Myth
Accessibility only helps affected people.
This myth is not true. General accessibility helps everyone.
An understanding of accessibility that refers exclusively to people with impairments excludes other target groups that can also benefit from accessible designs. People with family responsibilities (caring for relatives, looking after a small child), for example, do not have been assessed with disability, but their living conditions can have a similar effect on (study) participation. Remember, that in specific situations, such as the noise of playing children, physical limits might hinder listening and concentration for teaching and learning. Further, temporal restrictions on fixed schedules (activities can only be carried out in certain time windows due to care) might affect the learning process. Moreover, a barrier-sensitive design takes different learning styles into account. For example, a video with subtitles (in the video and on handout) supports auditory preferences and visual or textual preferences for learning at the same time.
A consistent barrier-sensitive prearrangement of materials and media is capable of answering not only to permanent impairments, but also to temporary and situational restrictions that affect teaching and learning (cf. figure below).
Talk
This video uses the Universal Design of Learning (UDL) approach to introduce adaptations for everyone. These principles can also be transferred and applied to the design of teaching and learning concepts.
Granted by
StudyasU is granted by Stiftung Innovation in der Hochschullehre (Grant Nr. FBM2020-EA-1050) (August 01, 2021 - July 31, 2024)