Accessibility Awareness: UDL (Universal Design for Learning) through the Lens of a Legally Blind Student and Instructor

OBJECTIVES

• Recognize challenges facing students of varied needs
• Identify evidence-based methodology supporting achievable results for all students
• Discuss experiences of a legally blind student navigating a graduate program with assistive technology
• Review strategies for supporting students with complex needs
• Characterize the value of the student/instructor connection
• Distinguish the need for attitudinal changes through UDL

The primary objective of this 45-minute round table discussion (Conversations that Work) is to create awareness and provide evidence-based methodology that supports facilitation of knowledge for instructors as well as learning for students with complex needs.  As the title (Accessibility Awareness:  UDL through the Lens of a Legally Blind Student and Instructor) suggests, the facilitator will recount and illuminate her experiences as a legally blind student through brief descriptions of various coursework and the tangible supports she continues to utilize.   She will also identify and explain how difficulties were met and overcome by herself and a previous professor who will be on hand to contribute her perspective to the conversation.  During the course of the discussion a two-fold solution will be offered to engage questioning and further exploration (i.e., simplistic, achievable supports for student and instructor).  Additionally, table participants will learn how to facilitate learning in a more relatable and individualistic manner.

The dialogue will unfold with three key points for elaboration.  No more than six slides will be used for presentative purposes.  These slides will be included at particular intervals to enhance the discussion questions.  For instance, the facilitator will open with similar or same questions asking, “Have you ever encountered a situation where you interacted or taught a student(s) with disability?  What did you do?”  Of course this line of questioning invariably leads to robust and sometimes lengthy dialogue.  As a result of this first key point, the facilitator’s intent is to have educators peer into the world of students with disabilities with more insightful and keen recognition of their role in this increasing and significant dynamic.  The second key point of the discussion is to paint a picture of a student with a disability from the perspective of the legally blind facilitator.  She will, first, reveal and share some of the tangible supports she utilizes as a part of her learning (e.g., view of magnification software on computer screen and orange dots on the keypad).  Next, she will briefly share certain aspects of her coursework and encounters with an instructor (highlighting, printed words on colorful backgrounds and difficulties with accessing audio for abstracts shown from the online library – Search Wise).  These areas of focus are all the second part of the discussion.  For this second key point, the facilitator’s intent is to reveal nuances that were, perhaps, never thought about or even indicated in accessibility rules and guidelines.  The third and final conversational key point delineates the importance of student-instructor connection.  This is, possibly, the most important part to this dialogue.  It is also the part of the dialogue that poses simplistic and achievable measures for ensuring student-teacher supports and student academic success.  The intention, here, is to better understand why student/educator connection is so imperative.  And it shows how to achieve it!

There is, however, an underlying goal that supersedes the most crucial and vital aspects of this discourse – the need for attitudinal and behavioral changes towards UDL among authority figures.  Understanding the psychology of students with special needs is tantamount because they, like everyone else, want self-sustainability, upward mobility, growth, acceptance and a sense of belonging.  Furthermore,  in order to gain thoughtful understanding of their needs, there must be an awareness of the student’s educational backgrounds, personal goals and or motivations.  The facilitator has successfully functioned in the roles of educator and student.  It is hoped that her two-pronged evidence-based approach inspires enterprising conversation which encourages innovative efforts and collaborations.