Time for digital inclusion at scale

  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/blindfolds-dont-build-inclusion-myth-experiential-harkness--jquvc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via To understand why simulations fail, we must first acknowledge what they are not. A simulation is not a lived experience. A person who wears a blindfold for twenty minutes is not experiencing blindness. They are experiencing the removal of a sense they have always relied on, without preparation, tools, community, or cultural context. The discomfort they feel is not insight—it is untrained vulnerability. This difference matters. Simulations center on loss, while lived disability is about adaptation.  Even worse, many leave the experience resigned. They say things like, “I could never live like that,”. That starts by shifting the focus away from “understanding how it feels” toward understanding what it takes to thrive. It requires engaging directly with people who live with disability—not as subjects of empathy, b...

Autism awareness is vital, I’m a mum to a 22 year old autistic and I’m still learning. The two biggest things I’ve personally learned on my journey is to listen and to be patient. Listening has helped me to understand my son and his needs or reactions and then to articulate these to get him help or understood. The patience element is not about having patience with my son, but the lack of support or input from the services that are supposed to help, but don’t. You need exceptional patience for that! It became apparent when he was young (before he started school) that he processed the world differently, he had rigid routines and absolutely hated change unless a lot of preparation was put in place to support it. He didn’t have tantrums, he had meltdowns, he was a very fussy eater (he still is), he never seemed to sleep (and still can’t) and he was hypersensitive to touch, textures, tastes and smells. Imagine your child grimacing when you gave him a hug because he didn’t like being touched...

To inform the design of an educational intervention, digital accessibility is specifically supported by legislation (ref) and a set of recognised guidelines (WCAG), however these are mainly specific to the discipline of website and apps design. Beyond website content, the guidelines do also offer the underpinning principles and specifications towards the creation of everyday content such as Word documents or presentations, as identified by (ref). This therefore acts as a natural established starting point to identify what principles and digital skills need to be covered in a curriculum intervention. The WCAG guidelines and supporting information are freely available on the W3C website (refs) but there are criticisms that they are written for a web developer audience (ref) or assume a level of technical understanding to be able to apply them (ref). This is despite the fact that the more recent versions of WCAG 2.0 and beyond were developed to be easier to understand and apply (ref), how...

  https://accessibility.education.gov.uk/training

Backdrop of DEI cuts International DEI cuts https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-takes-action-eliminate-dei https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmy7xpw3pyo Rollback on diversity policies ‘risks undoing decades of progress’, says Co-op https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/14/ditching-diversity-risks-progress-co-op https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/study-finds-uk-firms-are-not-ditching-dei/ https://hrreview.co.uk/hr-news/employment-law/demand-dei-resources-skyrockets-in-the-uk-us-corporations-scale-back/379483

 Pedagogy-  LEARNING AS EXPERIENCED - THE TEACHER PERSPECTIVE: Reflection is what a teacher does when he or she looks back at the teaching and learning that has occurred, and reconstructs, reenacts, and/or recaptures the events, the emotions, and the accomplishments. It is that set of processes through which a professional learns from experience (Shulman, 1987; p.19) Pedagogical content knowledge, that special amalgam of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers, their own special form of professional understanding (Shulman, 1987; p.8) The teacher has special responsibilities in relation to content knowledge, serving as the primary source of student understanding of subject matter. The manner in which that understanding is communicated conveys to students what is essential about a subject and what is peripheral (Shulman, 1987; p.9) To teach is first to understand. We ask that the teacher comprehend critically a set of ideas to be taught. We expect teachers...

Southampton symposium 2025   https://youtu.be/LGrikHE7cdI?si=RxZnalTThR7cPIXB Another useful video about teaching accessibility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xCi_x2Bj9s What Everyone Should Know About Digital Accessibility Sarah Horton and David Sloan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlWBI7gObOQ Teaching accessibility: 10 messages from research #id24 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeGK_r4nWmQ AXSChat with Sarah Lewthwaite & Angharad Butler Rees https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPW5qhAWUAc Prof Tom Crick in Conversation: Digital Skills and Capacity Building in the UK, a fireside chat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ycz3Kr5T7Fs Creating video for research methods teaching, Sarah Lewthwaite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5_2sHq3Rx0 Videos in research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT0O65NTghc

1, Framing the need for digital accessibility awareness education , the need for it to be introduced in schools at KS2 and be built upon and reinforced throughout a lifelong learning journey. The social model of disability and preventing barriers can’t work if we have a society not educated to prevent barriers. 2, Survey findings - Teachers knowledge at KS2 to be able to teach digital accessibility - refer to rationale paper 1 and the challenges of filling the teacher knowledge gap (update Lazar’s model towards implementing digital accessibility awareness into society. No current data on this knowledge and skills set (PCK) for teaching the subject. 3, Designing an implementation for the teaching of digital accessibility awareness , multidisciplinary topic and the main learning objectives and the order of them - the ENABLED framework to market such an approach- especially as it’s currently an unfamiliar topic to teachers. 

Automatic doors and universal design  https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tiffanyfixter_accessible-inclusive-accessible-activity-7247977752715223040-9BsY?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAAAIYcssBmosUyonT48jW9ap3QGtpBolk89g Intro to plain language  https://digital.gov/resources/an-introduction-to-plain-language/  To use a computer without sight:  NVDA is a free screen reader for Windows. https://www.nvaccess.org/ VoiceOver is a screen reader built into Mac OS: https://lnkd.in/e8_VdWPn You can find instruction manuals for both of these online. You'll also need to learn keyboard commands for your operating system, since you probably can't see a mouse pointer. You're going to have to practice. Even if you get training, you still have to practice.  To use a computer with low vision:  Windows magnifier is built into Windows. You can also change settings in the control panel to include font size, mouse pointer size, and contrast.  https://lnk...

  https://accessibility.education.gov.uk/knowledge-hub/coga https://design.homeoffice.gov.uk/accessibility/readability Hide your identity in teams meetings: Hide your identity in meeting captions and transcripts in Microsoft Teams - Microsoft Support Products and Services Covered Under the EAA: Computers and operating systems ATMs, ticketing and check-in machines Telephones and smartphones Digital television services and related equipment Banking services E-books and e-commerce platforms Passenger transport services (air, bus, rail, and waterborne)