Designing With, Not Around, Disabled Learners: A Screen-Reader Demo Experience

Facilitated by:

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Yasser Atef

yasser.t@aucegypt.edu

yasser.tamer@aucegypt.edu

Community Agreements

Here are the first four:

• You are welcome here - regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability/disability - all are welcome in this space.
• Make space for others.
• Critique ideas not people.
• Assume positive intentions.

Contribute to our community agreements

https://bit.ly/IEH24agreements

Invitation to Engage

1. You may participate by raising your hand and chatting, using the chat, or silently. There is no expectation for cameras to be on.
2. When we use breakout rooms, you may choose to participate in a collaborative or quiet room.
3. I will explain jargon and define key terms.
4. You need only share what you’re comfortable sharing.
5. I invite critical engagement with my ideas.

01

Intro and community agreements: - 5 min

02

Turn to your neighbour: - 5 min

03

Triz (designing an inaccessible environment for screen readers): - 7 min

04

Screen reader demo on different sources and websites: 28 - 30 min

05

Accommodation, power and contextual constraints: - 20 min

06

Speculative fiction activity (removing barriers): - 15 min

07

Harvest and closing reflections: - 10 min

Agenda for today

• In Breakout rooms (2-3 people):
• Introduce yourself to your partner (S)
• Share why are you here and what you expect from this session

Turn to your neighbour

• “Did you know that March is Disability Awareness Month?”
• We want to take this time to educate, acknowledge and celebrate the progression we have made as a country to instill disability access.
• It has been a long road that we are still traveling on, but, through the efforts of disability advocates and leaders, we have made a #GiantLeap in disability rights and equal access.
• Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BCptxH5WB/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Hint!

Did you know that march is disability awareness month?

Activity– TRIZ

• Instead of asking how to improve access, we ask: how would we make it worse?
• Imagine your goal is to design a course that is completely inaccessible to someone using a screen reader.
• Think about: your syllabus; your slides; your readings; your announcements; your LMS pages.

Room 1

Paper handouts

Lecturers writing on the board and not being aware of visually impaired students in their lectures

No video captions

No alt text

Scanned images as pdf

Links that are not descriptive

Practical courses are not specialised

Room 2

We discussed lack of support at our institutions

Room 3

Worst Brainstorm Group 3: Lots of content-heavy images and infographics with NO alternative text, no heading styles, lots of course links with the words "click here," all videos have no captioning or transcripts, lots of scanned PDFs! Tables without row and column headings, color used only for meaning, audio files without transcripts or captioning, file names not descriptive.

Room 4

• stylistic fonts that are inaccessible (example was text that’s for metal bands that look cool but are hard to read)
• no heading, only bolded and resized text
• lots of images with text but no alt text or text descriptions
• retrofitting accessibility after the fact vs designing it accessible in the first place
• not knowing who your students will be and what accommodations they might need before
• Content / image order for PPT
• “look here”, “click here”
• ​

Room 5

Click Here hyperlinks

Using font size, color, and highlighting to indicate different sections of a document

Using emojis for emphasis: Y [clap icon] E [clap icon] S [clap icon]

Lots of emojis in a row

Images without alt text, inaccurate alt text, or non-context specific alt text

Tables without headers, captions, or alt text

No language specification

Low quality scans of readings

Using all caps for emphasis

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Room 6

• Infographics can be inaccessible
• Alt text or a description of image
• “Decorative” illustrations vs. purposeful (decorative are clutter?)

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Non-screen reader ideas

• High contrast
• Size of text
• ​

Room 7

You should

- avoid uploading scans of PDFs

- avoid putting excessive amounts of text on a slide

- Include alt text for images and tables

- label materials well, e.g. Lecture 1: Geomorphology (not just Lecture 1), and place useful headings on course notes

- Make links descriptive (not “click here” or “this link”)

- use Plain Language principles (avoid using unnecessarily complicated language, use a good layout so information is well organised)

- use strong contrast

- use consistent conventions instead of doing flashy, new things (e.g., avoid using emojis as bullets)

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Room 8

Colors for emphasis without any other information

Information displayed on image with not alt-text

unwieldy links or click here

No headings

Emojis and arrows

Scanned pdfs, not ocr’d

videos without captions or transcripts

tables used for spacing/formatting

non-familiar acronyms without explaining

Room 9

Inaccessible pdf

Poorly labeled hyperlinks

Images without alt text

The use of green and red color

Room 12

Using emojis - screen readers cannot read

No descriptive links (i.e., saying “Click here” and no other context)

Alt text for decorative images

Screen reader demo

• Listen to different screen readers navigate common academic materials, internet webpages and apps.
• Notice how information is discovered; the difference between access and accessibility.
• Notice where interruptions happen.
• Notice how long tasks take.
• Notice moments of confusion or repetition.
• Think about the following questions:

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(What was easier than you expected? - What was harder than you expected? - What depended heavily on design choices?)

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Share in the chat

Accommodation– overview

• Often requires an individual to disclose a need and request an accommodation.
• Much human rights legislation requires “reasonable accommodation”
• (e.g. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities)

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Accommodation– benefits and challenges

Benefits:

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• Acknowledges and addresses the needs of individuals
• Enables greater participation in society, work, and education

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Challenges:

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• Results in access fatigue.
• Reactive and can take significant time to identify and address access needs.
• Inherently othering and based on an imaginary idea of “normal”. No one is normal.

What is Access Fatigue?

• Ongoing emotional and cognitive labor spent explaining disabilities and access needs.
• Repeated responsibility for educating others about accessibility.
• Pressure to appear appreciative of minimal or reluctant accommodations.
• Exhaustion from weighing the personal cost of requesting access against potential benefits (Konrad, 2021, cited in Kleinfeld, 2021.).

Exploring power and contextual constraints

• We all hold power differently in educational spaces; power is not a binary of “have” or “don’t have”.
• Contextual Constraints will impede your ability to evoke change.
• Focus on your own Scope of Control (what you can change immediately) and Scope of Influence (where you can plant seeds of greater change).
• What can we do in the digital and physical designs of our education to make them accessible?

Activity!

• In breakout rooms, Discuss the following question:
• Imagine the future of education when designed through the lens of accessible design for screen reader access.
• Create a story; a memo; a poem; a set of principles
• Consider the physical, social, educational, and digital barriers.
• Consider solutions that might exist at: the micro level (what can the instructor do?) and at the macro level (what can/should be changed by the institution?)

Room 1

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Room 2

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Room 3

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Room 4

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Room 5

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Check out: a small thing

Reflecting on today’s conversation, what small change can you immediately apply to your educational practice?

THANKS!

DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?

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