Breaking Down Barriers: How an Accessibility Vetting Rubric Promotes Equity in Digital Learning Environments

Audience Level: 
All
Institutional Level: 
Higher Ed
Streamed: 
Onsite
Special Session: 
Diversity & Inclusion
Abstract: 

Discover how collaboration between education stakeholders and edtech suppliers can ensure the creation of truly accessible digital products.

We will introduce you to a community-developed accessibility vetting rubric your institution can implement to improve student access and supplement existing accessibility measures.

Extended Abstract: 

Discover how collaboration between education stakeholders and edtech suppliers can ensure the creation of truly accessible digital products.

We will introduce you to a community-developed accessibility vetting rubric, which offers a common framework for evaluating tools with your supplier partners and augmenting legislated accessibility requirements and conformance documentation. This rubric will help improve access for all students and supplement existing accessibility measures.

Our presenters will share their experiences bringing diverse voices and perspectives together to develop and evolve a comprehensive and inclusive rubric. You will learn how this rubric can be used to evaluate digital products and the companies that create them with accessibility at the forefront.

Join us to learn how the power of collaboration and leveraging accessibility vetting can improve equity and inclusivity for all learners.

The rubric at the center of our conversation helps institutions assess the posture of edtech suppliers toward accessibility policies for their products. It is available for anyone's use and was developed to make conversations about accessibility more manageable for all stakeholders.

In this session, we'll take an in-depth look at the collaborative process for developing an Accessibility Rubric for education. Participants will learn how to apply the rubric to evaluate their edtech products. We'll have a small group activity to test the rubric and then a show and tell on each group's findings. We'll leave time for questions, sharing, and discussion on the challenges that emerged during the activity.

Conference Track: 
Access, Equity, and Open Education
Session Type: 
Education Session
Intended Audience: 
Administrators
Faculty
Instructional Support
Technologists