Welcome to Episode 143 of the Think UDL podcast: Accessible HOUSE with Trevor Boland. Trevor Boland is an Assistive Technology Officer at the DLSS (Disability and Learning Support Service) at Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland. I had the good fortune to meet Trevor at the AHEAD (Association for Higher Education Accessibility and Disability) conference in Dublin recently and wanted to bring his great ideas about how we all can make our classes and workplaces more accessible, and how it isn’t just the instructor’s job to do so either. In today’s episode, we talk about a very entry level acronym for accessibility called HOUSE that you can share with your students as well as the Marrakesh Treaty, lots of accessibility resources, and what to do to start this process in your area.
If you want to learn more you can find Trevor’s contact information along with the resources mentioned in today’s episode on the ThinkUDL.org website under resources just before the transcript for this episode. And thank you for listening to the Think UDL podcast.
Resources
Resources:
Find Trevor Boland on LinkedIn
EAA (European Accessibility Act)
Transcript
1:01:49
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Universal Design for Learning, accessibility, assistive technology, HOUSE acronym, Marrakesh Treaty, digital literacy, inclusive group work, dyslexia, accessible documents, European Accessibility Act, technology gap, student support, digital tools, inclusive education, UDL implementation.
SPEAKERS
Trevor Boland, Lillian Nave
Lillian Nave 00:02
Welcome to think UDL, the universal design for learning podcast where we hear from the people who are designing and implementing strategies with learner variability in mind. I’m your host, Lillian Nave, and I’m interested in not just what you’re teaching, learning, guiding and facilitating, but how you design and implement it, and why it even matters. Welcome to Episode 143 of the think UDL podcast, accessible house with Trevor Boland. Trevor Boland is an Assistive Technology Officer at the D, L, S, S, or disability and Learning Support Service at Dublin City University in Dublin, Ireland. I had the good fortune to meet Trevor at the ahead or association for higher education accessibility and disability conference in Dublin recently, and wanted to bring his great ideas about how we all can make our classes and workplaces more accessible, and how it isn’t just the instructor’s job to do so either. In today’s episode, we talk about a very entry level acronym for accessibility called house, H, O, U, S, E, that you can share with your students, as well as the Marrakesh Treaty, we talk about lots of accessibility resources and what to do to start this process in your area. If you want to learn more, you can find Trevor’s contact information along with the resources mentioned in today’s episode on the think udl.org website, under Resources just before the transcript for this episode, and thank you for listening to the think UDL podcast. Thank you to our sponsor text, help a global technology company helping people all over the world to understand and to be understood. It has led the way in creating innovative technology for the workplace and education sectors, including K 12 right through to higher education for the last three decades, discover their impact at text, dot help forward, slash, learn more. That’s L, E, A, R, N, M, O, R, E. Welcome, Trevor. I’m so excited to have you on the think UDL podcast. Hi
Trevor Boland 02:43
Lillian. It is great to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me, and hopefully, over the next whatever few minutes we’re going to be talking about, I can make complete sense about inclusion and whatever topics we discuss. Oh
Lillian Nave 02:55
yes, I’m sure. I have no doubt about it, and I really appreciated meeting you at the ahead conference in Ireland, and really appreciated what you had to say, so that’s why I wanted to come talk to you about a few things, but I’ll start with my first question, which is, what makes you a different kind of learner?
Trevor Boland 03:15
Okay, that’s a good question that’s been evolving as I get older, but basically I started in our college because I think that sums up the type of learner I am. So I’m visual. I love images. I love making. And the good thing about education is that I’m still my usual visual self. If you ever see my office, there’s posters, there’s things around the place, little questions for students to think and ponder about and making. I still like making, so I make digital artifacts for students about assistive technology. Those skills kind of keep growing with me. So e learning and making things, and I just, I just love it. It keeps me excited, keeps me engaged, keeps me hungry about learning, when I connect with those kind of learning qualities within myself. And actually, I think it generates empathy with learners as well. If you’re always trying to learn in slightly different ways, like you kind of appreciate the challenges of learning in new ways, and definitely from talking to the students I support, it’s nice when we can sit down and actually chat about learning strengths and challenges. And I’ve had really interesting conversations with students about that even lately. Yeah, so no, I rude. That’s a really nice question. Yeah, thank you.
Lillian Nave 04:37
Yeah. So it does sound like you try to keep yourself on that learning edge. Stepping out of your comfort zone is a big part of what you do. Yeah,
Trevor Boland 04:46
so I know, because even right now, I was talking to a student, even last week about like we were talking about essays and writing essays and proofreading, and I’m putting together a short proposal for hopefully a Doctor of Education. That I will be starting next September. So we were happy, I know. So fingers crossed, and my proposal accepted. And it was great chatting to the student about, like, writing and proofreading. And, you know, because I have dyslexia, and lots of students I have have dyslexia, so it was really good to talk about the our either typical challenges, or the nuanced challenges within dyslexia. So whether as a staff member or an 18 year old student, you know, there’s still insights to share and even learn from each other. That’s kind of one of the reasons why I like the job. Yeah, I’m always learning something for my students, a new little insight for me to probe and then, kind of like, explore in my own way. Yeah, it’s great.
Lillian Nave 05:44
That’s fantastic. So yeah, always learning and, and luckily, also always creating, and we get to benefit from that and. And the thing that I loved was your house, and I don’t mean where you live, so I want you to tell me about house in talking about accessibility, something that you created. And, yeah, why’d you start with H and tell me all about that? Yeah, well, I suppose I can’t take credit for the idea. The idea came from a conversation with a blind student who I support us a few years ago, and he sparked the idea, because he told me, one of the things that he found a challenge was working with his students, his like colleagues, when they would do group work together. Okay? And he made this really interesting point about when it comes to group work, his classmates know nothing about accessibility. They would know about headings and alt text for images and creating links that are done appropriately and and then I said, and he was a really outgoing person. I said, Would you ever just talk to your classmates about it? And he was like, No, it was one thing that he was just really self conscious ask his classmates just to do a few accessibility tweaks to a shared Google document so he could, you know, be included in it. So he would tell me that afterwards, when he could see when the Google document wasn’t being, kind of, I suppose, worked on by classmates, that he would go and he would try to retrofit accessibility into it so that a screen reader could access it. And I was thinking, that’s like, really strange. That kind of got me thinking about, how have we got this huge gap about group work? Because I never thought about inclusion in terms of group work in that way. So then, and I’ve realized, as our blind students are growing, group work is a challenge. And then, and there’s a couple of other things. So when it comes to inclusion, I’ve noticed that sometimes there’s a big chat about lectures feeling they have to be the workload is on them all the time. And it really got me thinking about actually students can share this workload, and not only share the workload, but actually it’s a life skill, knowing how to make a document accessible, and then that’s what’s burned, that whole creation of house, and this acronym that I use to explain a number of different just simple accessibility tips for students, and I use it with staff as well, because, you know, let’s let’s all get involved. And then house was really a way of trying to make that first gentle step into accessibility awareness. And there’s loads of acronyms out there. There’s an amazing one by an amazing pair of staff in Northern Ireland here in Queens University, and it’s called thrives. And thrives is brilliant. It goes really into depth with accessibility. So I tried to, like, if I was thinking, if I could just do a simpler one that’s like one step below this tribes acronym and guide them into something richer. I was thinking of house. So in a nutshell, what house is about is the H is for headings and structure. So talking about our headings in a Google document or Word document or headings in a PowerPoint or Google slide, and that O that O in house for images, so whether they’re ornamental or descriptive, and then how we kind of deal with those images in different ways. And then the U for house is URLs and links. So how we do links appropriately, or create appropriate links in our documents or PowerPoints or slides, and what to avoid when it comes to making links within the documents that we create for all our students, our staff, and then the S is my favorite part, because, you know, when dark college and it’s all About Sans Serif fonts, so I am a total font nerd, so I get really excited about this bit, and I love showing examples of terrible fonts, terrible fonts that are difficult to read. And even yesterday, yesterday, I was looking at a conference, a conference send me. Sent me an awful word documents to fill in with the information for my press. Station, and it was all italics, and it was in something, something like time’s wrong, but worse, and no headings. And I was like, this is fantastic, so I’ll be presenting at that conference tomorrow. Oh, nice. Wait to give them. They’re gonna learn a lot more than they thought. So it’s been really good and and something as simple as fonts is really interesting talk about and generally, like with staff, I find it’s really interesting because you speak to anyone you know, in particular students with dyslexia, maybe about fonts that if a font is easy to read, we can write faster and longer and just more efficiently. And if a font is a little bit cumbersome, then we don’t write or we don’t read for longer and more effectively. So just either being aware of the documents that we create, a staff for our students, for each other, and being aware that something as simple as fonts and different font types to use. So I mean, I love century Gothic, and I sometimes talk a little bit about century Gothic because even in my slides, I use century Gothic font, because I think it’s very geometric, really easy to read. There’s no muddling. Everything is very clean and crisp. And then I show them an awful font, and we talk about, like, chiller. We just go, yeah. We go, like, really extreme examples, and then some kind of in between examples as well. So, so it’s good, it prompts a lot of chat. Can I ask you another question before we get to the sense fonts? You’ve got me going now, what it makes me think, like that we should have some sort of, like, like, championship of the worst fonts, you know, like, where they go, head to head, which wins. And we’ve had that, you know, in the United States lately, we’ve had like, a big March Madness kind of basketball thing. And so I could just see that there’s a font off, yeah, but, but for the worst, oh, that’s it, I know. And there’s definitely fun champions out there. There are some amazing like, one that, like, the bad ones are great to talk about, but the good ones as well, like Roboto is really good. And then sometimes, as part of just this fun style conversation, it’s interesting just to ask lectures about. So you know, what kind of fonts do you advise your students use when it comes to assignments? And sometimes times, Roman will come up a lot in terms of that desire font. And I just tell them about how maybe just because of the type of font that it is, that it sometimes might be a barrier to some types of people. And then we have a chat about, like, if we could readdress something like a common font style, what would we kind of look for? So rather than choosing legacy fonts that were chosen at a time, like, why don’t we just review these things that have just been there and make one question for too long and then just revise, like inclusive fonts of a mainstream way of creating content. I like how you called it a legacy font, right? That Times New Roman, because it even has the word Roman in it, which should tell us it’s kind of old, right? Yeah, it’s a beautiful font. I think it has done great things in terms of its history of fontage, if that’s a word. But I think now, just with the nature of our students, especially now, I suppose I’m thinking of either GCU or in Ireland, and the complexity of our student cohort now that if, if reading, and reading comes up with my students, because I work in a disability service, and I have lots of chats with our disability students, that if reading is a barrier for lots of different reasons, the amount of reading, the complexity of us, the jargon in it, like, if there’s one thing that we could just control throughout all Our documents, which is like a common font style that would just lessen that barrier. I think that would be quite fundamental. I think it would start for you interesting conversations, and might help scratch the tip of the iceberg about inaccessibility. Yeah, you know. And what is your professional opinion on Comic Sans,
Trevor Boland 14:22
Oh, no. So I used to work at bribery schools, yes, so, so with that age group, that five to 12, I know it was a big favorite with teachers, yes, I think it serves a person like, I think century Gothic is great. So this is my go to answer. So I don’t want to dis a font, because I know there’s probably some people who are very invested in this font out there right now. So so if that gets positive feedback from your students, I think go with it. If it. Doesn’t get positive feedback from your students. Just consider other fonts, like Central
Lillian Nave 15:06
Bucha. There are some strong feelings about Comic Sans. That’s what in the professorial world out there, which is, yeah, that it’s not to be used ever at all, but it is a sans serif font, and I’ve heard that, you know, it might be, it might be helpful for some but I, I don’t think it’s ever been said you should write a whole paper in it. You know, maybe if you’re going to do an infographic or something like that, it’s possible. But anyway, I was, I do hear there are a lot of feelings about that font, which is a sans serif font, but yeah, so just, I guess, being aware of those things, right? Yeah?
Trevor Boland 15:46
And I think, yeah. I think yeah, like, I lean into this the opinion of my students a lot. So because I have to try to put aside my font preferences as well, yeah, so, because a little part of me likes more out there kind of geometric fonts, but that’s okay, so I just pull those back, and I find a middle ground between me and my students, yeah, and that’s okay. That’s
Lillian Nave 16:12
good. That’s a lot of that student centered teaching. It’s great. UDL, awesome, cool. Yeah, yeah, okay, okay, sorry, I took it a little deeper. So far, we’ve gotten H, O, U, S, and we haven’t even gotten to the E yet. So tell me about that.
Trevor Boland 16:28
So the E is the key one. So e is about examining for accessibility. So using, for the most part, we have in built accessibility checkers in our digital tools. So in Word and PowerPoint, we definitely have accessibility checkers. In Google Docs and Google Slides, you can add on an accessibility checker. And even though these are really supportive and they will find and detect most of the accessibility challenges, there’s still a manual aspect to it, which is still good. So that’s why I suppose we always need an acronym for accessibility. So rather than just accepting the feedback that we get from our accessibility checkers, our lack of feedback from accessibility checkers. So once we have an acronym house, or whichever one that you use out there, just lean into it. And in particular, I suppose, with house, I try to pare it down a lot, because from a few years of doing accessibility workshops with staff I have, I’ve definitely learned what scares the bejesus out of some people when it comes to accessibility, and there’s one thing that definitely I’ve learned to terrifies them, is that when we talk about making our tables accessible, yes, yeah, I’ve learned that, you know, and I used to put that last in my accessibility sessions, and I realized all the good that I had put in that hour beforehand drains away when people learn about accessible tables and how to make them that you know in different ways. For first, for students, in particular, for students who are blind. And I was thinking, I I needed to deal with that. I needed to figure that out. And how do I start a positive session about accessibility and end the accessibility session still on a positive note, where the person going out feels like they can make a first step into accessibility and at least start thinking about that, plus one that we all love in UDL. So how can I make a safe plus one first staff member who leaves where they can start at least engage on any of the levels of that house acronym. So what I had to do, and like, I’m still not 100% comfortable, but I had to leave out the accessible tables. And when staff come to me, because I give them the option to come to me and having a one to one with me, then I go into the accessible tables, you know, because it needs a I think it needs a little bit more one to one time, maybe both. Yeah, so I think that’s where I’m at right now with house.
Lillian Nave 19:16
Okay, so because not every document is going to have a table, but every document should is made up of a font. Every document is going to have headings, or should have headings and structure. And not all of them have images. But if you are going to add images, this is like base base minimum, you’ve got to say if they’re ornamental or alt text. So and actually, most, there are hardly any documents I see that don’t have a link or a URL. So yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. If you were going to make your acronym accessible, I would say, and for that’s the that’s the thing that. Does, that does scare people a lot. And honestly, it’s not in, it’s not in everything, you know, it’s, yeah, it’s an add on, and that’s okay.
Trevor Boland 20:09
And even, how, sir, even any accessibility acronym, I mean, it can’t cover everything like impossible. It’s impossible for any acronym to cover every kind of single angle of accessibility. So it’s so really, I suppose this was about making that first positive step into that accessibility world, especially. And we were just chatting about this before, before we start with this. And that’s that European Accessibility Act that’s coming in in Europe. So that is is definitely putting a magnifying glass on universities and education about how we are digitally inclusive. And even though it the directive came about in 2019 unfortunately, it came in during the pandemic, so it didn’t kind of get the attention that it needed or deserved. But at least since post pandemic, you know, we’re getting, like, lots of traction. There’s lots of conversation about it, and as a result, it’s going to be fully implemented as of June this year. Yeah, so,
Lillian Nave 21:19
yeah, it’s a lot sooner than ours, which is 2026
Trevor Boland 21:24
oh, okay, well, it’s interesting which countries are where, because even the UK are slightly ahead of us. So we’ve leaned into a lot of their learnings about accessibility. So it’s definitely good. The sharing even internationally about accessibility, is a huge advantage. And again, there’s a big accessibility community out there that love sharing. That ally group, a one, 1y they are fantastic. And I’ve learned a lot, and I’ve found videos and different websites and global accessibility day, again, which is an international event where everyone in their educational context is encouraged to have some type of small or large accessibility event, which is fantastic. Gets that conversation going between staff and students about accessibility and digital accessibility specifically. So there’s, there’s definitely a lot of chat about it, I suppose the good thing, but any change, there’s concerns and worries. And the good thing about this, since we’ve known it’s coming about, since 2019 there’s lots of solutions out there, lots of advocates who talk about it, lots of resources, even ahead that organization that you mentioned just earlier, they have three free, short accessibility courses. And again, it’s in an Irish, European context. They were created, but they’re good to just see about how ahead are tackling that whole challenge of accessibility. And I think they’ve had those courses available for three or four years. Yeah, so again, just trying to lay down that foundation, just for staff, you know, to slowly come around to any kind of changes they need to implement. Because, you know, I’m guessing everyone is like, working a lot, and change is definitely hard, you know, with big workloads. So if we can ease in some kind of change and manage change in an effective way, I really think just starting conversations and chats even like this that we’re having now, yes, and generating awareness about accessibility, this is a good because for a lot of people, this might be their first step, the plus one. So and if you are that person like I think this is a great place to start. So whether it’s just listening to us chatting or thinking about finding house and looking at that and either learning from yourself or sharing house with your work colleagues or your students, that’s definitely a good first step. And, yes, yeah,
Lillian Nave 24:04
yeah. And I’m, well, of course we’re going to have links to house. And actually, you mentioned quite a few other things there, the Global Accessibility day. And of course, we started with the ahead conference. I’ll put that in there. And you did mention a one, 1y or ally, and I found out about them year, a couple years ago. And I love their acronym because it’s accessibility, but they’ve taken out 11 letters because it’s such a long name. Am I right? It’s so great. And so, yeah, it’s ally, so it kind of reads as ally, but it’s accessibility, but to take out, to kind of shorten that, but by 11 letters, really into ally. So some really great resources, if, if this is somebody is just dipping their toe into this accessibility, these are all some great resources that we’ll have on on the web page for. This episode. Okay, so you also are really, you do have your kind of finger on the pulse of things that are happening about accessibility and other things. And you’d mentioned the Marrakesh Treaty, and I wanted to ask you about that. If you can tell me about the Marrakesh Treaty, what you’re hoping it nudges more to universities in Ireland and maybe beyond, to start considering,
Trevor Boland 25:23
yeah, like, I suppose the first time I heard about the Marrakesh Treaty was about eight years ago, and Ireland wasn’t part of this treaty yet. So again, as someone who supports students, and again, I was thinking of my blind students in particular, this Marrakesh Treaty definitely sounded good, because one of the things that it advocates is about that sharing of publications. So again, it’s something that comes up now and again with my students who are blind, is getting access to an accessible version of a textbook. So recently, a student of mine has actually requested a publication that’s in hardback, and we approach the publisher, and again, only, I think, because of the Marrakesh Treaty and using that because now Ireland has joined us, that we can have a little bit of weight behind us when We make these requests about looking for an accessible version of a textbook. And again, our library in DCU were fantastic because they have something like 23 copies of the book already, so they were able to prove that they had purchases of the book again, to incentivize the publisher to share the publication with us. And as a result, in the end, the publisher said that they hadn’t ever made a publication available via access, but they’ve never been requested to. So again, this is their first time. And wow, they did so so again, that’s really good progress. And you know another way we’ve made a publisher company in Ireland aware of the Accessibility Act, and not only that, but the Marrakesh Treaty. And because of that, again, we’re able to support our blind students, which is fantastic. And I suppose I chat quite a bit about blind students, because definitely, from 10 years working with them, I’ve definitely learned that there’s a lot of barriers that they experience every day that they definitely don’t tell me about. But when they bring something to my attention, I really, really try to listen and act on it as quickly as possible, and at least now with getting our veiling of accessible textbooks. You know, this Marrakesh Treaty is certainly a step forward in helping us just to support those blind students as much as possible in the educational experience, because, again, we don’t definitely do not want students to have a lesser experience in education. And whatever treaties or education frameworks like UDL are the European Accessibility Act that we see coming in and being enforced as of June this year in Ireland and Europe, that these are all great initiatives for those people who I suppose, have traditionally been on the periphery of education, and definitely from talking to mature students who are blind where they’ve lived, and have a very rich lived experience of education and being marginalized definitely has that definitely prompts me to be proactive and to stop that marginalization that can happen. So at least now, because of technology and treaties and frameworks like UDL and accessibility acts, we’re in a much stronger place to be included, inclusive, especially for those traditionally marginalized students. So like, it’s it’s definitely good times. It’s not perfect, yes, but we are definitely getting their slow steps forward are definitely happening, which is great.
Lillian Nave 29:16
Yeah, I notice and appreciate how Ireland, especially, is really a leader in the in the use of UDL and its kind of, its embeddedness in higher education and in like the educational framework, it’s absolutely amazing. You’ve got lots of conferences, you have lots of badges. And, you know, lots of learning about accessibility and inclusion with disabled students, with all kinds of students, and also in that workforce, readiness to going, going into it. And I’m just noticing how proximity is very. Be helpful. So you’ve mentioned you were the first person to mention to me. I hadn’t heard of it, the Marrakesh Treaty. So, you know, not too far up over Europe, the rest of continental Europe, yeah. But it’s, I mean, it’s slowly growing in patches, I guess. And one of the great things about a podcast is you can listen to it wherever you are in the world. And so that I’m hoping that these bright spots, so to speak, like the Marrakesh Treaty, and really what Ireland is doing in so many ways, in higher education with UDL implementation, can can grow, and we can get the word out with these things, because it’s, it’s everybody’s business. It’s the publisher’s business too, right? It’s not up to the faculty member to make an accessible textbook. Like to take the textbook that they use and make it accessible. That would be, whoever’s making the textbook needs to be doing that, right? Yeah,
Trevor Boland 31:02
absolutely, yeah. So, and it only really happens as well when we start making these requests. Yes, and that’s the only thing, that’s when the real change happens. Otherwise, publishers are totally unaware, or whoever that third party is. So I suppose that’s the other good thing. I suppose we are more open to making these requests now than before. And even just, even just about that accessibility awareness, like, it’s definitely bigger than, say, when I started 10 years ago, it’s much bigger than I imagined, like even accessible software. Again, the amount is either there’s one staff member I know who’s blind, and then a few students, like the amount of times where they’re expected to use a piece of software, like as part of, say, module that they’re learning and for their screen readers. So it could be NVDA, which is a free screen reader used across the world, fantastic screen reader. And then some students use like a paid Screen Reader tool. And these blind students would kind of get us a disability service to pay for that paid screen reader, and that’s called JAWS. And then, unfortunately, if an application or piece of software isn’t accessible, so designed to be compatible with a screen reader, then you know, they are again marginalized from that experience. So like, again, really interesting conversation with a student a number of years ago who was a coding student, and he was asked in his coding course to use a specific compiler, so a tool that’s used where they can test out the piece of coding or program, and his screen reader couldn’t engage with the with the compiler, and unfortunately, the lecture wouldn’t respond to his emails throughout the whole module. So what the student did was that he gave himself an assignment, and then submitted the assignment, he gave himself to his lecture, and his lecture passed him. Oh, good, yeah, yeah, but only that student, because he had the initiative to just go and do that himself rather than Yeah. Not a perfect solution at all. Not a perfect solution, yeah, so, so definitely, we’ve had different experiences. There’s a lecture here in DCU, and he found this amazing free piece of software. So a piece of free word to do it economics and is it sounded great. So for his sighted students, it’s going to work pretty well. And then he has one blind student, and she uses screen reader, and he has been amazing. So he’s literally, like, changed aspects of the module using an accessible application so that she can be included. So what the rest of the students for now have gone on to use the inaccessible version he’s modified so she can still work on power with the content, but using a different piece of software. So, I mean, he’s learned a valuable lesson about checking for accessibility statements of software. And I think in the States, actually, I think he, in America, advocated vpats, and we’re the first to do that. So an accessible statement about, say, a piece of software that someone in education could request, and it would state, you know, the accessibility ness of that piece of software. So over in Europe, I think we’re starting to see that V pass habit or expectation again, in the products that we start to think about and implement in education. So I mean, there’s definitely, there’s definitely sharing going on, and we’re definitely learning from each other, and that V pass initiative, that’s something I only heard about five years ago, but it’s definitely changed. My approach to having high expectations of whatever tools are out there, whether they’re even free or used, yeah, but I could, I could go down a slightly different road here, because then there’s an interesting conversation I had two weeks ago at a staff member about tools that are commonly used in education but are not accessible to screen readers, and there’s a few out there that are widespread. I don’t want to name them for certain reasons, but, but yeah, definitely, the one thing I would definitely encourage people to do is look for an accessibility statement of whatever tool you’re going to use. So whether it’s like polling and questions, which are students, whether it’s like a compiler, whether it’s like a type of freeware that does some kind of data processing, check out if it has an accessibility statement. And if you can’t find an accessibility statement, or you send them an email and you’ll get no response, then, to me, that’s the clue. Like, just move on from us. Find a different tool. Yeah, don’t use it, yeah. So that’s, that’s definitely a lesson I’m sharing with staff as well about that. That’s
Lillian Nave 36:08
a very good lesson, yeah, a very good question to ask that not all of our instructors really are aware of or aware to ask. And this is, I mean, inclusion and accessibility really is everybody’s business. We’ve it was kind of one of my questions, but you’ve already answered it a couple different ways, like, yeah, no, no, that’s great. Early on, it was, you talked about how it’s not just, it’s not up to the instructor the whole time. It’s it’s good for us as an instructor to ask, you know, what tools, if we’re going to assign something for our students to use a tool, right? That it should be accessible. It needs to be because we know that we have a variety of students in our class, and even if they aren’t blind, having something like captions and, you know, the ability to have, you know, it be a screen screen reader, or you know, any it’s going to help a lot of our students, whether or not you get a certificate, or, you know, a piece of paper that says you have a blind student or a dyslexic student, or there needs to be certain accommodations so and when you when we started with house, it was for the students to be taking the lead on that. They’re the ones who are creating the accessible document in the group. Work like that’s where this all started, was it’s not it’s not always up. And it shouldn’t be up to it’s everybody. It shouldn’t just be up to the lecture or the instructor, the professor. It’s up to the students. It is up for the lecture or instructor to ask questions. And you’re saying also with the Marrakesh Treaty, it’s also up to the publisher to be doing that. Who else am I missing?
Trevor Boland 37:55
I put anyone who makes software as well, whether it’s big software companies or even if it’s freeware, like, you know, should be accessible. Because, again, there’s that there might be a perception that all paid software is accessible, and that’s not the case. So again, we like, I was doing a webinar with a university there about two weeks ago, and we were having that chat like, so my example, unfortunately, is a piece of freeware. But then I say, immediately afterwards, like, don’t assume that all paid software is accessible as well. So again, they need to be tested, because there are definitely some paid software and online tools out there that are not accessible. Yeah, and then, and then just that question about even just lectures. In that webinar that I did two weeks ago, there was a lecture date at the end, and he had a blind student, and he was amazing. He went above and beyond, but in a way, that was it was it was it was it was really beyond, yeah,
Lillian Nave 38:58
so we don’t want to put that yeah, on on our lectures, they’re doing so much. Yeah,
Trevor Boland 39:03
absolutely. And the way he was doing, maybe I would just say, just a slight too much was that he in his module, so in his content, so the documents or the slides he would provide, he was going out of his way to make an MP, three version of every single document and PDF he had up there, and I took so I just asked him, like, why was he doing that? And he was saying that was for his blind student. So then I was kind of saying, like, is it possible to show them the tool that you’re using, or find a free tool that they could use, just because, if we’re, if we’re doing that piece of work for them, we’re actually denying them that piece of learning. And then, if you know, if they find they have a preference for that mp three version, I mean, even that is a life skill, you know, knowing how to convert something. Simple as a document into an audio file, is something they can take for like decades, well into the workplace, and by just doing that for them, they might either take for granted or just makes them less aware of their learning preferences. Yeah. So I even just said to him, you know, like if you just show them how to use the tool rather than do every tool, I think actually that would make more time for him, and actually he that would probably make more time for him to actually just think about and have a chat with the blind student, and realize that that only does a tiny bit really of the challenge for the blind student, and might just create that time that he needs to explore other kind of issues with his blind student. But, yeah, so it was good just to hear, because it’s always interesting to hear what staff are doing and how, you know, like, there’s definitely a good heart out there with staff. It’s just where how to distribute the heart into the curriculum or the content. That’s for me, one of the things being strategic about how to place that investment of inclusion in your work. And again, I like it took me a long time to learn that talking to the students is one of the best ways to learn how to be strategic with your work. Because unfortunately, for a long time, I was, and this is just a tiny side track, I promise, I swear, it’s not going to be attending. But like, my eyes were opened about two years ago, because I would use the word procrastination with my students, kind of thinking of good we’re all on the same page with procrastination and what this word means. And I quickly realized over here that this was having zero traction with students. And I was wondering, like, what? Like, what’s going on? There must be something with the word procrastination. So I met four of my disability students, and they were fantastic. They so I told them my definition of procrastination, which is, like, you know, if you get your essay title say and you just start to brainstorm it from the time you get us, and so it gives you time over weeks to break it up and you can work on it little by little. And they just said no to the all four of them said, That’s not procrastination. So there, yeah, I know because I was like, Whoa, what’s happening here? So all four of them, and one was a mature student, and the three were in the 20s. One was telling me that procrastination for them meant that procrastination was three days or two days or one day before the assignment is due. You don’t procrastin, you block out all distraction, and you just go straight into the assignment, and you just get into that focused mindset for that, and that’s procrastination for them, so avoiding structure in those three to two one days before the deadline. And I was like, that’s not that. No. I mean, that’s not where I’m coming from at all. Yeah. So it was great because then I realized I need to be chatting more of my students because, like my decades of assumptions is, yeah, is putting this kind of knowledge in my head based on my own education experiences and old interpretation of words into a context where I’m actually isolating myself from the people who I’m serving. So I had to, so it’s made me rethink. I need to go and check in with them about the language I’m using and the terminology, just so I know that they know what we’re talking about. And it was, it was brilliant, yeah, and actually, as a result, now when I do in class presentations, I’m way more explicit than I would have been. I would have been very softly, softly and going in. And now I’m like, like, how many people find proofread a challenge from day one? And it’s amazing. Students are so honest when you ask them direct questions, yeah. And it, you know, out of that, I’ve learned so much that in a class, generally, they’re about 30 to 60 students. In a class of 30 students, when I ask how many people love reading, I always get about three hands up, yeah, out of 30, it’s uncanny. It’s uncanny. And they’re always the same tree. Then, who like proofreading, or think that it is, yeah. And then I kind of asked the other 27 what, what do you do? And but again, students are really suffer. They Yeah. But, you know, some of them come up with really good answers, like, Well, I only start the assignments, like, a few hours beforehand and then submit us just a minute before the deadline, and then I can’t proofread us because, yeah, yeah, and I do
Lillian Nave 44:48
that to me, is procrastination, yeah?
Trevor Boland 44:55
So, so it’s it’s good to untangle like, what? Is actually going on with them, and actually one of the key things, and again, this is why. Another one of the reasons why I created house was I realized about a year and a half ago, from talk to students, that they’re not talking to each other about how they learn. I know and and this was like, this was something that I came across by accident. And I was because, at the end of a few sessions, I always kind of have a small amount of students who seem to have a clear idea about, you know, their learning preferences and what they’re good at are not so good. And then the most, the majority seem actually, because I even say, like, how many people work in chaos? And actually most, and I’ve, and I’ve had to start doing that because, like, again, being explicit prompts great answers with the students. And I ask that most hands go up, and I just think so. Does chaos mean not knowing how to store things? Or we kind of start to chat about what, what is chaos? And in terms of, you know, an academic environment and the expectations that’s on them, and we find that that some students literally just don’t know like how to download. They don’t feel confident downloading information, or even saving information, creating folders for information. Out that there’s a whole digital literacy thing happening. And as an Assistive Technology Officer, I just find that’s, again, an unexpected barrier to at is that like I’m having to deal with this digital literacy gap in order to get them to the level where they can use a simple assistive technology. And I’m finding even in some of the courses in Ireland that now some of even the media courses are building in a digital, digital literacy aspect to their media courses, because those assume skills like files and folders and name conventions have kind of kind of gone
Lillian Nave 46:57
that’s a great idea. Yeah. So we think that our students are so tech savvy, and they are in some ways, and then, yeah, like they can, some can make a video and add audio and edit and great things I can’t do and but there might be gaps. There are gaps in in whichever field, in other things. So, yeah, yeah. And you mentioned actually several things that at UDL, like UDL 2.1 is clarifying vocabulary and language. And so we often are going to say, like, probably dive right into whatever our field is, and we don’t realize our students aren’t understanding, like, they need a glossary of the terms that we’re using, because what we say and we understand may not be what they’re taking in just because you said it, yeah,
Trevor Boland 47:46
and I find I want to Glossary of their terms. Yes, the glossary goes both ways. Oh,
Lillian Nave 47:55
there are so many new words. I have three children aged 18 to 24 at this point, and it is a whole other language, yes, that I do not have, and they have not provided me a glossary here, sadly. Yeah, so and another, another thing you, as you were so brilliantly talking about all of the the folks who are part of this inclusion and accessibility that it’s everybody’s business is, I think we take it up another level into of course, it’s also the university, the administration a workplace. They have to be putting in guidelines and policies to make things accessible. They have to be choosing if they’re going to have a big software like buy a software to be used on campus, they’ve got to figure out that it’s accessible before they, you know, purchase that right or so, it’s, it’s the staff, it’s the administration, it’s the university itself. It’s the workplace. You know, if you’re going to serve, you know, have all of your your employees using this software, you got to make sure that it’s accessible. So that’s it’s not just the instructor. Like, and we often feel like, when I’m teaching a class, I am I the one who has to make sure all of this is, you know, happens? No, it’s everybody that has to be doing this together.
Trevor Boland 49:22
Yeah. And yeah, I know God, we’re I think we need another hour. Yes, I do want to just bring up one thing, because the definitely, there’s that technology gap that seems to be kind of appearing, yes. And again, I met up with a group of primary school teachers and secondary school teachers just last Friday, and we were actually talking about this. And it was so interesting. They were like, taken back that students in first year in universities have these gaps because they Yeah. And I was like, This is strange. So. Then it was really, it was great. But I was explicitly listing these are the types of challenges and and one of the examples, unfortunately that I give was a fourth year student just completed his course. Met up with me because in on his laptop he had one folder from the time he got the laptop, and for the four years he was doing his course, everything went into this one folder because, because he didn’t know how to make a folder, and he didn’t know how to store anything online, and he had over 900 documents in us. Wow, it was and it was even strange talking to him about why you had this gap, because a lot of the documents were like, PDFs and Word documents and PowerPoint, and he had a personal Gmail account. And he was like, I can’t, these files won’t fit into my Gmail account because they’re Word documents and PowerPoints. So he had this thing about Gmail was only for Google Docs. Yeah. And I was like, hmm, that’s not, that’s no. And so I had to show, like, I had to show, like, no, no. Watch. I can just drag it into your Google Glass, and he could see the files moving in, and then you can see, oh, like, it does store my Word documents and my PowerPoints and like, that’s a that always kind of struck me as like, how did he get through four years of university with this fundamental gap, yeah, you know. And I was so that made me step back a little bit. I was realized, okay, like, whether we have mature students, and we get a lot of mature students who talk about, still use that word technophobia, or they’ll just say that, like, PowerPoint isn’t something that used before. And actually one mature student who I remember I supported before she ended up leaving the course because it was a PowerPoint presentation in semester one of first year that just, she just could not get over us, she just could not figure out PowerPoints. And I was like, That is a travesty, that PowerPoint like has kind of broken her dream as a mature student to college. And then I realized, well, we’re how do we support them? Where do they go with these questions? And then, like I realized, in Irish education, like we do, we do amazing stuff, like we have writing centers for our students, where students can go and meet someone for either a workshop or one to one about academic writing, and how they can learn a few skills to to improve and their academic writing. And then we have a maths Learning Center. Again, students can pop in with their maths questions. But what we don’t have is a Technology Learning Center, like somewhere where students can pop in, yeah, and with these kind of questions that aren’t covered on the curriculum, like, what are the basics of PowerPoint? How do I use word? How do I use headings? And again, I’m linking this step back to house, because, again, part of me is kind of thinking, well, whose responsibility is it to oversee? Like, some simple accessibility skills as well as dealing with how to use PowerPoint, how to choose Excel and all this, like, surely, there is a need for a type of Technology Learning Center where students don’t have to have a disability, where they pop in for support,
Lillian Nave 53:10
yeah, and it’s not because their computer doesn’t work anymore. Yeah, we have tech centers, and it’s the only they only come in when it’s the screens blank. It’s not turning on anymore, or I can’t or this is broken, yeah, but there’s they don’t come in to say, well, how can I make folders? Or what’s the best way for me to organize this? What tools do we have? You know? And a lot of students also don’t know that. They’ll come into college, and I’m sure it’s told to them at some point. But like, all we have, like, you can get Microsoft, 365, for free, like, because we have a license at our university. And when my children went away, remember my son calling me, says, Hey, I have to get this thing, and it cost this much. I said, your university should have that. I know that they have that. Oh, yeah, here it is, okay. But yeah, he’s calling me, like, in Boston, I live in North Carolina, this is, you know, it’s like, no, no, it you you have, you’ve got it there. You’ve got to, like, they, there’s, and I’m, like, looking up where their technology center is, like, you got to go to this building and go talk to them, and they can put it on your computer. I know they can. But yeah, they don’t know. They just, they don’t know. And we need to get that out. And gosh, their lives will be easier, which means our lives as instructors will be easier as Yeah,
Trevor Boland 54:29
because, like, I do think even with lectures as well, that I think there’s even, like, an IT support aspect coming in with lectures. Because I remember Frederick Fauci, the big ut Africa. He I remember a few times he’s mentioned how when he starts a module with new students, I think he spent like, an hour going through the content and the layout and how to explore the information in his module. And I’m like, that’s like, that’s amazing that he does it. But, like, that’s an hour that, yeah, that. Like, how could we maximize his role? And then yeah, just Yeah. It’s just interesting, how you know that technology aspect, especially with our students, are we assuming they know more than we think? Yes, we are. And that was it. And this was the conversation I was having with those primary secondary school teachers last Friday. Teachers last Friday. I was saying, like, again, when I was listing the type of technology issues that I’m seeing, they, one of them, who was a parent, had spoken about how for her son, she knows, for deafness, he knows how to create files and folders. And I was like, that’s amazing. Like, he’s already got a head start, if he knows that. Because, again, that working in chaos question that I pose with my students, that’s the thing that I’d love to see that just mitigated like that, just dropping down. Because, again, I don’t know how students work in that chaos, right? And support their well being and feel they can succeed in environment like, like, to me, it just, it’s all part of what’s kind of happening that’s diminishing the capacity of our students to succeed. Yeah,
Lillian Nave 56:14
it’s an extraneous cognitive load, yes, taking away from their ability to actually learn the material that we want them to learn. Yeah, because of all those other barriers, really? Yeah, so, well, okay, this has been amazing. I have one more question, which is, where is your accessibility quest taking you? What? What do you see next on the horizon? Okay,
Trevor Boland 56:39
well, I suppose it’s a few things, but definitely I need to, I definitely need to talk more with my students. That’s one thing I definitely know, because that’s an ongoing process. They are definitely evolving. And I as I’m getting older, I realize I’m not evolving at the same rate as them, so I need to be really conscious about that, and I need to keep pushing myself at their race, not my race. And then the other thing is, I am, Well, right now I’m going to be finishing up a resource I have about house, and I’m making it with H, 5p, so it’s going to be interactive, it’s going to have videos, it’s going to have a few questions for students, and it’s geared for students, again, supporting them regarding inclusive group work, because again, that’s where I see my students going. But again, it’s future proofing them for the work environments that they’re moving into, because they’re going to be working with different types of peoples of different abilities. And we see in Ireland, there’s a big drive in terms of our graduates now with disabilities, getting workplaces, and that’s fantastic. So the workplace is going to get more and more diverse. So we need to think about inclusion in different ways, and that’s going to involve technology. And really I’m hoping, over the next few weeks, to complete house and then, kind of like for a resource I made before, I’m going to share that with the education sector. So I’m going to share my SCORM file so people can download it and upload it to their own whatever you call it, your VLE or LMS, and that’s like bright space, Canvas, Moodle, whatever platform you use. And once you have H, 5p available on on that platform, you’ll be able to upload house and edit it, tweak it according to your own needs of your own context. Yeah? So, like, yeah, so I’ll definitely be sharing that link as soon as it’s made. With your Lillian? So, yeah, we’ll do
Lillian Nave 58:42
that. That’s perfect. We’ll put it in the resources. Cool. Thank you.
Trevor Boland 58:46
So I think, as part of that quests, Oh God, I don’t know, just to keep talking, really, yeah, I think because, like, everyone wants to talk and everyone wants to share, and that’s great thing about education now. So the quest could take me in any direction depending on who I’m talking to, yeah. So, yeah, just being open.
Lillian Nave 59:06
Good, yeah. Well, if everybody wants to talk and everybody wants to share, that keeps me in business as a podcaster, yeah, I appreciate that, yes. But thank you so much. This has been great. It’s been such a productive discussion, and I already see that we’re going to have a load of resources for folks to check out with this episode. So thank you for bringing this wealth of information, bringing some really good points for us as faculty who want to have a more accessible class and group work and everything else, this has really got some wonderful nuggets of information and directions to go. So thank you so much Trevor for being on the think UDL podcast. Great.
Trevor Boland 59:51
Lillian. Thanks. Lillian, who’s ever listening? Thanks so much for listening. Cheers, thanks. Cheers,
Lillian Nave 59:56
you can follow. The think UDL podcast on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find out when new episodes will be released, and also see transcripts and additional materials at the think udl.org website. Thank you again to our sponsor, text help. Text help is focused on helping all people learn, understand and and communicate through the use of digital education and accessibility tools, text help and its people are working towards a world where difference disability and language are no longer barriers to learning and succeeding, with over 50 million users worldwide, the text help suite of products includes read and write, equate SEO and orbit, note they work alongside existing platforms such as Microsoft Office and G Suite, and enable them to be integrated quickly into any classroom or workspace with ease. Text help has changed the lives of millions worldwide and strives to impact the literacy and understanding of 1 billion people by 2030 visit text, dot help. Forward, slash, learn more. That’s L E, A, R, N, M, O, R, E, to unlock unlimited learner potential. The music on the podcast was performed by the Odyssey quartet, comprised of Rex Shepard, David Pate, Bill Folwell and Jose Cochez and I am your host. Lillian Nave, thank you for joining us on The think UDL podcast. You