Like many people, I have always had an ever-growing list of things I would love to know more about but struggled to make time for them. Longer and longer this list grows. ‘Some day’, I utter to myself as I add another one to the list. To that effect, I began seeking alternate ways to fulfil some of my curiosities and make good use of my trek to uni each day. Enter iTunesU. I started trawling through the seemingly unlimited options of lectures and conference talks from around the globe. When I came upon UC Berkeley’s series of lectures by Michael Burawoy, I felt like I had found the holy grail of social theory, another of my interest areas. My treks to uni with Burawoy became something I looked forward to each day.
In early March 2017, armed with headphones and a full phone battery, I set out to uni, looking forward to the next item on Burawoy’s list. But clicking the link no longer worked. I thought perhaps it was my connection, or some setting in my account. I tried again the next day and the next. Nope, nadda, nothing. This would need further investigation.
I found out that there had been a lawsuit filed by two staff from another university demanding that the content offered by UC Berkeley comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Department of Justice ruled that Berkeley either comply or remove the content from public view. Considering the huge financial investment that compliance would incur, there were 20,000 lectures, the university removed these free public lectures and restricted access to staff and students only. I was devastated. No more Burawoy to accompany me to uni each day. My self-development hampered, my knowledge limited, my personal growth impeded! I was also upset that just two people had caused this otherwise noble act of offering free knowledge to the world to be removed. A lot of the sources I read agreed that the lectures should not have been removed and placed the blame on the Department of Justice (see TNW and Reason.com as examples). On the other hand, the university has vowed to make future content accessible. This means that while legacy content will not be compliant, UC Berkeley are leading the charge in accessible content that is more current and relevant than the lectures they removed from public access.
It was time to call on my friend and colleague Sarah Houbolt from the UTS Equity and Diversity Unit. Sarah is the Disability Officer and had a few thoughts to share about the issue. This was potentially an opportunity to get really creative and innovative with a solution. Some ideas we shared included internships for students to transcribe lectures identified as most in demand, or leveraging corporate responsibility schemes and invite industry to invest in various courses by absorbing costs in exchange for some sort of exposure.
Access can lead to innovation; it just depends on how we approach it. There are more than just financial costs to consider. The cost of denying a global community of people with disabilities the access to a rich source of knowledge doesn’t sound fair. These issues should not be reduced to a function of competing needs.
So what does this mean for us here at UTS? Sarah offered seven tips for educators at UTS:
1 – Know your stuff. Find out where UTS stands in terms of access and inclusion. Check out the Web Content Accessibility 2.0 guide and refer to the UTS Access and Inclusion Plan 2015-2019.
2 – Know your reach. Consider the reach of your content, now and into the future. This will help you understand the impact of non-accessible material. Content that is publicly available may have many more people who are denied access to your content, for example. Alternatively, however, internal content might be distributed between peers too (student and staff), extending the intended reach.
3 – Technologize it. Find tech solutions that work for you. There are plenty of applications that can help you offer accessible content. YouTube, for example, can generate captions but you will need to check for quality!
4 – Consider everyone. We want the university to be an environment for everyone who wants to be a part of our community. Offering transcripts for audio/visual content and using pdfs with assistive technology (I found this Adobe Accessibility guide through a quick Google search) will make your content available for everyone, including students who can access this content without headphones, say in the train home! Further, people with English as a second language will benefit from accessible content.
Sarah pointed out that even well intentioned content can miss the mark. She offered the example of beautifully choreographed social justice videos with no voiceover or dialogue. They have inspiring images and text and a lovely jazz soundtrack…to someone with visual impairment, however, it’s just a lovely soundtrack.
5 – Go back to basics. Make time to ask your class about their access needs. Not everyone will get special consideration. Sometimes they don’t know they can and sometimes they just want to be like everyone else. Bringing this up will help everyone in the class see that accessibility is important and you can prioritise what you do with your content from there. We can’t change everything over night but we can do it incrementally by finding out what is most needed. It’s also a good chance for you to learn a little bit more about the lived experiences of someone with a disability (like I did, thanks to Sarah).
6 – Access leads to innovation. Keeping access in mind helps us get creative and innovative. Better mental energy is spent on seeking clever solutions, rather than fixating on the perceived enormity of the challenge. Accessible content should not be problematised but approached as opportunities to innovate. Check out the NSW Department for Education’s Disability Standards for Education for more information.
7 – Ask some hard questions. If you do speak to your class and you don’t have anyone with accessibility needs in your class, don’t stop there. Perhaps ask yourself, why not and what we can do to be more accommodating to people with disabilities?
Admittedly my first reaction centred on my own perspectives. Fortunately that wasn’t my last reaction. I’m glad I dug a little deeper and through an open conversation with Sarah (thanks Sarah!), I now have a much more nuanced perspective on what it takes to be accessible and what UTS values. Incremental steps will lead to big changes down the track so we ought to start somewhere.
History is abundantly spotted with superstars who have had various accessibility needs. Your students could be tomorrow’s superstars too!
Speak to your IML Learning Technologist or faculty contacts if you have more questions.
You can also check out these blogs about creating video captions and alt text.
Oh and in relation to talking to your class about their access needs, don’t forget that it’s not about singling people out, it’s about inviting people to connect with Accessibility Services or privately after class!
Recent article from the Australian Disability Clearing House on Education and Training about the importance of mainstreaming captions: http://www.adcet.edu.au/resource/9670/mainstreaming-captions-for-online-lectures-in-higher-education-in-australia/