Innovating Inclusion: Accessible Technology in Online Learning

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VOICEOVER: Innovating Inclusion: Accessible Technology in Online Learning. Joshua Hori, Director of Digital Accessibility at UC Davis. Dr. Sam Sanders-Shaker, Global Accessibility Lead at D2L. Kyle Shachmut, Senior Director of Digital Accessibility, Harvard. Mary Ziegler, Program Manager, Online Learning Accessibility, MIT.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Thank you, Karae and Ross. And thank you to SciTech Global for this session today. I’m delighted to be here with this fantastic panel of colleagues. We’ll start by introducing ourselves and sharing our current role and a bit about our background. I’m Mary Ziegler. I am the Program Manager for Online Learning Accessibility in the Department of Open Learning at MIT, MIT. My name is Mary Ziegler at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. I’ve contributed to assistive technology and accessibility initiatives for about 25 years. All of them were designed to make learning more accessible to students with disabilities. Joshua, can you please introduce yourself?

JOSHUA HORI: My name is Joshua Hori. I’m the Accessible Technology Coordinator for UC Davis, where I have built an assistive technology program for students. And I’m currently working with the University of Michigan, and I’m currently building one for faculty and staff.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Kyle?

KYLE SHACHMUT: Thanks, Mary. My name is Kyle Shachmut. I’m the Senior Director of Digital Accessibility at Harvard University. I lead a great team in our IT department that helps make sure all of the awesome programs and services and activities at Harvard are accessible to everyone and that everyone can fully participate to make the programs of a big research university like ours what they are. DR.

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: And, um, hi I am Sam Chandrashekar. I serve as the global accessibility lead at D2L corporation, which is an education technology company based in Canada. Before joining D2L, I taught inclusive design for over six years in graduate programs in OCAD University and in the University of Toronto. And currently, I hold adjunct professor or doctoral committee member positions at three Canadian universities, supervising master’s and PhD students in inclusive design and critical disability study research. Over to you, Mary.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Thank you, everyone. Online learning is offered by many colleges, universities, and other organizations. Some learning programs offer a path to a degree or credential, while many simply offer the opportunity of learning a skill or a topic. Unites them is the promise of access to online learning, the promise that individuals can join the learning opportunity from any location in any time zone using the internet and their own technology. The question I’d like to start us off with today is: In your career, how do you see online learning technology and other online learning aspects evolving and innovating to offer more accessible and inclusive educational opportunities? Kyle, would you like to start us off?

KYLE SHACHMUT: I’d love to; that’s a great question and such a big one. Right this has definitely changed a ton in in the time I’ve been working in higher education. and technology and i’m sure the the same for everyone here on the panel but one of the biggest functions and opportunities we’ve seen in the last few years is the ability to organize your people to be engaged in reviving around the change that has taken place you talked about in a minute last year i think a lot of our maturity and también lo consider Fargo more than two years ago when we first had to handle this that was because there was met skewed and I guess those восек in a l an ty nu me of learners at once, right? You now have a plethora of opportunities available to you to take courses, and that offers so much more opportunity. It doesn’t mean that every course is the same or the same opportunity for access or for learning, right? But you have so many more choices than you used to as a learner, which is really exciting. And then for those of us trying to create and teach courses, you don’t have just your local area to draw from anymore. You’ve got the whole world, and that’s really exciting. And it means we can bring people together and bring learning communities together that just weren’t possible before. So it’s really exciting, the scale and the change that is available through online learning.

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: That was a wonderful response, Kyle. And, like I had already mentioned, my career is a mix of teaching and educational technology. Every cohort I taught in the inclusive design program had 50% of students with disabilities. So, I naturally grew sensitive to student needs, and I brought that spirit and the philosophy of inclusive design to D2L. And, inclusive design is about designing and building technology with people with disabilities. So, I’d like to pick specific students. To illustrate how they are currently being met with inclusive technology and what possibilities AI brings to enhance that access. So first, for students with low vision, we build responsive interfaces that resize to the viewport size of the device used. What the future holds is intelligent interfaces where student profiles and needs can be predefined in a way that is not only for the student, but also for the students. So I think it’s a great way that the display gets personalized according to contextual requirements. Second, we design simple, consistent, and predictable user interfaces for students with cognitive constraints. But AI makes it possible to gather inputs about user behavior while they are using the system and add preferences to their profile to enable personalized design. Such that one size fits one. A good example of this would be in terms of digital learning delivery to accommodate students with diverse needs. Currently, we enable uploading of content in multiple modalities or formats, and I am happy to emphasize that over the past few years. But with all the Saturday morning translation capabilities, that AI brings, it is increasingly possible now wants to offer learning material in different formats on wonderful tools, including the transportation of a system through another way. Just by converting modalities, and finally, above all the natural language processing capabilities are making it possible for simpler and more effective communication with technology, and this benefit goes to all students, so I do believe that while we can feel we are offering some amount of accessibility to students, um, the it’s going to increase more and more with AI.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Joshua, do you have any thoughts?

JOSHUA HORI: Thank you for sharing that, Sam. My work has focused centered on making web accessibility, learning management systems, and document accessibility more inclusive. I’ve also integrated assistive technology such as screen readers, text-to-speech, um, speech-to-text note-taking, and writing assistance. to remove the language from the system and to make it more accessible to students barriers and support learners with diverse needs moving forward we need to be proactive in addressing accessibility by focusing on universal design from the outset this means ensuring that learning platforms documents and tools are developed with inclusivity in mind not as an afterthought ai can play a key role here by simplifying content and personalizing support as what sam mentioned earlier um with ai’s help uh whether it’s converting text to plain language providing more accessible document formats or generating adaptive Assessments additionally, I envision learning environments where users can choose how they engage with content, whether it’s through virtual reality, mobile devices, or laptops. The integration of tools like 3D printing, haptics, and other emerging technologies can create tactile, hands-on learning experiences, experiences filling in the gaps that traditional methods leave behind. This could benefit students who need more interactive and tangible ways to engage with content to meet the promise of accessible education. We must move beyond simply meeting compliance and instead build learning environments. That proactively adapts to every loss, ensuring equitable opportunities for all learners.

KYLE SHACHMUT: Mary, you’ve been a leader in this space for a long time. I’m curious how you’ve seen things evolve over time.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: You’ve been a leader in this space for a long time, well I think Sam and uh Josh took us way into the future and I’m looking forward to getting there. Um, but that I want to highlight as a perhaps not an innovation but a change is the online learning environment is a is an awesome opportunity for accessibility because it not only allows us to be able to do a lot of things, but it also allows us to be able to do a lot of things. A learner to come to the course with whatever technology they have on their computer already, and they don’t have to carry it around. They just show up with what they need. But I’m finding that also faculty and instructors are much more interested in understanding how to design learning to be accessible, because they understand that the whole environment is digital, and they have to deliver all their content via a technology, and they want students to engage. So I find that there’s a higher motivation to understand what needs to be done to make things accessible. And some of the simple results of that are that some of the accessibility elements in a course, they’re just not questioned anymore. They just come along. So captions come with a video, and transcripts come with a podcast, and descriptions come with an image, and videos come with an alternative format document if they have visuals in them. And these are things I don’t generally have to explain or even ask for anymore. It’s sort of understood.

KYLE SHACHMUT: That’s really awesome. So you’ve definitely seen that progression where faculty are ready to be more accessible than they were even a few years ago?

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Yeah, because when it’s fully online, they’ve discovered that a lot of what we ask for in accessibility is actually quite generally positively received by learners. So when we first started, occasionally a course would sneak out without captions, and inevitably there would be an immediate complaint on the discussion forum, where are the captions? And it was often not clear. And I think it’s important to understand that it’s not a person with deafness or hard of hearing. It was just someone who wanted captions. So yeah, so I feel like it just makes a lot of sense why we do accessibility.

KYLE SHACHMUT: Totally agree. We find it really resonant when people just say accessibility is just one dimension that makes an online course high quality.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Exactly, exactly. That’s so well put. I’m going to stop for question one on that and move along to question two. Online learning is a digital ecosystem, which we’ve been talking about, with many interdependencies. Teachers create educational materials; they design to allow learners to engage with a topic or a concept. Learners connect to the courses via the internet and their own technology with an expectation that they can achieve a learning goal. And so I think it’s important to understand that. And I think this problem really does quite rightly. Even when teachers have a key or zuppe at some of The technology platform and the options and supports learners, is what connect teachers to learners and vice versa. In your experience, what can teachers, technologists or learners contribute to make this interconnectivity and integration work well, for all of them? How about Joshua, would you like to start us off?

JOSHUA HORI: Sure. Thank you, Mary. tutti years of experience. Here, Yeah. Teachers, disability offices, and learners all play essential roles in creating an interconnected digital learning experience that prioritizes accessibility. Teachers should focus on developing universal design content that is accessible from the outset. This means creating materials that are adaptable and can be easily used with various technologies, ensuring that all students can engage effectively with the content, regardless of their learning needs. Disability offices should hire assistive technology professionals who can work closely with the students to build their confidence in using these assistive technologies. These professionals can provide training, resources, and personalized support to help students navigate the tools available to them. Additionally, they can interact with learning management system administrators to ensure that the integration of LTI apps, learning technology integration apps, and other tools aligns with accessibility standards and supports diverse learners. Learners are encouraged to reach out to their disability offices for support, as these services are typically available at no additional costs. By seeking assistance, students can access valuable resources and tools that enhance their learning experiences and help them overcome barriers they didn’t realize they were experiencing. When teachers create universally designed content, disability offices provide necessary support through assistive technology professionals. And learners actively engage with available resources, we can foster a more inclusive and effective digital learning environment for everyone. Hey, Kyle, what about you? What do you think?

KYLE SHACHMUT: I love that. Thinking about this framing of the how we create a whole environment or ecosystem that makes learning more accessible is really interesting, right? Going back to what I mentioned earlier, how the scale of potential students can be so much greater on a daily basis. Even if we’re not able to do this online, it’s a real opportunity for teachers to try to anticipate and think about the needs that students have before they even show up for a course, right? Josh identified working with an accommodations office where that might be appropriate, and that’s a totally important thing to do. But it’s a real opportunity for teachers to think about and address those needs before a student even shows up, right? In the same way that a teacher thinks about schooling, they’re thinking about what they’re scaffolding their curriculum and says, how am I going to teach this topic to someone that may have never encountered it before, or someone that’s encountered a tangentially related discipline, or to someone who’s really in the weeds and knows a lot about this topic, whatever it may be, right? Just as they think about those different use cases for learning, think about different learners’ needs, including accessibility needs, is a real opportunity to kind of integrate that universal design, born accessible mentality from the start. And then because we’re here as part of SightTech Global, right, we definitely think specifically about our blind and low vision community, myself included in that, right? We want to make sure that as educators and as people creating learning environments, that we don’t think of blind and low vision folks as just learners, right? Just the consumers of course content. It’s really important. We want to have blind and low vision folks as learners, right? We want to have blind and low vision folks as teachers and faculty members and content creators that are sharing all of the awesome gifts and knowledge and resources that they have with the world too. And so that requires a real commitment from the technology ecosystem to make sure that accessibility isn’t something just for the learner side, but it’s also like a really important integration and consideration for the teachers and professors of courses as well. How about you for the ecosystem?

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: I totally endorse your point, Kyle, about considering more than one role when it comes to accessibility. Especially education accessibility is about access, participation, contribution, and success for everyone involved. That’s why we create technology that works not only for students with disabilities, but also for teachers and instructional technologies with disabilities. Technologists with disabilities and administrators with disabilities and staff with disabilities, everybody. Another point that comes to my mind about technology is that the ideal tech is invisible. Because generally, we become aware of tech when it breaks. Therefore, if we want a seamlessly accessible learning experience, different roles must work together in order to be able to do their parts effectively. So to answer your question, Mary, what can teachers, technologists, and learners contribute to make the interconnectivity and integration work well for all? I would say technologists must build their tools by including a variety of users with different constraints throughout the product process, and they must provide prompt support whenever a user with a disability faces a barrier. And I think that’s a really important point. Institutions must have a procurement process that’s focused on accessibility, and teachers must also ensure that the apps they want to include in their classrooms are usable by all students in the class. Institutions must also ensure that they have a process in place for the creation and maintenance of accessible content. And it goes without saying that learners have that key role of trying everything out and providing access to the content that they need. And I think that’s a really important point. Mary, what’s your experience?

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Well, I agree. There’s so much interdependency with the different technologies that are used. And while teachers can contribute by thinking more creatively about how they design their courses to work online, they are often, the channels that they use are either greater or even greater. It’s just constrained or opened depending on the platform and the technology and how their ability to make the content accessible to the learner. So we need a lot of supports in the space and guidelines to make sure that that connection actually works for tech teachers and technologists and for learners. And you’re right, we do depend a lot on the learners to show up and tell us what is working and what is not working. I always worry it’s a little bit of a burden. I don’t like to burden students with accessibility, but we very much need them in the space to tell us what’s working. Do you have that issue also that you don’t want to burden your students with telling you?

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: It’s tricky. We can’t burden some students out just because a student uses a screen reader. We can’t have them test every single lesson. But if we generally say a student that experiences constraint must express that, I think that’s taken care of. Instead of just naming students with disabilities or students who use assistive technologies.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: No, and I didn’t really mean it that way. Just sort of, it’s sort of we assume in accessibility that things are accessible if we don’t hear that they aren’t.

KYLE SHACHMUT: Yeah, that’s a great point, Mary. Some of my favorite feedback we’ve ever received from students is like, they’ll take a course or an introductory course, and then, you know, they’re going to take a course and then, we do our best to try to think about accessibility from the start, right? We’re always open to feedback if something’s not as great as it could be. But some of my favorite feedback is when people will take subsequent courses, either through a different teacher or another school or a different institution, and be like, wow, I didn’t know all the accessibility that was going into a course until I had a different experience and found it to be so different, right? And so sometimes it’s like the water that you’re swimming in, that accessible ecosystem, can be great, and you should definitely talk to your student accommodations office or the course providers if it’s not, absolutely. But definitely feedback welcomes, of course, creators all the time on when you have a good accessibility experience, too.

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: That’s a wonderful segue.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Oh, sorry, Sam, did you want to say something?

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: I call it positive accessibility, like positive psychology.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: So that’s a wonderful segue because we’re talking about learners. I also wanted to ask the panel, what would you share with a learner embarking on taking a course online? Sam, do you want to, do you have an idea what you would say to a learner?

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: I would begin by saying that every learner has unique needs. And again, the needs could be permanent, temporary, and situational. All of them in one single individual. So the same online course might meet the needs of different learners differently. So they cannot be any objectively labelable online course that is accessible. Because disability is a mismatch between the needs of the learner and what the online course offers. Therefore, I would sensitize the learner to the fact that they must try the course and determine what works and what doesn’t and provide feedback. Because in an ideal online learning system, there would be a process for receiving feedback from students and taking action with an urgency that’s commensurate with the severity of the barrier faced by the learner or the student. So if I know about such a mechanism, then I would share with the learner that mechanism for sharing feedback. And hope that they get timely help to be able to continue learning without losing their motivation or morale. What about you, Kyle?

KYLE SHACHMUT: I love that, Sam. Providing feedback is definitely really useful to the teams or individuals that create online courses. If someone was considering it from the start, right, I would definitely encourage, maybe, to proceed with caution, right? Maybe caution and some optimism. As Mary was mentioning earlier, I think accessibility is definitely much more there across the board than it may have been in previous years. But as a sector, as an industry, we are not where we could or should be either. So it’s absolutely in the same way that you think about what are the technical requirements I would need to take a course? Or what are prerequisites that I would need to know? And I think one of the things that we need to know or learn or understand to get the most out of this course is ask or look up. Anyone who provides an online course should be able to tell you if asked, yeah, we think about accessibility when we create these courses, right? And if they don’t, that would certainly be a flag of maybe this isn’t the provider that I should be thinking about, right? And we hope and certainly look forward to the day where that’s just an understood expectation across the board. But it’s probably not where it should be today. So definitely ask and try to get answers before you start about the level of accessibility to expect within a course. And then, you know, you might identify or find a gap where you could even create your own more accessible learning opportunity or find a different platform that does. So lots of opportunities there if you’re thinking about diving into a course. How about you, Mary?

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Yeah, I think trying courses is important. And reporting when you have any accessibility experiences that are not, you know, seamless. There are a lot of, like, open courses that we provide, and I know others do, too, that do allow you to get into a course for free and try them out. And so I would encourage a learner embarking on online learning to try out different platforms and courses. And if, you know, if you’re looking for a course that’s more accessible, try it. And if it’s not accessible to you, when you get to the point where they say you can’t continue without paying, then you don’t want to keep going if it’s not accessible to you. But I really feel that I would love to see more learners with disabilities show up and let us know not only what’s not working but what is working for you. Joshua, what do you say?

JOSHUA HORI: Ah. This is where I come in. And I challenge the students to play around in the course and become familiar with it and find the accessibility issues beforehand. How do you access your textbooks and course materials? How do you contact the instructor or fellow classmates? Check the syllabus and become familiar with what’s required from you as a student. And make sure you can access all those areas. And if you’re having problems with any of it, reach out to your disability office and request accommodation. Because that’s where we’re going to come to find out what needs to be fixed.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Well put. So as we wind down a little now, what is the one thing you would want the audience to take away from our panel today? I could call on someone, but maybe I’ll wait for a volunteer.

JOSHUA HORI: I’ll go ahead and go since my mic is already open. One key takeaway I would like the audience to have is the importance of collaboration and creating inclusive online learning environments. It’s crucial for teachers, assistive technologists, and learners to communicate openly and work together. By sharing insights and experiences, we can better understand the diverse needs of all learners and develop solutions that genuinely enhance our learning. The integration of assistive technologies and universal design content should not be an afterthought, but a fundamental aspect of our educational practices. Together, we can foster a digital ecosystem where every learner feels empowered to succeed.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: I love that. It’s very aspirational. I have an aspirational takeaway, too. The one thing I want the audience to take away from our panel today is that we’re going to be working together. Thank you for the time. The important thing that we heard from our panel today is that the field of online learning is paying attention to accessibility and learning as we go. We’re innovating with technology just like everyone. We’re trying to open doors to curriculum, and we want the connection of teachers and learners to work. So please join a course or teach a course. Kyle, it was wonderful to remind us. We need you to teach, not just learn. And, um, let us know how you do, Kyle. What’s your takeaway? Very well said, very well said, Mary.

DR. SAMBHAVI CHANDRASHEKAR: I just wanted to commend your points and I’d like the audience to remember that learning happens in an ecosystem where technology connects people and technology takes multiple forms as content and as delivery tools so the most crucial requirement is that all forms of technology are usable by all the people involved and this can happen only if we involve people with disabilities at every step because nothing without us because everything is about us that’s the that’s the slogan that we use in Canada, so I’d like to reiterate, nothing without us, because everything is about us, everything is about us. And Kyle, you have the last word for the day.

KYLE SHACHMUT: I love that, uh, thanks Sam. I’ll, I guess I’ll bring us from the aspirational to the practical and thinking about it, and uh, we talked a lot, that learning happens in an ecosystem right? It relies on everybody, uh, it’s generally not just a solo journey even if it’s an online course you’re interacting hopefully with peers or previous learners or a community right? And so I think we all have a role to play in some way whether it’s speaking up like we talked about when we encounter issues maybe it’s you’re an ally and you’re interested in just asking the instructors, have you captioned that? Video before, have you made this accessible right? No matter what we’re doing uh in an online learning experience, you have an opportunity to contribute to accessibility whether you’re the the teacher leading the development um a learner who needs things to be accessible or just an ally who’s interested in going on the road to accessibility and I’d like to hear what you have to say on your own learning journey so we’ve all got a role to play ensuring that online courses are accessible and inclusive to everybody.

MARY J. ZIEGLER: Thank you, thank you for listening to our discussion today and thank you especially to Site Tech Global for Making this panel possible, we invite you to reach out to us if you have any questions.

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