Talk: Accessibility and Universal Design for Learning and Research

In some realms of the academy and administration, we are having more and more discussions about technology/content accessibility and universal design. We are seeing tremendous growth in the use of instructional technology, but little to no consideration for giving access to everyone. For instance, we upload videos all the time with no captions, which automatically makes the content inaccessible for a growing number of users. Even complicated language use (Yeah, I’m guilty of it.) makes our work less available to the world. Many of us are advocating inclusive, universal design for learning and research. I would like for us to talk about what this means, what is practical, and how to move forward to help more tools and content be accessible from the outset through universal design.

One of my UDL/A11y idols: Howard Kramer – UDL/A11y from 2013 AHEAD Conference

UPDATE: Here’s a link to our conversation about accessibility

Categories: Collaboration, Session Proposals, Session: Talk, Teaching |

About Rachel Thompson

Alabamian. U of Alabama Linguistics PhD. Even though I am in the world of instructional technology administration now, I still enjoy teaching when I get the chance, particularly introductory linguistics, American English dialectology, and applied English grammar. I love to read (sci-fi and suspense mostly, but really any words in a row), cooking, irreverent humor, and sitting on my screen porch with my awesome husband Jacob and our sweet furbabies.

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