Readers of this blog will know that it is crucially important to make learning opportunities and resources accessible to all learners. The reasons for improving accessibility are all around us: legal reasons, business reasons, moral reasons and pedagogic reasons.  However, dealing with the issues which emerge is far from being a trivial task, and many educators and managers find this area challenging.

Technologies bring new complexities to this area. On the one hand they can be hugely enabling, allowing learners to interact with people and resources in ways which were unthinkable hitherto. However, the introduction of new technology without due attention to the needs of disabled people can occasionally lead to the opposite effect, and teachers who fear disempowering some learners may also fail to adopt new technology which could otherwise prove very helpful to all their learners.

There is no magic solution – no ‘fairy dust’ as Jane Seale so delightfully puts it (Seale, 2006). We cannot sprinkle a little accessibility here, a little accessibility there, and expect to make improvements. There are plenty of ‘tools’ (software and hardware)  which claim to enhance accessibility, but it is often very hard to know how effective these might be under any specific circumstances. Recognising appropriate contexts and modes of use are real skills, requiring both practical experience and a robust conceptual framework which takes into account the interests of all the stakeholders.

Acquiring these skills is not entirely straightforward. Fortunately, some really good opportunities for staff development in this area are emerging. One place to go is the JISC TechDis website. This service is now includes (amongst much else) ‘TechDis Tuesdays: Dialogues for Difference’, a fortnightly series of online workshops, starting on January 10th 2012.  There is no registration charge, and these sessions are a great opportunity to learn from peers and experts alike, to develop your capability to help learners. More information can be found here:

http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/techdis/news/detail/2011/TechDis_Tuesdays_news

Meanwhile, the Open University offers ‘Accessible online learning: supporting disabled students’, an online masters level module, which as an alumnus I can recommend thoroughly. You can find more information here:

http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/course/h810.htm

If you don’t want to commit to the time and expense of a masters module, but still want access to the OU’s resources,there is an alternative. The ‘Accessibility of eLearning’  module is freely available online. You don’t get the support and the assessment, of course, but the quality of the materials is excellent. You can access the course here:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=397765&direct=1

Reference: Seale, J (2006) E-learning and disability in higher education: accessibility theory and practice. Routledge.

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