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S9E14 Inclusive Education: Advancing Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning
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S9E14 Inclusive Education: Advancing Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning

Episode Airs 07/17/24

Host = Kristy Duggan

Guests = Damara Paris, PhD and Carrie Boettcher, PhD

Music

Host - The Teachers College at Emporia State University presents How We Teach This a podcast where we talk with experts and educators. Welcome to How We Teach This Tonight we have Dr. Carrie Boettcher and Dr. Damara Paris. They are both faculty in the Counselor Education Program at Emporia State University. And Dr. Damara Paris is accompanied by her sign language interpreter, Courtney. Recently, Damara Paris has been recognized with the 2023-24  Emporia State University King Endowed Professorship Award. And we're going to be talking about accessibility and Universal Design for Learning. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us how you became interested in accessibility and universal design for learning?

Paris - Yes. Thank you, Kristy My name is Damara Goff Paris. And currently my role with ESU is I'm the CACREP Director, the R.S.A. Grant Director, and I'm also part of the counselor education faculty, Which includes mental health and rehabilitation counseling. I am also licensed as a professional counselor, nationally certified as a counselor and a certified rehab counselor as well. And as a deaf individual who also I have a right leg amputee, Accessibility to educational environment for me was important because of all the experiences that I had growing up in K through 12 and this was before, ADA really helped cement the need for accessible education. I've been a lifelong advocate of accessibility to education for all individuals. I became really interested in the online learning when I was working as a doctoral director of the university program that had scholars from all over the United States, that were attending the university, that they would come for one weekend a month for the residency program. Back then, there were so many limitations to online education. So what I did is I helped design the synchronous online courses. When I joined ESU, we were in the process of moving the Master's and rehabilitation counseling program online because we had vocational rehabilitation grant recipients that were also out of state. And ESU actually had a better platform for this. And we also had the dedicated e-learning and online teaching program. So to try to further my skills as an online course director and designer, I took the ESU E-learning and Online Certificate. And then I took courses with Quality Matters and Quality Matters overseas the quality of online course design. And then after that, I became a Peer Reviewer and then a Master Reviewer for that nonprofit organization and continue to review courses across the nation to provide input to ensure that courses are designed to meet the needs of diverse learners. And I also want to just mention I am a deaf individual myself and that I am signing and I have and ASL interpreter who is voicing for me.

Host - Carrie, would you introduce yourself and tell us how you came to be so invested in accessibility?

Boettcher - Sure. My name is Dr. Carrie Boettcher. I'm an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of Counselor Education in the School of Applied Health Sciences at Emporia State University. I'm a licensed professional counselor as well as a certified rehabilitation counselor. As a rehabilitation counselor, we work with individuals with disabilities to pursue a variety of life goals that they might have. I have spent a lot of my career working with individuals in the employment sector, helping them prepare for work, maintain employment, gaining new employment or developing new skills. So working with individuals on these goals, oftentimes that means accommodations in the education environment or accommodations in the work environment. Accessibility and accommodations go hand in hand in rehab counseling. So it's a very natural fit for me. About 8 to 9 years ago, I had the opportunity to start teaching for Emporia State University in rehabilitation counseling, and the courses that I was offered for teaching were online. So I jumped in and started teaching online. It was a new opportunity. The environment wasn't totally new because online education is similar to some other work that I'd been doing online. But the environment of education was new, so I was learning how to not only teach, but I was learning how to then make accommodations and accessibility in the online environment, at the same time. I enjoyed that and I continued with that. When I joined the faculty full time, I quickly transitioned into a fully teaching online environment that was a natural fit for me. And currently most of the courses that I teach are asynchronous courses, which means that students do the work at the time that works best for them. They could be doing their education work at any time of the day, any day of the week, so long as it fits within the course schedule. So as long as they're getting their work done in the course schedule, they can do it at any time. We don't have live regular meetings together. To improve upon my skills, I completed a Jumpstart training program that Emporia State offered through Learning Technologies, which is basically designed for new instructors, kind of a baseline skill set for online instructors. I've also completed Quality Matters training, similar to what Dr. Paris mentioned. Last year I completed a series of trainings that end in a teaching online certificate through Quality Matters. And currently I'm continuing my education with Quality Matters to complete courses to become a QM Master Reviewer. And Master Reviewers they're Peer Reviewers that review courses for other faculty, faculty at any university across the country and provide feedback on their courses specifically related to accessibility and design standards within the QM framework.

Host - And Quality Matters is not just about accessibility. It is about quality course design for online courses. So that's really cool. And we will put a link to the Quality Matters website on ours. If our listeners would like to check that out and learn more about Quality Matters. Let's start off by explaining, what is accessibility. So would you kind of explain to us how Accessibility, Universal Design For Learning, how they differ from having accommodations for individuals with disabilities?

Paris - Sure. So this is Dr. Damara Paris speaking. Dr. Damara Paris. So I'll take that one. So in terms of accessibility, this is usually specific to people with disabilities, and it's really governed by different laws such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1974 and the American Disabilities Act of 1990, and all the future amendments that they added after those laws were enacted. The Universal Design for Learning, that addresses the needs for everyone. It is to ensure that there are diverse learners with or without disabilities, and that they are able to access and learn from their courses. An example of that would be that some individuals are visual learners, while other individuals might be auditory learners. So UDL addresses the needs of the various learning styles and people from varied backgrounds. And there are three basic principles of UDL The first principle is providing multiple means of representation. And so what that means is presenting the information and the content through different methods. For example, you might provide information in a PowerPoint. But then you would also have an audio aspect of that PowerPoint. So, that some individuals could listen to it auditorially  and then someone could maybe listen to the audio as well as watching the PowerPoint. And it provides the information with the same content. Another example would be like this current podcast that we're doing today. So this podcast is for auditory learners. It also needs to be accessible for people who might have hearing and or other challenges that could make it difficult for them to hear the spoken word. And so therefore providing transcripts to auditory podcasts are very important so people can follow along.

Host - And I wanted to tell you that that's part of what I've learned in this journey, that our podcasts were not accessible because they didn't have a provided transcript. And we're working to get that fixed. So I am so appreciative that you're helping us understand what we need to do to make this better. So what were the other principles involved with UDL?

Paris - Yeah. Great. So principle two, that one is providing multiple means of action and expression, which is basically differentiating the way that students can express what they know. So this could include maybe encouraging the students to do a written response of the information or, you know, they might express the information through a student created video. And then the third principle of UDL is providing means, multiple means of engagement. So it's stimulating interest and motivation for learning. In an online environment, providing only the written content may not be the best need for all students, and it might not meet all their needs. It doesn't encourage active learning. It doesn't encourage the engagement. So you may want to go further by providing opportunities for students to actively engage with the material, by maybe creating games or quizlets in which they can respond to that written content one chunk at a time. And then they can respond to questions to self check their own knowledge. For some of my own courses I provide the publisher created videos in which the videos will pause After about 2 to 3 minutes and they ask multiple choice questions before the video is then resumed.

Host - Well, that's great. Thank you. So Universal Design for Learning is about differentiation for students. It's good instruction, basically, right? And accessibility is, from what I understand, making sure that everyone is able to access the content. Is that correct?

Paris - That is correct, yes.

Host - Okay. So, Carrie, did you have anything you wanted to add on that?

Boettcher - Oh, sure. This is Dr. Boettcher  again, as you mentioned, UDL, I think of it as best practices. It's a best way of designing a course for all learners. Accessibility is not just the best design or UDL, but it's also the law. As Dr. Paris mentioned, it's something that we need to do. It's a required opportunity for students of all learning styles, especially individuals with disabilities, to be able to access online course content. So very simply, we should make our courses accessible because it's what we need to do to follow the law. It's really a legal requirement. But accessibility is  not just limited to individuals with disabilities. It's not just limited to those students who reach out and have an accommodation memo. So Emporia State students follow a process that is very similar to other schools in which if they have a disability, they can reach out to the Student Accessibility Office, they can request a specific accommodation so they have equal access to the course. The same or similar to others who may not have a disability have access. So it's really about equal access and making sure students can access courses. A lot of those accessibility options are also just best practice for all learners. So accessibility should be embedded in the course design from the beginning. So all students benefit from the course. In a perfect world, the accommodations would already be there for a good number of individuals. The video example is a good one that a student who needs closed captions and a transcript, that may be a part of their accommodation memo, but hopefully we already have those included in the course design. Hopefully those captions are already there. The transcript is already there. The accommodation memo brings that attention to the instructor, but if that's the only accommodation they need, they may not have to reach out for an accommodation if it's already built into the course. This is not limited to just individuals with disabilities, though. A lot of us could benefit from many of these tools. So if I continue with the closed captions example, individuals who just might have a hard time following videos online or have a hard time keeping up, or if English is not their primary language. Dr. Paris mentioned as a deaf individual, using ASL, English could be considered a second language for her or a Spanish speaking student or anyone whose primary language is not English. Close captions may help them engage with that content better or engage with that content in a way that's a deeper understanding, and that wouldn't necessarily fall within the accessibility for individuals with disabilities. That's just a general learning population.

Host - Yeah. I've noticed with my children at home, when we would watch movies, we would turn on the closed captioning because sometimes the sound effects in the movie would be so overpowering that we would miss the conversation that's happening in it. So even though no one in my family has a hearing disability, we still use and benefit from the closed captioning.

Boettcher  - We you do in our home as well. We have close captions on most of the time. There's a lot of background noise you mentioned in movies and there's a lot of soft speakers when it comes to television shows and movies.

Host - Uh huh.

Boettcher  - So we had captions on a lot of the time in our home. As I get older, I find that to be very helpful. I don't have a diagnosed hearing loss or anything like that, but differentiating between the sounds, it can be very helpful.

Host - Mm hmm.

Boettcher  - Captions is, again, just one example, but it's one that we can oftentimes relate to because it's something that's commonly seen. And that's a good example of something that benefits lots of individuals, whether they watch movies or TV shows or television shows. You don't have to sign up for it to watch television. That's already there. It's embedded into the whole system.

Host - Dr. Paris. Do you want to add something?

Paris - Yeah. I just wanted to add a little bit more also on that. When you're talking about the closed captioning, you know, and the quality matters and all of those measurements in there under the UDL learning. That is something that is very much emphasized that many of our students. They just work in a variety of environments with a variety of different backgrounds, and sometimes they need that audio to be quiet so they can actually look at the captioning then. So they're not actually hearing the audio. So there could be a variety of reasons why there could be a benefit. Maybe the background they're working in is really noisy, so they're actually able to hear those videos of the instructor speaking. And so it's just yet another tool that is able to provide to all students of all backgrounds, whether they're hearing or  have a hearing loss or if they just simply need a quiet environment.

Host - I wanted to touch base a little bit about the term accommodation, since that's a common term that we hear sometimes when we're talking about this. And I wanted to see if my understanding of it is what you understand it to be. I thought an accommodation was something where you have an identified need for it in order to create that equal environment. And it might be something where a student has ADHD or they need additional time to take the test. It doesn't change the content, but it takes it a step beyond just the regular accessibility expectations for an individual situation. Is that what you understand it to be?

Boettcher - This is Dr. Boettcher  again. Yes, I would. I agree with that definition. I look at it as something that  Is individualized. The accommodations are not general in nature. It's always individualized to the person and what their needs are to be able to access whatever it is they're doing. So if you think about it in a work environment, is enabling them to do the basic requirements of their job. And the accommodation is very specific to their need, their ability to complete their job duties. In the educational environment, It's the same. Even though the accommodations may look a little bit different, it's still individualized for what that person needs in order to access their educational environment. Each educational environment is a little bit different. So if you think of online learning, you think of what we call on campus classes or same physical space together. There's hybrid classes. Accommodations may be very similar across those various  classroom types, but they may not be the exact same. So a student taking a variety of formatted classes may need different accommodations in different environments.

Host - Yeah. Dr. Paris?

Paris - Yeah, I just want to Add to that. Really, to be honest with everyone here, when you design the course, if you follow UDL it really reduces the need for having to consider all of the accommodations. And it's good because first of all, all the different accommodations that you have to go through, you have to go through the Student Accessibility Office and have this paperwork signed. You have to wait for approval. And then they have to inform the instructor about whatever the specific accommodations are that are needed. Well, it could be, you know, a few days after school has already started and now this student is already behind because they don't have those accommodations already set up, like, for example, the closed captioned or any kind of visual access that's needed. And so it's like trying to hurry and get caught up on that. So if the good design is really following, UDL and that really avoids the need for a lot of that last minute panic of how to set up your class to make it accessible. And then it also supports the students privacy more without having to reveal that they have that disability.

Host - That is a really good point. Thank you for sharing that.

Boettcher  - And if I could add to that from the instructor's side, it takes more upfront work. I have to be diligent and think through what my course objectives are, what the instructional materials are, what the assessments are. Does everything align? Is it embedded in the course in a way that makes sense? Does it convey the message that I want it to convey? That's a lot of upfront work, and that looks like it would take more work than maybe a different environment or developing as you go. What I have found in my experience is those courses that I have all that developed up front beginning of the semester as much as possible. I have my courses fully developed. They're fully available within the learning management system. Those semesters go better in terms of the course flow, Student communication, Just overall process. The process just goes better and I have fewer Questions from students about how to do certain things. Usually accommodations that come up later in the semester are typically a student who didn't think they would need one, but they actually find that they do. And then they need to implement it. So an example of an accommodation would be an extra time on a quiz. after they took the first one, they might need a second one. On the second quiz, they might think, okay, I really do need that extra time. And that's for a variety of reasons, whether it be a learning style challenge or maybe an anxiety challenge, that they just need that extra time at accommodation and put that into place. That might not necessarily be something that I can pre embed through accessibility or universal design standards. Though because my course is already developed, I can quickly make that accommodation for that student and they can jump right in and continue moving forward with very little break in their course.

Host - Yeah,

Boettcher  - IT can look like a lot of work upfront, but that upfront work really pays off because of the improved environment overall for not only the students, Students of  all types of learning styles, but also for the instructor.

Host - Now, that's that's a really good point. Thank you for those examples. And I know you've already mentioned some examples of accessibility tools, but I wondered if there were any others that you wanted to share with us.

Paris - Yeah. There are several actual tools that we can use for accessibility. One that we already mentioned is obviously the closed captioning. A transcript of videos. You know, that's one of the most easy tools that you can use to be able to upload information into a system, to be able to do automatic captions like Zoom and Microsoft and Adobe that will have those automatic captions instead of you on your own having to type out the captions and type out the transcripts. There's also documents that are accessible for screen readers, for those that are visually impaired. You're easily able to achieve that by checking the accessibility tool that typically is embedded in Microsoft and Adobe products. Another is providing tools that will allow the individuals to be able to listen to the document as they are reading it. So like, it's kind of like speak is one there is a built in feature of Word. It's in Outlook, PowerPoint and in OneNote. And what speak will do is it will read aloud only the text that you select. And read aloud also will read the entire document from starting from wherever your cursor is, all the way to the end. Kind of like an audio book. So it's like for people that kind of struggle with reading, they tend to have a lot of reading errors. Another one is the dictation tools. That one is where individuals can speak on their own and then the computer will type out the spoken content. Microsoft 365 has this dictate, has a speak to text. There is a variety of softwares and tools for that. Another accessibility tool would be Flip grid. That one, and similar tools to it will help students. Maybe they want to speak, maybe spoken languages is Their preferred, maybe typed out is their preferred. Maybe sign language is their preferred. Maybe they're not able to type out. So they because they are talking too fast and it's not picking it up. And so they can have the captioning with that as well. But one of the key things with Flip Grid is that they do have to be responsible for making sure that the captions are accurate based on what they're saying.

Host - And I believe the students have to do that as well, right?

Paris - Yes, exactly correct. Because that's the one thing I wanted to emphasize with that, is that sometimes people who will teach some classes with some of those videos think that, oh, okay, it needs to be accessible to everyone. So they'll let the students know, okay, you have to have your information captioned and they're doing their own maybe video and then they're uploading it. But you have to actually explain to them in a little more detail how they can get that captioning added. So that way it can be accessible to all. You can't assume that they already have that knowledge.

Host - Oh, that's great. Thank you for sharing those. And I'll put links to the Microsoft products for accessibility and for Flip, the video creation tool on our website.

Paris - And then I would just add real quick if there's anything that I missed. Dr. Boettcher, do you have anything more to add on accessibility tools?

Boettcher  - Thank you, Dr. Paris. Yes. I was thinking as you were going through this list, A lot of times folks think that accessibility tools are another platform, another piece of software. A lot of times the accessibility tools are actually just embedded in whatever tool you're using anyway. And the one that comes to mind for me oftentimes that I didn't really consider until I started down this path of online teaching is continuing to pursue trainings to enhance my skills, my knowledge, all of that. A lot of what we just consider good teaching or good practice are actually embedded accessibility tools. So one thing I wanted to point out is often times we like to enhance our work with color. We like to use various colors of font or various colors of backgrounds. that can oftentimes make it very difficult for your audience to distinguish between letters and environment or pictures and backgrounds. If you just think about a typical lecture in a classroom or in a workshop, if the lettering is in yellow or a color that's difficult to see up close or even far away, that can make the overall experience difficult. Not only that, but it's a mixed message. Is this color for enhanced look and it looks pretty and it's fun? Or would that be a message like calling attention to that information, like making sure that the audience pays attention to that specifically? Sometimes we use bold or larger letters to do that. That's a mixed message and it's not really always accessible. So just following these fundamental practices of thinking about color on the background, a lot of my PowerPoints are very basic. I use black text on a white background. I'm not sure if that's because I just preferred not to put all the other things in there or else. But I find that I have very few comments that people cannot read or access the information that I put in those PowerPoints.

Paris - Yeah. And just one thing I want to add to that is don't forget that there are a large percentage or at least a percentage of our population that are also color blind. And so putting certain words and a specific color doesn't help them at all.

Host - Very good point.

Boettcher  - Exactly. And it's not that black on white is the universal standard because not everybody can see black on white. But if you at least use color options that are a bit more standard, then your ability to reach more audiences improves.

Host - That high contrast is important.

Boettcher - Yes. Yes, the high contrast. Thank you.

Host - Okay. Well, that's great. So did you have anything else that you wanted to share with us? We're just about out of time on our podcast.

Boettcher  - I would like to and this is Dr. Boettcher  Again, I would like to add that Uuniversal Design for Learning,  accessibility, This is not a one and done activity. This is not something where you make, you develop your course. It's accessible, and now you can consider that done. It's really a continuous process. It's a continuous process of learning for the instructor to not only keep their course content up to date. But is there a better way to make something accessible? You might have edited all of the captions in your videos and that's all good. Now you can turn your attention to a different area of accessibility. Perhaps this time you're actually looking at color and headings. Am I using headings correctly? So it's something that even though I said a few minutes ago that I try to have my courses all done at the beginning of the semester. It's something that I look at throughout the course as well as each time I teach a course, I'm looking at ways that I can improve the accessibility within the courses and oftentimes it's because of student feedback and it's not always a complaint or anything like that. But just by the nature of the questions they ask. If they're asking a lot of questions about a particular lecture or a particular assignment or a particular module that can call my attention, that I should go take a look at that and see what I can do to improve. That really is framed by the Universal Design for Learning standards. We need to always be aware that it's a continuous process. It does not have a beginning or an end. Instead, it's just a continuous process of improvement.

Host - That's a very good point, Dr. Paris?

Paris - Yeah. And just to add to this, Dr. Paris, here, and just briefly, one of the things that yes, you will always be editing your course design at any point in time, but what is really great and very exciting. Is that every year that we make these improvements. Every year technology has some kind of new thing that comes in that helps to make things so much better and so much more accessible. And I'm just thrilled to live in the world that we are in where we have so many creative tools that keep just popping up and keep coming out that I'll use them to improve my own course designs.

Host - I think that is a great point. Thank you. And as we were learning that the podcast was not accessible and we needed to fix that. One of the tools, as you mentioned, there's new things developing all the time. There's a Google extension that you can open up and it will live  Caption anything on your computer like our conversation right now, If I were choosing to do that. So great point about new technology coming out. I want to thank you so much for taking your time to be here this evening and to talk with us on the podcast.

Boettcher - Thank you.

Paris - Thank you.

Music

Host - This podcast is for informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Emporia State University or The Teachers College. Any mention of products, individuals or organizations within this podcast does not constitute an endorsement. Listeners are encouraged to conduct their own research and consult with appropriate professionals before making any decisions based on information provided in this podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to like and subscribe. This podcast is sponsored by The Teachers College at Emporia State University, featuring talks with experts and educators. We release new episodes every other Wednesday. Our guests provide more information on our website, www.emporia.edu/hwtt. follow us and share an x with @hwtt_ESU, on Facebook and Instagram search for How We Teach This. If you would like to be a guest on our show or want to provide feedback, please send us an email hwtt@emporia.edu I'm Kristy Duggan, your Host and Executive Producer. You've been listening to how we teach this. Thank you.