Welcome to Episode 134 of the Think UDL podcast: Ask Me and Believe Me with Mickey Rowe. Mickey Rowe is an award winning best selling author and speaker. As an autistic and legally blind person, he believes that when we design for accessibility, we help others to perform at their best, and, as he says, that’s not just for disabled folks. He is a Broadway actor, director, consultant and public speaker and was the first autistic actor to play Christopher Boone, the lead role in the Tony Award-winning play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. He is a disability and accessibility advocate and his most recent speaking engagement is with TextHelp’s open access conference Back to School Blockbuster: Lights, Camera, Educate! on September 18-19, from 12:00 pm to 3:00 pm EST. This is a free virtual conference designed just for educators. If you are listening to this episode after the synchronous online conference, all of the content is available on demand until the end of November and you can find a link to the Back to School Blockbuster conference on the ThinkUDL.org webpage under the resources section of this episode, and in the episode description. In today’s conversation with Mickey, we talk about his experiences as a disabled student at the university level and what he and his professors did to manage the barriers that persisted while he completed his undergraduate degree. Mickey gives us all, students, instructors, administrators, and everyone else, some sound advice on how to reduce the friction but not the rigor of a college education. There are some easy choices and forward thinking designs that can help all of us along the way. I was able to catch Mickey at 6:30am his time in Seattle, Washington, and by the end of our interview his young school-aged children had joined us in the recording and made a brief appearance. You’ll hear them, too! Thank you for listening to this energizing and thoughtful conversation on the Think UDL podcast.
Resources:
Learn more about Mickey Rowe at his website MickeyRowe.com
Link to the Back to School Blockbuster conference where you can hear Mickey Rowe’s keynote address.
Transcript:
59:14
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
students, disability, accommodations, accessibility, UDL, learner, captions, professor, learning, talking, conversation, disabled, textbooks, instructor, accessible, people, understanding, class
SPEAKERS
Lillian Nave, Mickey Rowe (with special guest appearances by Phoenix Rowe and August Rowe)
Lillian Nave 00:00
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 134 of the Think UDL podcast: Ask Me and Believe Me with Mickey Rowe. Mickey Rowe is an award winning, best selling author and speaker as an autistic and legally blind person. He believes that when we design for accessibility, we help others to perform at their best. And as he says, That’s not just for disabled folks. He is a Broadway actor, director consultant and a public speaker, and was the first autistic actor to play Christopher Boone, the lead role in the Tony Award winning play The Curious Incident of the Dog in the night time, which I loved when I saw it on Broadway. He is a disability and accessibility advocate, and his most recent speaking engagement is with texthelps Open Access conference. Back to school. Blockbuster Lights, Camera, educate on September 18 and 19th from 12 to 3pm Eastern Time. This is a free virtual conference designed for educators. And if you’re listening to this episode after the synchronous online conference, all of the content is available on demand until the end of November 2024, and you can find a link to the back to school blockbuster conference on the think udl.org webpage under the Resources section of this episode and in the episode description in today’s conversation with Mickey, we talk about his experiences as a disabled student at the university level, and what he and his professors did to manage the barriers that persisted while he completed his undergraduate degree. Mickey gives us all students, instructors, administrators and everyone else, some sound advice on how to reduce the friction, but not the rigor of a college education. There are some easy choices and forward thinking designs that can help all of us along the way, I was able to catch Mickey at 6:30am his time in Seattle, Washington, in the USA, and by the end of our interview, his young school aged children had joined us in the recording and make a brief appearance. You’ll hear them too. Thank you for listening to this energizing and thoughtful conversation on the think UDL podcast. Thank you to our sponsor, Texthelp, 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, I wanted to welcome you. Thank you so much, Mickey for joining me today on the think UDL podcast.
Mickey Rowe 03:45
Thank you so much for having me. It is such a huge honor to get to be with you this morning. I
Lillian Nave 03:51
am so grateful for the chance to talk to you, and I’m excited to hear actually, a lot of the things that you have to say and know that you are quite a fun and interesting and great speaker at conferences and such, so I’m really excited about our conversation. So I’ll jump right in with my first question, and that is what makes you a different kind of learner.
Mickey Rowe 04:17
That is such a great question. I think a lot of things make me a different kind of learner. I think one of the main ones, though, is that I’m autistic and I’m legally blind, so I think my vision definitely makes me a different learner, just in terms of so much learning happens through textbooks, and that’s definitely and also so many tests now happen with these little, tiny Scantron bubble sheets, and that all is definitely much more challenging for me because of my vision, because I’m legally blind in ways that don’t actually necessarily have to do with my. Comprehension of the material, but just my ability to learn the material in the same way, or prove my understanding in the same way. And then with my autism, I think I’m a different kind of learner. Because, boy, I think a lot of times autistic folks really need to understand the why behind what we’re learning that we ask a lot of questions, and oftentimes that can be perceived by people as us being maybe confrontational or having issues with authority, when that’s not our intention at all. But I totally get that. That’s how it comes off, that’s how it seems. But in reality, for me to learn something, I just really need to understand the why. Why is this important? Why is this going to be impactful, or, Why is this the way we do things? Why? Why? Why is this the answer we came to in terms of best practices or whatever? And so I think autistic learners just ask a lot of questions very directly and maybe in ways that educators aren’t used to receiving.
Lillian Nave 06:08
Exactly, yeah, I am really interested in that. First of all, when you say the why of learning that is, of course, a huge part of Universal Design for Learning, that’s yes, yes. That’s one of our main three kind of legs of the stool that supports UDL. Is the why, yeah, and getting students engaged. And as you were speaking, it made me think about that, that those why questions are so important. And I think that we, as an educator, right? As an instructor, we really need that to hear that, because I do think that there’s a lot more students out there, like in my classes, who might have that question, but are socially aware to say, I don’t want to ask that question. Somebody’s going to look at me funny, you know, I don’t want to know that, right?
Mickey Rowe 07:02
Absolutely, 100% and also to piggyback on that just a little bit, even students who maybe aren’t thinking the question and too shy to ask it, even even students who don’t necessarily think to ask the why question. If they’re given the why, it is still going to benefit their learning, it is still going to help in their understanding and comprehension and remembering. Even if they don’t, they don’t have the impulse to ask why themselves. That will still benefit them. And that’s so true for I think, all things, when it comes to universally designed instruction and accessibility that, yes, while some of these things are requirements are necessary for folks with disabilities to be able to access the material, it actually, when we come down to it benefits all of us, that all learners, Whether they are disabled or not, whether they’re neurodivergent or not, we will all benefit from from Udi and from accessibility.
Lillian Nave 08:09
Absolutely, I 100% agree that there are so many things that various different students will kind of bring to the class that I will think, oh, I should have thought about that. Or that is a great point, right? Like, if I, you know, if it’s just me out there, I’m gonna forget things, or I’m not, right? Yeah, reach everybody. But when we have so many of these inputs and the feedback from the students, it just makes it such a better learning environment, absolutely.
Mickey Rowe 08:39
And I think one other thing, just while we’re on this, this little topic, is, you know, oftentimes, I think whether it’s the student or whether it’s the Educate, whether it’s the student feeling the need to advocate maybe for themselves, or whether it’s the educator either trying to figure out how to balance accessibility for disabled students and doing the rest of their job, the many millions of hats that educators have to wear every day. We sometimes, we sometimes worry about, you know, being burdens, or whether, whether this is necessary or not. And one thing I try to remind people, one way, I try to help people see that, yes, this actually does benefit everyone, because sometimes it’s harder to see in educational spaces. It’s harder to see when we’re thinking about our own work, but it’s so easy for us to just see out in the world, and it can help us. It helps us relate back to education. You know, or I know you already know this little Lillian, but it’s a concept called the curb cut effect. And I remind people that you know, for instance, captions right on apps like Instagram and Tiktok or on Netflix, right, deaf and hard of hearing folks needed to advocate so hard they. Had to fight so hard for these captions to be included on those apps, and they probably felt like maybe they were being selfish at times, or they were doing something that was only benefiting their community, but actually these captions that are necessary for deaf and hard of hearing folks to use those apps, they actually make all of our lives easier, because now I can look at and watch Instagram reels or Tiktok videos while I’m on the bus, or even maybe I’m in a lecture or a Keynote or something like that. That’s running a little long and is a little boring, right? I could pull out my phone and watch these things without anyone else knowing, or Netflix, right? I can be watching a show without leaning over to my significant other all the time saying, What did he just say? What did he just say? As I get older, right? Or as I hear my kids footsteps starting to happen upstairs, right? Those curb cuts that people with mobility disabilities had to fight so hard for, they actually make all of our lives easier that when I’m pushing my kids in the stroller outside, right? I don’t have to battle that stroller trying to pull it up onto the sidewalk or make all the kids get out of the stroller while I pick it up on the sidewalk, and then they get back in, because that curb cut makes my life easier. Or when I’m going to do keynotes all over the country with my rolling luggage in, and I see the stairs and I see the ramp in the airport, I’m going to take the ramp because that makes my life easier and so and the same is so 100% true in education to relating back to that, why question and all all forms of all ways that we can make our learning spaces more accessible that when we, when we focus on accessibility and universal design and making things more accessible for disabled folks and neurodivergent folks, we are actually truly, truly making the learning easier and a more accessible environment for everyone. 100% 100% agree.
Lillian Nave 12:01
Of course, I had read recently statistics about how just everybody you know, so not just a particular group, just how everybody watches videos, and it’s like 80% of people keep the captions on right. So, yeah, it’s a preference. Yeah, you, you don’t, you know, not just hard of hearing, right, needs that, or not just those with any sort of disability are finding that. Wow, this actually makes life so much easier. And I’m thinking also about, like, if you’re watching something in a crowded area, like on airport monitors at a, you know, a bar, you know, Dave and Busters, you know, or something like that, to have that, to have captions anyway, it’s so many things we’ve learned, I think, especially since covid, about putting things online and doing things through that technology lens, that when I’m like, back in a very analog, like Keynote or something like that, and there’s no, you know, there’s no subscript, like, or, you know, there’s no captions, I’m like, wait a second, I I can’t do this anymore. I’m so used to having that other layer that helps me to get everything you know that anyway, it’s I feel like I’m back at a disadvantage if I don’t have that thing that we just added to so many different ways that we were communicating, no, 100%
Mickey Rowe 13:33
100% I agree with you. Yeah, there’s a statistic that I often use in my PowerPoints I don’t have in front of me right now that T Mobile actually did, because they’re tracking everything we do on our phones all the time, and they found that over 80% of phone users are watching videos with their phones on mute, which means that We are using over 80% of us are fully using those captions when we watch videos on our phones, relying on those captions at some point during our day.
Lillian Nave 14:08
Yes, I am definitely one of those. And I think most of the time I’m watching a video is when it’s on mute, right? So there are only actually certain parts of my day that I can like fully, like, engage with that and have absolutely sound
Mickey Rowe 14:26
it’s a commitment. It’s a commitment to have the volume up.
Lillian Nave 14:28
Yes, it is right, and I don’t always have that. So all right, well, we’re totally on the same page, of course, with all of that. And I really appreciate your insights too, as to helping all of a lot of my audience are college instructors or folks who are interested in higher ed and thinking about really just another perception about how our students are getting information. Oh, and before I go into my. Out of my next question, I will say that when I started with the UDL, I started putting the readings that I have in audio format for my students, so I have the PDF of the chapter. And then, because I started this podcast and I have this cool microphone, I actually just recorded my voice reading it, because there wasn’t an audio version. Oh
Mickey Rowe 15:22
my gosh, that is so amazing. Yeah.
Lillian Nave 15:25
So, so I have that as an option, and so I’ve been asking my students, and I have a pretty small class this year, so it’s a small sample size. And I just said, Okay, well, how many of you, instead of reading the PDF of the chapter, it’s like, you know, 30 pages, it takes about 60 minutes for me to read it. How many of you read it and how many of you listened to it? 100% listened to it. 100% listened to me reading it, and yeah, and a few of them, like, read it while they were listening, kind of double layer. But every single one of them chose the the listening because I have several students who drive an hour actually ticket to campus, yeah, because I’m at a campus that does not have dorms anymore. And anyway, I was like, Okay, well, this was not the original way that we were doing this, but it has become 100% the preferred way of accessing, you know, the reading, because they were driving, they had a job, they had other things, you know, taking care of people. You can vacuum and listen to the reading you know, while you’re
Mickey Rowe 16:28
that is such a valuable anecdote. I love that so so much. Another resource too, you know, technology too, is making things easier and easier every day. Because I understand that not every educator, not every professor has the microphone, has the setup to do that themselves. Not everyone has maybe even the time in their day to be able to read every every reading assignment that they hand out out loud, right? But the nice thing is, too there are so many different ways that technology makes this so it doesn’t even need to take up more of our time. An app that I love and use all the time is called speechify. Speechify is so great, and you can give it any text, a PDF, a Word document, anything, and it will read that out loud to you very smoothly. It is hard to hard to really tell sometimes that that’s an AI voice reading it out loud to you. And you can even select different celebrity voices to read it out loud. You can have Snoop Dogg reading your reading your assignments out loud to you. So that’s a cool resource as well.
Lillian Nave 17:44
Yeah. And I just heard Microsoft Edge recently has the speech to text, yeah, so depending on your browser, and of course, text help has some really fantastic ways to, you know, make these things accessible. So you’re right. Like I did think that was a little extra for me to actually read my students. And I’m not advocating that it’s so
Mickey Rowe 18:07
valuable, though it is. It is the right kind of extra It is, yes,
Lillian Nave 18:11
so instead of doing that, we can just make sure that our students know, our learners know that, hey, you know it. You can use this app. You could just run it through. It’s no problem. And now you can, you know, have that facility as well. But
Mickey Rowe 18:26
I think what it does require is not just relying on hard, on the textbook, on the physical copy of the textbook. Because I think sometimes we get intimidated when we think about accessibility. Maybe not as much individual educators, because as individuals, we are all so creative, but as institutions, we get really scared sometimes when we think about accessibility and we think that it’s all going to be big, expensive legal things, you know, big these that we’re going to be setting ourselves up for litigation, or these things are big and expensive remodels, right of schools putting in elevators and things. And it doesn’t always need to be that way. Accessibility can be so affordable and so easy things that we can make the shift to start doing tomorrow overnight. But I think when we just rely on textbooks, it is not accessible in that way, and the more we can shift to using things like text enabled PDFs, the easier our lives get when it comes to making sure our classrooms are universally designed and accessible.
Lillian Nave 19:39
Yes, and it is that just the knowledge that that exists out there so that, you know, the instructor who has is a is an expert, you know, in their content, but may not know all of these other tools and options that that they have and that they don’t have to go through. Oh, my goodness, is it going to take me days? To make sure all of my, you know, all of my readings and everything, are accessible. No, if you have, usually, the institution will have help for that. Or, yeah, we might have copiers that will can scan a PDF and make it readable for a text to speech. It’s just so like, just knowing that there are really quick ways to make it accessible, it’s going to be very important too, because that’s the law that’s coming to yep, yep, be accessible with the WCAG or WCAG web accessibility, and that it it’s going to be for everything. It used to be kind of not those things that were password protected. So like at a university learning management system, you could sort of get away without doing it. Not anymore. It’s coming down soon.
Mickey Rowe 20:50
That’s so great. I think one of the challenges, though, is not, or I’m going to speak from a student’s perspective, if that now, if that’s okay, but I think not just the educators knowing, knowing what makes their classroom accessible, how they can do that in a really easy way, relying on the resources the school already has to help them make it accessible. It also has to do with two the students knowing that information that you know a lot of students elementary school through high school may have IEPs and all of these things are just done for us as students you know, as a student with a disability, it feels like You have so many resources available to you, and not just available for you, but kind of laid out for you by other people, step by step. And then the moment you graduate from high school, those all just kind of seem to vanish, and you are not a lot of students, myself included, when we get to college, we don’t know what resources there are available. We don’t know that that the university does have disability departments, accessibility departments, who can help us, and we don’t know what our rights are anymore. We don’t necessarily even know who to talk to about that, and we feel embarrassed, too, I think a lot of times because, because there is sometimes stigma around disability, sometimes, if we do ask a professor for an accommodation, and maybe that Professor isn’t as well, isn’t listening to the think UDL podcast, right? That oftentimes, right? We can get funny looks from from our professors, or they try to ask a lot of questions to figure out if this is really something we need, or why we want these things, which is not something maybe we were used to from high school, right? We didn’t. We weren’t necessarily set up with the skill of advocating for ourselves in high school. A lot of times, we weren’t even invited to our own IEP meetings through high school, right? And so, yeah, we don’t. The students often don’t necessarily have the language or the knowledge to be able to start seeking those resources out, or even know what those resources might be, to start looking for them. When I went to college, you know, I was in special education, elementary school through high school, getting speech therapy and occupational therapy and carrying around these big, giant 11 by 17 textbooks from the Talking Book and Braille library. And it was so obvious to everyone, to my peers, that I was a different learner. And so when I got to college, I thought, You know what? I’m not going to tell anyone that I have a disability, right? Yeah, I don’t want anyone to know this. I’m going to try a new thing here, and I’m going to try to just be like everyone else. And I thought that’s what I was going to have to do in the real world, in a job once I graduated from college, and I thought that I better learn how in college to just do things without so I didn’t ask for large print text. I’m legally blind. I cannot read 12 point font. I didn’t ask for large print textbooks. I wasn’t getting things photocopied or anything into large print. They weren’t when I was in college. Gosh, how long ago. Don’t want to think about that. When I was in college, though, it wasn’t PDFs, it was mostly all textbooks. I wasn’t telling anyone I was autistic, and I didn’t ask for any resources. And that was so damaging to my education, to the point that a lot of classes i. I stopped attending a lot of classes because what was the point of going to a class when I couldn’t I couldn’t read the if I’m in a big lecture class, if I couldn’t read the PowerPoint from where I’m sitting, I couldn’t read the textbook. It was just so frustrating to me. But I think it’s an easy fix, too. I think one thing that every professor, every educator, could do on day one of class, that would take zero prep time, take five minutes during class, less probably, and would make a world of difference, is just on the first day of class. Because in these situations, in these classrooms, right? It is scary to be a student in college for the first time. It’s scary to be a student attending a class that you’ve never attended for the first time, and the professor really has all the power in the situation. The professor is, isn’t, has a higher power level, I think, than the students is if, instead of it, the onus being on the student to approach the professor and say, Hey, I have a disability. I need XYZ accommodation, which can be terrifying, right, especially if we’ve had bad experiences in the past where maybe we’ve been made to feel like burdens for asking for those things is instead of the onus being on the student to bring it up, if the professor can bring those things up on day one of the class, by just saying, if there are any students with disabilities in this class who need any accommodations, please let me know. You can let me know after class right here, or you can email me and let me know via email. Accommodations I’ve made in the past include, but are not limited to XYZ. And I think that second sentence, the accommodations I’ve made in the past include, but are not limited to.dot.is so important, especially because so often now in all spaces, but especially in education spaces, diversity, equity and inclusion can be such powerful talking points such like popular talking points, accessibility can be such a popular talking point that we don’t always necessarily trust that just because someone said the right words the first time that they actually mean it, or they know how to do the thing they’re saying they want to do, right? Will they follow through? Will they follow through exactly? But by providing that next step of accommodations I’ve provided in the past include, but are not limited to XYZ, makes me say think, Oh my gosh. This person actually does mean it. This person actually is a safe space. They do know what they’re talking about. And it makes me as a student so confident to then approach that educator and ask for an accommodation I might need. And it takes the onus off of me to have to be the one to start that conversation and bring it up and do something that might feel scary.
Lillian Nave 27:59
Well, you’ve you’ve already, you’ve answered one of my questions. I was going to ask you about a what a college instructor could do, or, you know, did do that made it made a difference. And, I mean, that seems to me that that really makes a student feel very valued. I think so, as a learner or and included in that that they’re reaching out and saying, Oh, hey, I understand that there’s going to be a lot of different kinds of students, students with disabilities. I’m ready for you. I’m here for you. And then it
Mickey Rowe 28:34
makes the student feel like they do belong here. They do belong in this classroom. They are in the right place.
Lillian Nave 28:41
So a related question to that is, are there any instances in your college career where you found some barriers in your learning? I mean, you’ve already mentioned quite a few that are out there, and was there something that helped you to overcome those barriers, like did an instructor help a campus member? Did you handle it on your own? Already, you’ve mentioned something that is an important part of of disabilities, of students with disabilities in college, which is, you’re not the only one that said, I want to do it on my own. I’m not going to go to the disability accommodation center or the that’s also a huge thing. Like, you have to have doctor’s notes. You have to have a whole medical workup. It costs money. Like, there’s so much that goes into that too. So that’s a big barrier, even just going through the system. And I’m using air quotes to signify that the system can also be a barrier for for students with disabilities. So is, do you have an example too, of where you found a barrier and you were able to whether you went through this system or around the system, or what happened to help you overcome that barrier to learning? Yeah.
Mickey Rowe 29:58
Absolutely. I think one of the best ways that folks at my university, at University of Washington, helped me to overcome barriers, is in my drama department, in my theater program, because just because those were the those were the professors who knew me, who saw me over a number of years, when they were open to providing more than one option for me to prove, for me to show my understanding, for me to prove my understanding of material. You know, I think another one of those you were talking about kind of a stool of a three legged stool of universal, universal design. And I think another one of those legs of that stool is providing options and making sure that students understand and feel that those options are all equal, that that there’s not one better option that we wish everyone did. But if you can’t do that, fine, I’ll accept this too. But no, there’s so many different options, and these are all equal options as well. And but from my experience, you know, there was a time when I was, this is not even necessarily disability related, but I was working. I was having to work at the same time as going to school and in in theater. You know, theater is often very time consuming in terms of not being able to do the work on your own schedule in your dorm or something like that, because you’re reliant on all these other people in rehearsals and everyone doing things at the same time. But one thing that my professors were so willing to do always was help me find ways to meet with them and show them what I was learning in real life and help that count for grades. But I think how that can relate more that I’m a little off topic, but I think the way that that can relate back is that, you know, not every student is here’s one more example, too. I was taking a class where we needed to prove our one part of our proving our understanding was meeting with the professor and having a conversation with them. This was an ASL class, American Sign Language class, and one part of the final here was that we had to meet one on one with the professor and hold a 10 minute conversation or something with them in ASL. And this was so terrifying for me. I I, at that time, was not as great at masking as I am now. I was not as good at pretending that I wasn’t autistic. I was everyone could tell that I was autistic, I think, and having a one on one conversation was the scariest thing in the world for me, having small talk period was the scariest thing in the world for me. And I didn’t pass this, this ASL proficiency interview, I guess you would call it. I didn’t pass it, and it had nothing to do with my knowledge of ASL. It had nothing to do with my understanding of ASL, but it had everything to do with my ability to hold a conversation, to to carry on the small talk in a natural way. And that was really, really hard. But I think the more understanding professors can be that we that we can say, Okay, what, what are, what am I actually trying to test here? If I’m if this is not a writing course, if I’m not trying to test someone’s ability to write an essay, if that’s not the goal of what I’m testing here is your essay writing abilities, let’s not make that the only option for me to prove my understanding. Maybe there is a student who’s going to do so much better by having a conversation with me, right? Maybe I can have a student come in and talk to me for 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 30 minutes, and share their understanding of the material with me that way, instead of writing an essay. Or maybe there is a student who is not going to be able to do a scantron bubble test very well, right? But maybe they they’re gonna rock an essay so hard they’re gonna be able to or they can do some sort of other project, a more hands on, tactile project, to really show their understanding and mastery of these concepts. So I think the more that we can provide options, that is one thing that people. Think that especially my theater program did for me, that really benefited me, and I think that’s something that can benefit all of our students. It just takes a little bit of creativity, sometimes,
Lillian Nave 35:10
absolutely yes, and I’m thinking about that assignment, like that final meet up with the professor, and I’m wondering, like, what is the goal? And you know, unless it is like face your fears about meeting authority figures, then they’ve been done any number of other ways, like perhaps a recorded conversation between you and another person in the class. You know something absolutely right that demonstrates your proficiency, but is not in the you’re gonna have to talk to a your like the person,
Mickey Rowe 35:45
professor, who I’ve never had a one on one conversation before, once before with, yeah, we also had, we were also in that class, you know, meeting with peers, meeting with we were going to Deaf events in The community and having conversations with people. There’s no reason that those couldn’t have been videotaped, or that the professor couldn’t have just observed conversations between peers as well. There are so many different ways to do it, but it is scary to ask for these things, right? I think that is really one of the biggest struggles that disabled students have, at least that I had, is that it we we feel like burdens so much of our lives, and that makes it really scary to ask for the accommodations that we need.
Lillian Nave 36:32
I really appreciate all of these kind of views into what those barriers are between the student and the and the instructor. It’s really important that we kind of know all of this part of the environment. And I’d like to know in your experience, what were things or what would you caution professors against doing if they’re designing a college level course? Was there anything that created, like unnecessary problems that you think during your college career? Sure,
Mickey Rowe 37:05
that’s such a good question. And I think the biggest, I think this is something that that a mistake that is so often made. I make it myself all the time. I make this mistake all the time, but it actually makes the instructors life more difficult and the student’s life more difficult. I think often, when we think about accessibility, we almost overthink right? We have to. We want to feel like we we have all the answers, that we know, we know all the information, and that we’re able to swoop in and save the day, sometimes, right, which can be a that’s a big burden, that’s a lot to ask of any individual. So I think that the problem is when we assume what someone needs, or we decide that it’s our job to need to predict, to need to almost become mind readers and physicians and doctors and all of these things, and be able to predict and assume what someone needs, rather than just asking what they need. So often, I’ve been provided with accommodations that either accommodations I don’t need, or maybe there’s a problem I have, and I have a great accommodate. I know what. I know what accommodation works best for me, but the professor has done all of this work to almost invent their own accommodation, right? They saw a problem, and they wanted to be so kind and helpful. And this all comes from such places of such good intention, and they come up with this elaborate, amazing accommodation for this problem. But maybe the accommodation they’ve come up with, it’s just so much more clunky. It’s another combination. Yes, it is. It’s more work. It’s more work than is necessary. And so I think always feeling brave enough to ask a student what they need, ask a student what they can do and what they can’t do. And then believe the student when they tell you, as disabled people, you know, I think disabled people are some of the best creative problem solvers in the entire world, because we have to be, we’ve had to be creative problem solvers our entire lives to navigate a world that wasn’t necessarily designed with us in mind. And so while, yes, the goal is universal design, the goal is creating these spaces that are perfectly accessible for all individuals and all disabilities. And that’s a goal we should always strive for. Also it’s impossible. It is a, it is a never reachable goal at this moment in in time, right? And so we can, we should also always feel brave just asking someone what they need. And I think one of the reasons that feels scary to us is because disability is often taboo, right? You know, even. Just the Way We so often rely on, oh my god, I’m forgetting the word for this at the moment, but we are so often scared to even use the word disability, right? We’ll say things like differently abled or special or disabled with the abled in all capital letters. You know, we will find every way possible to avoid saying the word disabled, and I think that comes from our discomfort around disability, right? And so the more we can get over that discomfort and be confident. Just having the conversations the better. Another thing that can help us be more confident in that is, if I’m asking someone what accommodations they need, I don’t need to know anything about their specific disabilities. I don’t need to know about their diagnosis. I’m not asking them for any personal medical information about themselves. All I’m asking is, what accommodations help you the most? What accommodations help you the most if I’m referring to someone, a student with a disability, I don’t need to know their disability. I don’t need to say, oh, XYZ, student has cerebral palsy or whatever, right? All I need to know is, this is a student who benefits from using a mobility device. This is a student who benefits from using large print text, right? And so really, taking the focus off of the disability and putting the focus onto the accommodation can make us feel so much more confident in being able to have those conversations and ask for ask students what they need. Yeah, I think another reason we have so much, so much discomfort sometimes around asking people these questions and having these conversations is that somewhere deep down we know we Intuit and realize that disability is sort of is really kind of the one equal opportunity minority group. Any one of us absolutely can become disabled at any time. And should we be lucky enough to live long enough, every single one of us will at some point in time, join the disability club. Joined the prestigious disability club, absolutely, yeah, so I think, but, but it really, it really is just best practice, I think, to ask people what they need, ask people what accommodations they need, even if we’re really confident that we have made our classrooms entirely, universally designed to still like at the on the first day of class, say, if any student has a disability, let me know. Accommodations I’ve made in the past include, but are not limited to.dot.it still so important and and it’s and then the best practice is focus on the accommodation, not the disability, which also falls in line. I’m not sure. I’m sure you guys have, y’all have talked about this before, but if not, you people, listeners, can Google the social model of discipline. Okay, stay quiet. Y’all. Sorry. Another concept that listeners can Google as well, which can lend confidence to instructors, is the social model of disability versus the medical model of disability. And the medical model of disability is the one where we would really focus on an individual’s disability a medical diagnosis, or the disability being a personal problem that one individual has that we need to kind of help them correct or fix. Whereas the social model right is that Universal Design model, the social model is that model where we say the disability doesn’t actually even matter. All that matters. We’re going to put the focus on the accommodations. We’re going to put the focus on what can I change about this environment? What can I change about this classroom to make it more more accessible and that that’s the issue. The issue isn’t the disability. The issue is the lack of accessibility in the classroom. Absolutely,
Lillian Nave 44:21
I really appreciate the social model I talk about that when I’m giving talks to faculty as well, because it really does change our understanding of the it’s the environment. It’s not the person that has that needs to change, actually. So and another thing that you mentioned too is, even if you have, let’s say you have created an incredibly, universally designed course, that does not mean we don’t need accommodations. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. So absolutely, yeah, I’ve gotten that question a lot that it’s not, oh, well, I can now no longer need. Need accommodations. We don’t need a disability services. No, that is not what UDL does, but it does often mean that fewer people need some of those most common accommodations, like extra time on tests. Well, if you design the way you assess students that don’t have time to test, you know, or other things that are the kind of the general ones, then you don’t have to but it does not negate the need for accommodation.
Mickey Rowe 45:23
The other thing that UDL means is that more students are going to thrive. Is that students who would not be asking for accommodations, they may not identify as disabled themselves, more of those students are going to thrive in your classroom, right? There are people who, so many people benefit from Universal Design and from accessibility, who don’t see themselves as being disabled for all the reasons we talked about when we were talking about the curb cut effect a few minutes ago, right? And also I think about because I work in theater, right? I think about how often in theater, when we have the days where the performances are captioned, how many of the audience members showing up as our audiences are getting older and older, benefit from those captions? They don’t see themselves as disabled. They wouldn’t identify as being deaf or hard of hearing, right? They maybe didn’t even necessarily come specifically because this performance was a captioned performance, and yet it enhanced their experience so much, it benefited them so much, and they thrived so much more in that space because of those captions. And the same thing happens in our classrooms, right that when we use universal design, it’s really those people who don’t identify as disabled, and who wouldn’t be asking for accommodations that are going to start thriving so much more as well.
Lillian Nave 46:46
Absolutely, I this makes me think, actually, when you bring up theater, that when I was just starting off my first job and lived in upstate New York, there was I lived in Cooperstown, New York, which is the home of the Baseball Hall of Fame. But it also has, yeah, it also has the glimmer glass opera, which was where apparently several stage settings, like the preliminaries of what would eventually go to the Met Opera House in New York City would be staged. And it was the first time, so this is 30 some years ago that I went to operas, and it had the superscript, so you could, yeah, understand what was going on, because also it was in another language. So it I was not familiar with opera at all, and I was, you know, like 24 and would go to these because also, I really didn’t have anything to do in Cooperstown besides my jobs. And I would go to these, and I thought, oh my goodness, I would have zero understanding of what’s going on without that superscript right above the players. So I could hear how beautiful everything was. But it really had no clue. Because unless you’ve studied the opera and kind of know what’s you know going on, there’s no reason you would know anyway. That has stayed with me for 30 years about how something that I was like, Oh, isn’t this great? Is this what opera does? I didn’t even know they did that, you know, had no clue how much it enhanced my understanding and and actually brought any understanding rather than, well, that was kind of fun and weird and chill for me to do as a 24 year old, to go to the opera and pretend like I’m an adult.
Mickey Rowe 48:34
And isn’t that our goal, though, that should be our goal as educators all the time, right? Is to bring as many people into the fold as possible is to enhance everyone’s understanding and to make as many people feel like they belong here, that this information is accessible to them, that this that this is something that they understand and are capable of diving deeper into, right? That’s all of our goal. And opera is so, so good at that with those with those captions that are there every performance above the above the screen translating into English,
Lillian Nave 49:09
yeah, like, I can imagine that, like in our learners context, like for the first time, that a learner is taking, you know, geography or or art history, which is not something I had in high school, But then fell in love with in college, you know, or something completely different. I mean, I’m sure organic chemistry also seems like a completely different language, right? Yeah, that my son is currently taking in college, and to have as many, like, supports, because it is kind of like a foreign language to have, you know, flexibility and when you can access that. So do you get the slides ahead of time? Do you have, you know? Do you have alternate text to a to describe some crazy diagram? You know that? Yeah, a scientific diagram. How would I know what that is? So, whether deep into it, as a deep learner or. You’re an expert or you’re a novice, that’s going to help.
Mickey Rowe 50:03
And one way we often think about those translations, like, right? You’re talking about translating opera from Italian into English, one way we think about those that same kind of translation in the disability community and disability culture is called plain language, where, for instance, my book, if you are my book, is written in big paragraphs. Often, there are terms that are really specific and almost jargony when it comes to disability and accessibility, right? But anyone can go on my website and click on the book tab and download for free a plain language Guide, which is every paragraph of my book translated into short sentences, bullet points using common words that everyone knows, and so we can do that in education. There are so many experts out there who just focus on these plain language translations. But yeah, you but it’s it’s so valuable. Often we think that using big fancy words is how we prove our understanding. We prove that we know what we’re talking about. Because we can use these big fancy words that no one actually knows the meaning of when in reality, right. As an educator, I can prove my understanding of something so much more if I’m able to explain it in short sentences using words that everyone knows. That’s how you know you really understand something. That’s how you know that you are really you have really internalized the understanding of something and have mastered it is when you’re able to explain things and teach things using short sentences and common words that everyone knows. So if anyone’s interested in that, definitely do some more research and deep diving into into plain language translations and plain language guides. Yeah, and
Lillian Nave 52:20
I’ve seen that, I know that AI can help with that. It’s not perfect, but we can, like, change the feed in a high level article and ask for it to be, in essence, translated into plain language, something that’s much easy, a lot easier for students to understand, for anyone to understand that’s not in the jargon or the highfalutin language sort of thing. And I find that also with my students, that that I even said to them, and last week, I said, Hey, if you don’t understand a word, as I asked a question, everybody was sort of silent for a while. And I was like, Do you need me to define some of those words. It’s like, you guys, please. I want to explain them. And sometimes I just hate it when people use these big words, they don’t explain. And there I did. I just did it. So we we need to be explaining it. And I do think that there’s a little bit of that giving away the power in that position. We mentioned how a student coming into a college classroom, the professor, the instructor, has a lot of power, and there’s a big power differential there, and the more that we can give away that power to our students, the better, the more learning is going to happen, and giving that control and going way back in our conversation to asking Students what accommodations they need, and then believing them, or asking what they need, rather than coming up with, well, I’ve got an idea about which accommodations are going to be perfect for you. That’s giving away the power to other the students in the class, and that’s scary, especially for like beginning instructors, but sure, yeah, it’s definitely where the learning is is going to take off, is when we can share that power, get that feedback, solicit the feedback, Bender and and it’s those, those students, those persnickety students, maybe are the ones that ask the literal questions, like, what does that word mean? And they’re not afraid to say it. Or maybe they just don’t know that they should be afraid to say, yeah, they’re the ones that help the most, that help
Mickey Rowe 54:24
everybody, absolutely. And to reframe that the professor is definitely the expert on the subject matter, but when it comes to the learning, we are all we are all a team together, right? The the professor is coming in as the expert on this subject matter that they’re teaching and that we can all we are all here together to learn. We are all here with good intentions to learn together, and we can all be a team in that.
Lillian Nave 54:54
Wow. That brings me to this, this last question, and that actually. Sounds a lot like what what this could be as an answer, but let’s say you had some college professors in front of you, and they were about to teach their semester worth of courses, and they knew they’d have a variety of students, including neurotypical students, neurodivergent students, autistic students, students with disabilities in their classes. What’s your advice that you would give to college professors?
Mickey Rowe 55:24
Yeah, I guess to tie it back into what we just were talking about a second ago, is to see the see the students in your class as collaborators, that to see the students as the class in experts on their own lived experience, on their own brains, on the ways that they learn best, right? The professor is coming in there as an expert on the subject matter and on the as an expert on how to teach that subject matter too. But the students are also experts in their brains, their bodies, and how, how they’re going to be able to best learn the material in this classroom. So together, you have all the information you need, right? You have lots of different experts on lots of different things in this classroom. And if we can start to see each other as collaborators, all working towards the same goal, I think that is the best, the best reframing that I could imagine.
Lillian Nave 56:21
And that sounds like a universally designed experience, because you are, yeah, taking into account all of all of the people in there, both the teacher and the learners, and those learners also become teachers in that context. So thank you. That’s fantastic. And Mickey, I just want to say thank you so much for this fantastic, energizing conversation super early in the morning for you on the White House, and I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me and my audience and to help us understand too, what we can do to make a better learning environment for our students. So thanks. Oh.
Mickey Rowe 57:00
Thank you so much, Lillian for having me. It was such a such a pleasure. I’m gonna let August and Phoenix say goodbye and thank you as well.
August Rowe 57:08
Thanks bye,
Phoenix Rowe 57:09
bye, bye, or something, bye, oh bye. Thank you.
Lillian Nave 57:15
Thank you, Mickey and August and Phoenix for a fantastic conversation.
Mickey Rowe 57:21
Have a good one.
Lillian Nave 57:24
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 thinkutl.org website. Thank you again to our sponsor, Texthelp. Texthelp is focused on helping all people learn, understand and communicate through the use of digital education and accessibility tools. Texthelp 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 Texthelp suite of products includes read and write equatio and orbitnote. 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 Oddyssey 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.