Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) GAAD on May 18 is a day designed to remind those who shape our digital world that they have a critical role in making our future world accessible to everyone. Most designers work to accessibility standards and guidelines that consider the diversity of ways that people access webpages, software and mobile […]
Category: Teaching
What if your digital strategy could… reduce the cost of supporting learner achievement provide a framework for addressing new requirements and responsibilities – without increasing the risk of exclusion identify opportunities for technology to extend and improve engagement and encourage innovative teaching practice at the same time The accessibility and inclusion subject specialists help Jisc members find practical, […]
Our Jisc Learning analytics –Data and disadvantaged student’s webinar in February was well attended. If you missed it, don’t worry, you can still view the recording and download the slides. As anticipated, the audience was diverse. Staff from disability support services, teachers and data managers were attracted by the deliberately broad-ranging title. Our aim was […]
The number of disabled students – or students with additional support needs – is rising. There may be many reasons, but the best reason is that we are becoming more aware of the issues. But ‘more aware’ of the problems doesn’t mean more aware of the answers. In this blog, Alistair McNaught gives some advice […]
Technology often overtakes ethics. Lecture capture is one such example, with powerful (and sometimes controversial) implications for accessibility. Sue Watling, Academic Advisor for Technology Enhanced Learning at the University of Hull, muses on the issues in this guest post. Opt-in? Opt-out? When it comes to institutional policies on the recording of teaching, the answer […]
A missing half million? Half a million dyslexic students may have missed out. According to the 2015 figures for England[1] the overall entry for GCSEs in summer 2015 was 4,916,000. Given the demography of dyslexia we could expect 10% of students benefitting from exam papers in accessible digital format, using inbuilt or third party assistive […]
Funding changes in Scottish FE sector prompt Margaret McKay to reflect on the wider opportunities for colleges to embrace digital inclusion in widenening participation… A review of funding to support disabled students in FE colleges in Scotland was undertaken last academic year (2015-2016). Engaging with a wide range of stakeholder groups, the Scottish Funding Council […]
Fieldwork is often the high point of a course but for many learners it is also most challenging, taking them beyond their comfort zones. Stepping up to – and overcoming – the challenges often contributes to the sense of personal achievement the learners gain. This is especially the case with disabled learners. Alistair McNaught explores […]
Many things influence the accessibility of a learning platform. Here, Alistair McNaught gives some pointers to the main issues. And – as we see below – it is not just about technology; the way you use it matters too. This overview looks at four key areas; users, resources, activities and browser choices. Users Usability of […]
A recent question on the Assistive-technology Jisc mail list (https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=ASSISTIVE-TECHNOLOGY) sparked some interesting debate. Alistair McNaught thought the debate was worthwhile enough to summarise as a blog post. In the process he discovered some weird and wonderful things about redeeming inaccessible PDFs… How are PDFs good for accessibility? If a PDF document has been created […]