Innovation and accessibility

There are approximately 1.3 billion disabled people in the world – that’s around a sixth of the world’s population (World Health Organization, 2023). In 2022, 27% of the EU population over the age of 16 had some form of disability. (European Council, 2023). In the European Region, the World Health Organization estimates that 36 million people may have developed Long Covid over the first three years of the pandemic (WHO, 2023). Disabled people are routinely marginalised and prevented from participating equally in many aspects of society, including education.

Meeting the needs of disabled people is a vital part of ensuring education is open to all. Most people would agree that making education open to all is ‘the right thing to do’. This idea is more formally shaped in legislation in many countries, requiring that education providers make reasonable adjustments so that learning opportunities are accessible to disabled people.

Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2008) stipulates that countries must take steps to ensure that:

Persons with disabilities can access an inclusive, quality and free primary education and secondary education on an equal basis with others in the communities in which they live;

Persons with disabilities receive the support required, within the general education system, to facilitate their effective education;

Effective individualized support measures are provided in environments that maximize academic and social development, consistent with the goal of full inclusion;

Persons with disabilities are able to access general tertiary education, vocational training, adult education and lifelong learning without discrimination and on an equal basis with others.

The UNCRPD principles apply to all forms of education, including those conducted solely online. Accordingly, claims about the many benefits of online education often include that it is:

• inherently more inclusive than face-to-face alternatives, giving educators increased opportunities to innovate and better meet the needs of diverse learners
• inherently more accessible for disabled people, removing barriers to participation that exist in face-to-face education.

At this point it’s worth noting the distinction between the terms ‘inclusion’ and ‘accessibility’. Inclusion is a broad-reaching term. When used in an educational context, inclusion refers to the removal of barriers to equal participation related to factors such as age, economic situation, disability, education level, gender, geographic location or language. However, the term accessibility specifically focuses on ensuring equal participation for disabled people.

Claims about online education being ‘inherently more inclusive’ are certainly true for some people. Online educators can innovate to make learning more engaging for diverse learners, for example through the use of interactive learning resources and videos. Geographical barriers to learning can be removed when teaching takes place solely online, opening up education to remotely located learners. Online learning also tends to offer students the opportunity to follow a fairly flexible study schedule. We should not forget, though, that in the developing world reliable access to electricity, suitable computer equipment and an internet connection – all essential for learning online – is not universal.

Claims about online education being inherently more accessible than face-to-face education are also true for some disabled learners. For example:

• Online course materials can be more accessible than printed materials for people with certain types of disability, allowing the use of screen-reading software and different display formats.
• Online tutorials can allow some disabled students to better communicate with their peers on an equal basis. For example, a deaf student or a neurodivergent student may find it difficult to interact in a face-to-face tutorial, but may have less difficulty interacting in text-based online discussions.

However, innovation in online education can sometimes come at the expense of accessibility. Cooper (2015) points out that uncaptioned videos, disorganised websites and course materials that cannot be read by screen readers or accessed without a mouse, and online educators who have little knowledge of how to ensure that their courses are accessible, compound the difficulties faced by disabled students. Sadly, more than a decade later, this is still the case (Iniesto et al, 2022).

Douce (2015) suggests that digital technologies such as virtual learning environments can help to increase levels of accessibility and inclusion. However, Pudaruth, Gunputh and Singh (2017) caution that ‘simply adopting these technologies does not ensure accessibility’. Rather, ‘educators or administrators have to make sure that these relatively new digital tools are indeed accessible to all’.

The claim that online education is inherently more accessible than face-to-face education appears, therefore, to be a myth. That said, it is within the power of online educators to make that myth a reality. Indeed, unless every online educator takes responsibility for ensuring their teaching is as accessible as possible, there’s a risk that developments in accessibility will never catch up with the fast pace of innovation in education. It needs the collective power of all educators sharing good practice and innovative ways of achieving accessibility to ensure nobody is left behind by changes in educational technology and pedagogy.

In the remainder of Week 2 you’ll look at approaches to designing inclusive and accessible online teaching and learning, how accessibility guidelines can be used to inform online learning design, and how to learn from others when designing and delivering inclusive and accessible learning experiences.

The next two steps will focus on the broader topic of inclusion before the focus of Week 2 narrows to consider accessibility in online teaching and learning.

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