ELEARNING ACCESSIBILITY
Dyslexia Inclusion in Higher Ed
Dyslexia is one of the most common learning disabilities represented at UCLA according to data gathered at UCLA’s Center for Accessible Education (CAE). In the year 2019 UCLA has 224 students enrolled who have been verified as dyslexic.
My proposal is to design a teaching and learning framework that is more inclusive for students with dyslexia. The program will focus on the accessibility of online reading material, universal design for learning and a soft skills training. The main goal of the program will be to ensure that all documents are accessible to screen-readers and assistive technology that can export text to audio formats such as MP3 and designing classes that are inclusive for students with dyslexia.
WHY DOES ACCESSIBILITY MATTER
In this short video essay I discuss the cultural reason why accessibility matters. I look at the life outcomes for people with disabilities in America and argue that we can do better,.
Infographics on disabilities
I have designed a number of info graphics in PDF format that can be printed and distributed for people working in disability services. I touched on four major disability types: Autism Spectrum, Dyslexia, ADHD and Physical Disability. I have have provided a checklist for instructional designers.
The Industrialization of Education
In this video essay I outline the history of education and why the Prussian model of education became dominant in the 20th century. I also discuss alternate strategies for education in the age of technology.
Universal Design for Learning 15-min Lecture
This is a short video of me teaching a webinar on universal design for learning. I have been interested in UDL as a framework for teaching and learning in online education. In this video I outline some of the core values of UDL and also show examples of UDL from courses that I design while working for the university an instructional designer.
Part 1 Intro to Accessibility and Accessibility Laws
Part one of the accessibility presentation reviews the need for accessibility in online education and the laws around accessibility including ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act), Section 508 and Section 504 Accessibility Laws. I also cover Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG); this sections reviews at the high level the guiding principles for accessibility. I cover statistics about disabled people in this country and college students with disabilities, and the numbers may surprise you. This presentation is intended for instructional designers, web developers, and people who work with students and technology.
Part 2 Accessibility Best Practices and Tools
Part two of the accessibility presentation covers best practices for web designers and instructional designers to build accessible online content. This section also explores the tools that are available to instructional designers to help them make better design decisions. I also stress the importance of communicating to disabled students their options and accommodations available to them at the office of students with disabilities. It is also worth noting that disabled students do not have to self-identify to the faculty or the school. I concluded with a section on how building accessible online content help many types of learners, not just students with disabilities.
UCLA Student George
Collecting Student feedback to improve disability services
Full Essay on Student Feedback
There are many issues facing students with disabilities at UCLA. The two issues I will focus on are student attitudes toward disability services and improving student learning outcomes through the lens of student feedback. This inquiry will focus on how UCLA can improve disability services and student attitudes through the use of student regular and measured student feedback. This essay will include one student interview.
EQUALITY FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
So many young learners with learning disabilities (LD) are left behind in public and private education. I was one of those students with a learning disability that was discouraged and told by adults that I was not bright enough to succeed in school. In this video essay I will discuss the ways in which we are failing these students with LD and the ways we can better provide educational opportunities for them to not only succeed in school but to feel that they bring something special and unique to the learning environment.
REPORT ON HOW THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA CAN IMPROVE ACCESSIBILITY
Although the UC is committed to accessibility and inclusion, it does not always understand the scope of work it takes to make online content accessible to people with disabilities. Sometimes it’s because of lack of knowledge and sometimes it’s because of lack of budget.
There are also cultural reasons why accessibility of online courses is poor in the UC. The UC is strongly federated and does not believe in the top-down approach to management and change implementation. Each of the 10 campuses has their own culture, LMS and own instructional designers with varying degrees of understanding around accessibility. This report outlines my interventions that took place in the Fall of 2017 to improve accessibly for online courses.
Microlearning & Students with ADHD
Click Here to Read Full Article
According to the National Center for Education Statistics 11% of college students have a disability, this includes both physical and learning disabilities. Learning disabilities fall into a spectrum and are varied in both type and severity. This article will focus on attention deficit disorder in college students and will also discuss the general trend of viewing shorter content of college age students. I will argue that microlearning can lead to better learning outcomes for these populations without impacting the quality and rigor of the curriculum.
Instructional Designer Accessibility Checklist
Instructional designers like most web-developers are often designing at high speeds attempting to hit fast approaching deadlines. As most accessibility specialist know, it is much easier to build in accessibility the first time than it is to go back in time and rebuild the scaffolding of a website to be accessible at a later date. This checklist is a quick tool that I designed for the ILTI Instructional designers. Although it does not touch on every aspect of WCAG 2.0 AA, it highlight 10 of the most common accessibility issues with our current design.
DIGITAL STORYTELLING FOR STUDENTS WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES
As someone with dyslexia, writing, grammar and spelling has always been a challenge. For many students with Learning Disabilities (LD) traditional essays and story writing poses a challenge not because they do not have amazing stories to tell but rather the structure of the assignment creates anxiety and a mental hurdle. Leveraging technology to design writing and essay assignments in the audio and visual format give students with LD more options that might be inline with their way of thinking and expressing themselves. In this blog post it explore how this technology is helping many students with LD tell their stories.