Prompt: Roblyer & Hughes (2019) discuss the importance of equitable access to websites for all students in Chapter 8. Address examples of how you use technology and assistive devices to create a classroom designed to meet the needs of all of your students.

Video Transcript

Hey family,

My organization’s makeup is a bit unique regarding equitable accesses to learning content. I work for the United States Air Force, and as a professional military organization, it legally discriminates against many physical disabilities. However, I still employ universal design for learning principles in my learning supports strategy (Roblyer & Hughes, 2019). I use strategies aligned with response-to-intervention and technology integration theory to encourage my learning teams to transform the learning supports. In my practices, this sometimes includes little more than ensuring textual, visual, and auditory aids are provided in the content, but also focuses the content on bridging learning interface supports with tangible learning outputs.

Meanwhile, Shaheen and Lohnes Watulak (2019) make the comparison between physical system-level accessibility elements like wheelchair ramps and the virtual system-level accessibility elements of technology accessibility. They make the case that it is almost too little and too late when technology accessibility is levied as an individual classroom-level concern because it is simply too much to ask of teachers rather than top-level administrators. At the ground level, I see teachers struggling to solve problems above their scope. As we continue to try to overcome systemic injustices and design classrooms that meet the needs of our learners, I would like to encourage us to do less with less while aiming beyond excellence in that less is more sort of way. Thanks!

     – Ray

References

Roblyer, M. D., & Hughes, J. E. (2019). Integrating educational technology into teaching: Transforming learning across disciplines (8th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc.

Shaheen, N. L., & Lohnes Watulak, S. (2019). Bringing disability into the discussion: Examining technology accessibility as an equity concern in the field of instructional technology. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 51(2), 187–201. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2019.1566037