and promote discussion, especially if they are real-life individuals sharing their lived experience expertise.

Personas and how they are effective - it’s even been suggested in the learning context, that aligning personas with the WCAG guidelines brings it to real-life rather than just a technical checklist. This would be ideal to deepen meaningful connections and build knowledge across different learning objectives of understanding awareness and the technical skills or principles needed to address barriers. Bringing the socio-cultural understanding of digital accessibility to the black and white quantitative checklist, opening up perspectives of discussion around the interpretation of WCAG, and potentially why in some literature they refer to there not always being consensus around if something passes or fails WCAG.

This research will adopt the approach of using videos as it best reflects what would be feasible if the topic was to be added to the national curriculum at scale. It also means that a broad range of videos could be made available to illustrate the complexity and different types of disability.

The suggestion is that disability can be categorised by four main disability types, visual, auditory, motor or physical and cognitive. Using these categories could offer a balance of resources and examples to illustrate the differences.

Microsoft also focus on these categories of disability in their inclusive design toolkit. With Microsoft being a familiar suite of tools for both teachers and learners it also connects relevance to real world examples and models for inclusive design and accessibility.

Videos from real- life people can also be complimented by experiencing examples of digital accessibility barriers themselves by simulations. Simulations too come with challenges, e.g. they are deemed inappropriate because they can promote negative challenges, so there is a need to frame digital accessibility as an enabler rather than a barrier. It is suggested when using simulations to be clear to learners that simulations only offer an insight and are not true examples of the real-life broader implications of disability.

Experiential learning however is deemed an effective strategy.

Experiential learning makes it more authentic and learners can connect and relate to it if they experience it themselves.

Some suggestions are comparing the experience of a website for disabled and non-disabled users demonstrates the different considerations for accessible design, design not being about superficial and visual characteristics but the functioning of digital content so all people can use it.

A-ha moment about inaccessible hyperlinks.

Empathy labs examples and the differences in learners in different groups to illustrate how it’s a better approach.

Using comparisons like this can highlight how disabled people are overlooked in designs.

Pulling these differences together and writing a meaningful learning experience - the order the learning objectives can build knowledge- how each aspect frames and scaffolds another to build depth and meaning.

Conclusion is to provide teachers with a repository of resources and activity types for all of the learning objectives and reinforce that each aspect is an important component to communicate digital accessibility.

Teachers in their training need to be exposed to the importance of a multidisciplinary acknowledgment. Using a repository of different ideas and pedagogical approaches e.g. activities, tools and resources they can make decisions about what would be appropriate for learners at key stage 2 who might be new to the topic.

The research lessons that will be developed will be teachers choosing their own combinations, therefore meaning that potentially each group of teachers may approach it in very different ways, offering this study a mix of rich explorations for the key stage 2 classroom.

Add example activities and resources based on those used in literature as well as access to any repositories signposted via the literature e.g. teach access, games, empathy labs and GitHub.

Develop a course for teachers to access for their own training that also outlines the main learning objectives so they too can experience how each learning objective builds upon another, this course or material will be framed around the suggested order of learning objectives highlighted in the literature. This course or materials will support their initial training but also scaffold their own experience of being able to plan and teach the topic for themselves. Act as an underpinning but not as an exemplar, the study will encourage them to consider pedagogies, resources needed and the types of activities that would work in their own teaching contexts. It is aimed that any supporting materials created will be shared across cohorts to inspire future ideas and techniques to teach digital accessibility in schools.

A matrix of references to academic papers will also be provided to illustrate how others have approached the topic of digital accessibility awareness education.

As they may not have had any prior schooling or training this acts as a foundation to support their own learning, but also offer them an opportunity to reflect on their own learning journey to suggest more appropriate or creative ways to teach the topic.

L2E support pages list:

GitHub and other repositories 

Matrix of papers and activities used.

Followed by what was made during this research study.

Any materials developed as a result of the research, e.g. learning materials and lesson plans (including reflections on how lessons were developed from initial concepts to how they were adapted after piloting them in the classroom, offering anyone exploring this in the future a repository to build upon. OER and Creative Commons.