Participant Profiles 7-9 (Cycle 1)

This is the last email of three to complete the participant profiles for my AR.

Professor Cameron: No previous Accessibility Training. PC user.

"My previous syllabus might be more accessible because for the newer one, in my mind I wanted to make it more visually appealing and attractive but I didn't consider the accessibility aspect of it."

Cameron may be transitioning to a third party tool to build future syllabi that are still visually appealing but that have proven to be more accessible. Cameron has shared their syllabus design with other faculty members within their major so I have offered to also meet with the others to discuss their options.


Professor Matthews: No previous Accessibility training (at CI). Previous experience with working with students with special needs. Mac user.

"Everything I do, I try to be colorful but you don't even think how it effects these other things. I feel I also would need to make a more straightforward week 1, week 2 and make a plain text version of it more than the chart." Stated while discussing a colored coded table used to display the schedule.

"One of the things that is emphasized in... classes is agency for students... but in order for them to have that agency they need to be able to have the same level of control over the documentation presented in the class the same as anyone else in the class would." Stated when discussing the importance of a class experience being fair to all students.

"Listening through the screenreader hearing through their eyes..."

"...when I had a student that was deaf in my class and I saw the translator signing... the whole time I was aware of every single word that I said. It makes you more aware of how you are presenting your material either verbally or in writing and how someone is going to make sense of that." Stated as an example of using meaningful text to explain concisely and effectively.

"I think so often our faculty are just used to doing things like they've always done them but at the same time these are people that claim to want... you're not on a campus like this if you don't want to deal with students that are going to have challenges. I think the hardest part is getting that cultural change across the campus... making it more integral (integrate these practices) and this is how we do things as opposed to curtailing faculty resistance to top-down authority on these kinds of issues but if you don't pay attention to it then you get a lawsuit... we don't want to be reactionary to these kind of things we want to be proactive and taking the lead."


Professor Miller: No previous Accessibility Training. Mac user.

"I understand what headings are and how I probably should be using them but probably aren't."

"I do different syllabi in different colors so I can keep track of them."

"It's visually appealing but probably not visibly accessible."

"This sounds like a cool project."


What's next: I need to finalize the 2nd cycle email and get that out by today!!