I think about accessibility a lot. Maybe because I work with clothing, and I know for sure that "one size fits all" is a lie. Maybe because I'm left handed. 10% of the world's population is left handed, and yet I challenge you to go to any event, class, whatever, where scissors are provided for the participants and check whether 10% of those scissors are left handed. I bet more often than not none of the scissors are left handed.
We can erroneously fall into thinking that accessibility is only about disability. Making sure that our built spaces work for people with legally defined disabilities is important--those laws ensure that public spaces include notices in braille, that TV shows are captioned, that businesses have accessible parking near the entrance with clear space to load and unload out of a side door. But accessibility is so much broader. For one thing, the only reason that any built space doesn't accommodate someone, is because it is just that--a built space. Human designers made it, and at some point made choices that work for a few bodies and minds, but not all. There is no problem at all with the person who the space doesn't accommodate, the problem is with the design plan that didn't take everyone into account. Like my brownie troop leaders who didn't buy a single pair of left handed scissors...in three years.
"One size fits all" is a lie. There is not one way to build a space that is fully accessible, and another that is not. The stairs are best for some, ramps for some, elevators for others. Providing multiple options to the same goal tends to be the best way.
That's not to say that accommodating everyone is easy, or obvious. Here's a mistake I made: among other things, my job includes teaching students how to sew at a sewing machine. I am just a bit over 5 feet tall. One of my tall students was having real difficulty learning to use a sewing machine. He figured out, and then pointed out to me, that the tables our sewing machines are built into were too low for him. His knees banged against the front of the table when he tried to reach the pedal. At my height, it had honestly never occurred to me that this would be a problem for someone with long legs. I asked him to let me think on it. By the next class I had gone to the book store and bought the risers they sell to prop up your dorm bed so that you can shove more crap under it. They worked perfectly!
Even though I solved his difficulty pretty easily, I felt awful, because not only had I failed to see the problem myself, I knew I had had students his height in previous classes, who must have struggled just as much. They hadn't spoken up, I hadn't noticed, they had to struggle for no reason other than that the sewing machine tables were all the same size, but people aren't. I failed to imagine that what fit me comfortably wouldn't fit everyone.
The solution wasn't to raise all of the machines. It's no good to go from only accommodating the shorter half of the class to only accommodating the taller half. the solution was to provide a wider variety of heights, to better accommodate a variety of people.
So yeah, access is important, and easy to miss.
And now that schools at all levels across the country are teaching remotely, there is another layer to access. All of us experience the world with different bodies and different minds, but now we are also experiencing it with different equipment and internet speed.
I am seeing so many assumptions that "what's on my screen must also be what's on your screen" or that video is the only way to conduct class.
What assumptions are we making about what students have access to at home? What assumptions is the school making about what teachers have at home? How do these new access issues stack on top of any student's current access issues around their ability to see, hear, or read print?
Internet speed is different in different locations, especially rural vs. urban. I know so little about "computer stuff" but as I understand it some forms of internet are slowed down by how many people are using it. I was chatting on video with one of my students while we were waiting for the rest of the class to enter the meeting. She was in one room of the house video conferencing for our class, she had two parents both working online from home in other rooms, and a sibling somewhere else in the house also taking class online. I bet this is pretty common for students, whether they are living with family, still in the dorm (some of my students are) or in an apartment with other students.
So I'm trying to keep my eyes open, question my assumptions, and vary the assignments around different platforms. I love getting on video and seeing my students' smiling faces, but I can't assume that video is the best answer for every student, or for every lesson. So I'm doing some video, some discussion forums where we type to each other during class time, some written assignments that can be done in their own time and turned in on the day of class.
Finally, here's the big win for accessibility that we could all pull out of this. All of this stuff we're learning, like how to broadcast a class or meeting while it is happening, we can still do when we are back to meeting in person. So for a student or employee whose attendance is affected by illness, whether something long term like chronic fatigue, or short term like a non-pandemic flu, they can stay home and I can put the class online in real time. At home, I've been doing this by mounting my tablet on a tripod. I can do that on campus too. And that student can either follow along in real time or watch the recording later. It may not be as good as being in attendance, but it's way better than getting notes from a classmate, and it protects the rest of the community if that student has something contagious.
And yes, hopefully lots of businesses are realizing how many of their employees can work from home, and how that opens those jobs up for people whose disabilities make reporting to a work space a lot harder than working from a home work space.
There is a lot that is hard about what we are doing right now, but with some creative thinking we can pull a lot of good from it to carry with us into the future.
Are you working remotely right now? are you teaching? I'd love to hear what you're trying, and what's working to accommodate your students across so many different levels of computer/internet access.
No comments:
Post a Comment