Notes on Seale - Chapter 7

There is a debate surrounding who is responsible (or most responsible) for accessibility. How helpful is this debate in ensuring that people working in post-16 education change their practices?

Perhaps a better question would be, who is NOT responsible? Few learning experiences are the result of input from one lone ranger.

If those with technical skills, such as learning technologists, are not ultimately or solely responsible for ensuring accessibility, what responsibilities do you think they should have and why?

Communication. Technical staff are perhaps well placed to make sense of the guidelines and how to implement them, understand the practicalities of assistive technologies, how to make things compatible and compliant. If they can communicate some of the key points and issues to other staff such as academics and senior management and disseminate understanding throughout the organisation that would be a good start.

On pages 82–83, Seale uses an archaeology metaphor to try to encourage learning technologists to dig deeper beneath the surface of accessibility guidelines and standards. This is intended to develop a greater understanding of approaches to accessible design. How helpful do you think this metaphor is? Can you think of an alternative metaphor, image, analogy or visualisation that could be used to help develop learning technologists’ thinking in this area?

The archaeology metaphor is as helpful as any other I guess. Learning technologists will be better placed to understand accessibility issues if they have looked beyond the technical guidelines and have some practical experience e.g. using assistive technologies to get a better understanding. This was very helpful for me as I was aware of best practices and guidelines but had never tried any assistive technologies before this course. Just a couple of hours was even enough to open my eyes.

On page 98 Seale discusses the tensions regarding the use of technical tools versus human judgement to evaluate the accessibility of learning resources. What is your position concerning this issue?

A combined approach has got to be taken. As a producer of materials I do find the automated tools useful to help identify problems I may have missed BUT they are only after gaining an understanding of the underlying issues and best practices in the first instance.

Can we trust human judgement? If so, whose judgement should we trust – learning technologists working within educational organisations or external experts?

We have little choice but to trust human judgement to some extent. Automated tools are not delivered by storks after all. Who should we trust? All of the above. Gathering information and having discussion is surely key to improving accessibility at all levels from the guidelines of national and international bodies to organisational levels and to individual technical and academic staff.