1 00:00:04,796 --> 00:00:13,796 Okay, it's 2 o'clock go ahead and get started So you're mindful of everyone's time welcome. 2 00:00:13,796 --> 00:00:18,796 Hopefully. Everybody joined us for accessibly summer camp last Friday. 3 00:00:18,796 --> 00:00:28,796 If you didn't those recordings for all of the sessions, including the 2 pre-sessions we had Thursday on the sixteenth, will be available in about 3 weeks. 4 00:00:28,796 --> 00:00:33,796 We'll have those up on our website accessibilityict.org. 5 00:00:33,796 --> 00:00:39,796 And then you can also watch that website throughout the year for information on next year's conference. 6 00:00:39,796 --> 00:00:47,796 So let's kind of your gateway to everything that we're doing here with accessibilityict, anyway. 7 00:00:47,796 --> 00:00:53,796 So welcome to ASC Live. This is Episode Number 5, and ASC. 8 00:00:53,796 --> 00:00:56,796 Live is brought to you by our summer camp sponsors. 9 00:00:56,796 --> 00:01:13,796 This is last month that our sponsors have signed on, for this is WSU Tech, of course, Concourse Syllabus, Way point Ventures, Innovative Educators, Open LMS, Blackboard, Accessible learning.com, Simple Syllabus, 10 00:01:13,796 --> 00:01:27,796 D2L, and PackBack. Special thanks also goes out to Mid-America Nazarene University, StreamYard, and Captain Coder. Captioning is provided by the auto captioning within zoom to view those captions please enable 11 00:01:27,796 --> 00:01:37,796 the captions located on the toolbar by clicking the "Live Transcript" icon, and then selecting, show subtitle or view full transcript. 12 00:01:37,796 --> 00:01:39,796 So you can read the whole thing if you want to do it that way. 13 00:01:39,796 --> 00:01:47,796 You do have an option to customize that, and how you see those we know that the auto capsions within zoom are not a 100%. 14 00:01:47,796 --> 00:01:52,796 When ASC Live concludes, we will make a recording available with corrected captioning. 15 00:01:52,796 --> 00:01:57,796 Within a week of this broadcast you'll be able to find that recording on the ASC 16 00:01:57,796 --> 00:02:04,796 Live tab again at accessibilityict.org. We're excited about our guests today. 17 00:02:04,796 --> 00:02:07,796 Kate Sanka, who is the executive director, 18 00:02:07,796 --> 00:02:18,796 Pardon me, of Teach Access. Our topic of discussion today is accessibility, collaboration between education, industry, disability, advocacy organizations. 19 00:02:18,796 --> 00:02:23,796 So we're gonna talk a little bit about all that stuff Kate. 20 00:02:23,796 --> 00:02:28,796 Welcome to the show or the podcast or video cast, or whatever we want to call this. 21 00:02:28,796 --> 00:02:35,796 That's a little bit about you and your role that teach access and some of your passions. 22 00:02:35,796 --> 00:02:40,796 [Kate] Yeah, Thank you so much, Cliff. Thanks for having me here for your whole team. 23 00:02:40,796 --> 00:02:44,796 Really excited to be with all of you today. live, and then hello to all of you, listening. 24 00:02:44,796 --> 00:02:49,796 Later. My name is Kate Sanka. I use she her pronouns? 25 00:02:49,796 --> 00:02:56,796 I am the executive director of Teach Access, which you will be hearing a lot more about throughout the next hour or so. 26 00:02:56,796 --> 00:03:00,796 I first just wanted to say thank you for making time to be here. 27 00:03:00,796 --> 00:03:06,796 I know there's a lot going on out in the world today, especially in and in general. 28 00:03:06,796 --> 00:03:11,796 So i'm happy to have you here in whatever way that you're coming here today. 29 00:03:11,796 --> 00:03:20,796 So about me. So I currently am living in Michigan in Lansing, Michigan. 30 00:03:20,796 --> 00:03:33,796 Prior to doing this role, being in this role Full-time I was working as a faculty member at Michigan State University, which I think we'll talk a bit about as we get into the conversation. 31 00:03:33,796 --> 00:03:39,796 My background academic background is in bilingual by cultural education. 32 00:03:39,796 --> 00:03:42,796 So I have a masters of education and those in that area. 33 00:03:42,796 --> 00:03:52,796 So i've always really been intrigued by this notion of inclusive teaching, and learning and the various ways that our students come into our classrooms. 34 00:03:52,796 --> 00:04:08,796 As well as the various ways that we exist. as as faculty as staff and and how that comes into our classroom, and and what that looks like. In terms of my passions. 35 00:04:08,796 --> 00:04:15,796 Certainly food is one. I would, you know, cooking, eating, trying new things. 36 00:04:15,796 --> 00:04:21,796 Travel is another. I've been really fortunate to travel a lot around the world in my life. 37 00:04:21,796 --> 00:04:27,796 So. Yeah, I think those are those are those are the ones i'll highlight right now. 38 00:04:27,796 --> 00:04:34,796 There's certainly others. But that usually gets people going So yeah, i'll pause there. 39 00:04:34,796 --> 00:04:39,796 [Cliff] I can certainly relate to the food i'm a Nelson. 40 00:04:39,796 --> 00:04:42,796 We love to eat, and that's just the way life is and i'm not ashamed of it. 41 00:04:42,796 --> 00:04:48,796 [Kate] Yeah, right? right? [Cliff] I just bought a watermelon that's delicious. 42 00:04:48,796 --> 00:04:56,796 So I just had a piece. [Kate] absolutely. [Cliff] Tell us, maybe you wanna expand a little bit more on your higher education experience. 43 00:04:56,796 --> 00:05:01,796 And especially when it comes to accessibility. [Kate] Absolutely thanks for that. 44 00:05:01,796 --> 00:05:08,796 So as many people maybe in the audience here have experienced often. 45 00:05:08,796 --> 00:05:14,796 We kind of end up finding ourselves in these roles doing accessibility work for any number of different reasons. 46 00:05:14,796 --> 00:05:31,796 Coming coming into this space. So prior to being at Michigan State University, I worked in the College of Education at DePaul University and the work that I was doing there was certainly sort of a general academic technology, faculty support, 47 00:05:31,796 --> 00:05:35,796 faculty development. not so much focused on accessibility. 48 00:05:35,796 --> 00:05:44,796 More kind of broadly speaking, When I was recruited back to Michigan State on my very first day of the Associate Dean, I reported to you, said all right. 49 00:05:44,796 --> 00:05:49,796 Accessibility is a thing. we care about it. Could you do something with it? 50 00:05:49,796 --> 00:05:54,796 And that that was maybe 2014 and at that point I really did not know that word at all. 51 00:05:54,796 --> 00:06:09,796 Didn't know what it meant had no clue However, both of my parents. were teachers at the Wisconsin school for the blind and so growing up that was the work they did I learned about what they are doing every day 52 00:06:09,796 --> 00:06:12,796 you know their students what was happening in the classroom? 53 00:06:12,796 --> 00:06:15,796 And so, when I was introduced to that term I was like oh, this makes sense. 54 00:06:15,796 --> 00:06:23,796 We're talking about ways to to make education accessible and inclusive for students with disabilities, perfect, 55 00:06:23,796 --> 00:06:28,796 let's go. So that's really how I got into It was just kind of a hey? 56 00:06:28,796 --> 00:06:31,796 We need someone to be focused on this in the college arts and letters. 57 00:06:31,796 --> 00:06:42,796 Please do it. And from there it really became what was needed, both by our faculty in terms of the types of support that was needed. 58 00:06:42,796 --> 00:06:51,796 What was needed by our students across across our college. And then, as I am, as I have a tendency to do, I love collaborating. 59 00:06:51,796 --> 00:07:02,796 I love working with people, I love finding new ways to come together, and think about and solve questions, challenges whatever people might have 60 00:07:02,796 --> 00:07:10,796 And so I started reaching out to other people across the university i'm sure some of you i'm looking at some of the universities here in the chat. 61 00:07:10,796 --> 00:07:13,796 Some of your universities are pretty large as well. 62 00:07:13,796 --> 00:07:20,796 And so at Michigan State University enrolling 50,000 students there's a lot of people working there. 63 00:07:20,796 --> 00:07:23,796 And so my work really kind of expanded from there. 64 00:07:23,796 --> 00:07:29,796 So it always came back to How are we best supporting the students in our classrooms? 65 00:07:29,796 --> 00:07:33,796 What do our faculty need to be able to teach? in accessible way? 66 00:07:33,796 --> 00:07:36,796 And from there there are different initiatives that came up. 67 00:07:36,796 --> 00:07:52,796 So I co-founded founded a conference called the Accessible Learning Conference which ran for about almost the whole time I was at MSU really similar to the accessibility summer camp in the sense that It 68 00:07:52,796 --> 00:08:01,796 was a free moment, free and open. Please come and learn about accessibility. You'll get to hear from a variety of people and higher ed and industry. 69 00:08:01,796 --> 00:08:08,796 Disability advocacy groups, and really understand what's going on get answers to your questions, and so forth. 70 00:08:08,796 --> 00:08:13,796 And we ended up having by the end. I think we had the last year that I was there. 71 00:08:13,796 --> 00:08:18,796 About 600 people register for it. so it it had some legs. 72 00:08:18,796 --> 00:08:24,796 It was out there doing some some you know, making making space for good conversation. 73 00:08:24,796 --> 00:08:28,796 Some of the other programs that I was a part of. 74 00:08:28,796 --> 00:08:30,796 We had something called the Faculty Accessibility Fellows Program. 75 00:08:30,796 --> 00:08:38,796 So we were awarded a group of us from 3 different colleges as well as our disability services office. 76 00:08:38,796 --> 00:08:43,796 We're awarded an internal grant and essentially the idea 77 00:08:43,796 --> 00:08:51,796 with that was over the course of an academic year. We had about 15 faculty who are coming together once a month to talk about. 78 00:08:51,796 --> 00:08:55,796 What does it mean to teach in an accessible way? 79 00:08:55,796 --> 00:09:02,796 How does that impact my teaching? various topics that that might be familiar to some out here? 80 00:09:02,796 --> 00:09:08,796 Things around universal design for learning, or UDL for short and so forth. 81 00:09:08,796 --> 00:09:13,796 It was sort of a phase approach so the beginning was meant to be Here's what accessibility and disability is. 82 00:09:13,796 --> 00:09:18,796 And then let's look specifically at your course and then the last piece was really going to be. 83 00:09:18,796 --> 00:09:24,796 And now here's how you can be an advocate on your own campus, because I I firmly do believe that you can. 84 00:09:24,796 --> 00:09:30,796 You can do this work in whatever role you're in However, that was spring of 2020. 85 00:09:30,796 --> 00:09:37,796 And we all know what happened that spring. So the program kind of was not kind of. 86 00:09:37,796 --> 00:09:42,796 It was impacted. But yeah, that was that was one that I was really excited 87 00:09:42,796 --> 00:09:49,796 to have going. The goal had been to kind of create this group of advocates within various colleges to kind of go out from there. 88 00:09:49,796 --> 00:09:58,796 Beyond that I got involved in each Teach Access as a volunteer, which I'll talk more about, of course and so forth. 89 00:09:58,796 --> 00:10:04,796 So a lot of varied sorts of accessibility activities. 90 00:10:04,796 --> 00:10:10,796 [Cliff] When was the the last year that you had the accessible learning conference? 91 00:10:10,796 --> 00:10:21,796 [Kate] The last year that I was there would have been in fall of 2021. 92 00:10:21,796 --> 00:10:26,796 Wait. What year is it? 22? Yeah, No fall of 2020? 93 00:10:26,796 --> 00:10:30,796 Was the last year that I was a part of that. 94 00:10:30,796 --> 00:10:40,796 I do believe it ran last fall fall 21 but I had already left, and was and was at was here at Teach Access full time by that point. 95 00:10:40,796 --> 00:10:46,796 [Cliff] So it's still it's still going ? [Kate] I think so. Yeah, 96 00:10:46,796 --> 00:10:51,796 I I know there's a small group who was working on it for this past fall. 97 00:10:51,796 --> 00:11:01,796 And I think I don't know now what will happen moving forward as as some of the other people in that group has have either moved into new roles or 98 00:11:01,796 --> 00:11:09,796 you know things things change, and I I think that's an important piece of this work, too, is that when that conference was founded in 2015 99 00:11:09,796 --> 00:11:24,796 The conversations on Michigan States campus were a lot different than they were in 2,020, in the sense that there were more people now aware of it, more people understanding, maybe, the implications of what accessibility means in their own 100 00:11:24,796 --> 00:11:31,796 classrooms or colleges. And so the conversation I had seen was already starting to shift into different spaces. 101 00:11:31,796 --> 00:11:35,796 You know it was less about kind of the what is it? 102 00:11:35,796 --> 00:11:40,796 And more about great let's let's talk more about these bigger challenges that we're having in our departments or colleges. 103 00:11:40,796 --> 00:11:44,796 And so yeah, the future of it, you know. I hope it keeps going. 104 00:11:44,796 --> 00:11:50,796 It was great. It was a great way to bring together people from the MSU community, and beyond. 105 00:11:50,796 --> 00:11:56,796 But yeah, don't don't know for sure what will happen this fall, but it's if it's happening. 106 00:11:56,796 --> 00:12:03,796 Check it out. [Cliff] Hopefully, hopefully, keeps rolling any chance that we have to have free access to 107 00:12:03,796 --> 00:12:11,796 information, tools, training, learning, education, anything that we can do to help level the playing field for all students. 108 00:12:11,796 --> 00:12:22,796 I'm all for that I know for us accessibility really started taking the steam and and teeth and traction about 5 years ago, when we started doing the conference. 109 00:12:22,796 --> 00:12:31,796 So i'm glad there's other things out there that that are free. [Kate] Yes! [Cliff] It's hard to continue to do that, especially when it's growing. 110 00:12:31,796 --> 00:12:36,796 We're we're about to outgrow our ability to handle our group. 111 00:12:36,796 --> 00:12:42,796 But so we've had to branch out and get some help, and works out pretty well. [Kate] It's a good. 112 00:12:42,796 --> 00:12:46,796 It's a good space to find yourself in I mean it's it's something to navigate for sure but 113 00:12:46,796 --> 00:12:50,796 The fact that awareness grows that way is is a good sign. 114 00:12:50,796 --> 00:13:00,796 More and more people are aware of it. [Cliff] So so when we met I don't know about a week so ago we talked about a lot of different things and questions. 115 00:13:00,796 --> 00:13:10,796 And and ideas with one of the things that you had mentioned, that I think the group would like to you elaborate on is, you know, the 6 methods or approaches of engagement. 116 00:13:10,796 --> 00:13:19,796 When it comes to this whole thing. [Kate] Yeah, so I could talk for the whole time, just about these. 117 00:13:19,796 --> 00:13:26,796 [Cliff} We have to cut off at 3PM (laughing). [Kate] So i'll i'll do a i'll do a really quick run-through of what they are. 118 00:13:26,796 --> 00:13:33,796 And then i'm happy to to share out more information or or you know, talk with anyone more about that in detail later. 119 00:13:33,796 --> 00:13:49,796 But when I was at MSU and was working to try and bring faculty on board to the idea of accessibility and teaching in an accessible way, they're kind of kind of what I called the 6 methods of coalition 120 00:13:49,796 --> 00:13:55,796 building, I think, is what I finally landed on. But really the idea is the various ways 121 00:13:55,796 --> 00:14:07,796 that you might want to, or could engage a faculty member in getting them to essentially care about why they might want to teach about accessibility or teach accessibly. 122 00:14:07,796 --> 00:14:13,796 And so the first one off the top is always student success you know in my mind, and like, we've admitted students to our university. 123 00:14:13,796 --> 00:14:20,796 That means that we believe that they can be successful, whatever that definition of success looks like for them. 124 00:14:20,796 --> 00:14:28,796 And so it it is. It is our responsibility to to make that work and and to find that because they're at our university. 125 00:14:28,796 --> 00:14:35,796 And so you know that often resonated with a lot of faculty, because faculty do care about their students. 126 00:14:35,796 --> 00:14:42,796 And so student success was one. just getting faculty to understand that this is a this is a dimension of student success. 127 00:14:42,796 --> 00:14:47,796 But if things are accessible in your classroom, that students can be successful. 128 00:14:47,796 --> 00:15:01,796 The next one with social justice. So again, resonating these are the different ways, and maybe i'd use some combo of them based on who I knew the faculty member was but for some faculty social justice was a huge is 129 00:15:01,796 --> 00:15:10,796 a huge part of the work that They're doing I was working in the College of Arts and Letters, which is the College of Arts and Humanities at Michigan State. 130 00:15:10,796 --> 00:15:16,796 So a lot of scholars and professors. this this is their work is social justice on various ways. 131 00:15:16,796 --> 00:15:23,796 And so talking about how disability is part of that conversation and the intersectionality that people have. 132 00:15:23,796 --> 00:15:31,796 Are the the way that people people come to our classrooms with various various types of 133 00:15:31,796 --> 00:15:37,796 What sort of looking for identities? and disability is one of those. 134 00:15:37,796 --> 00:15:41,796 And so, for if we're caring about social justice, we should be also caring about disability as well 135 00:15:41,796 --> 00:15:48,796 Another One, of course, was universal design for learning which I suspect you've talked about here on this pod a few times. 136 00:15:48,796 --> 00:15:54,796 But again, thinking about the actual teaching practice and the pedagogical choices that faculty are making. 137 00:15:54,796 --> 00:15:57,796 What can you do in the name of universal design 138 00:15:57,796 --> 00:16:05,796 for learning as a way to get started and creating a more inclusive or accessible classroom. 139 00:16:05,796 --> 00:16:10,796 The fourth one was community impact. and this one could be taken. 140 00:16:10,796 --> 00:16:19,796 Any number of ways. So it could be about a faculty member specifically themselves in their scholarship or their teaching. 141 00:16:19,796 --> 00:16:32,796 So, hey? If if you aren't doing things accessibly you're, you're excluding a significant portion or a port at least 20%, we know of the population from being able to access your work, or be able to learn from 142 00:16:32,796 --> 00:16:37,796 you in the classroom. and you know thereby what does that do for your community impact? 143 00:16:37,796 --> 00:16:41,796 If if that's if that's something that's important to you as a faculty member. 144 00:16:41,796 --> 00:16:47,796 Of course it's also important anytime we're talking about disability, that we are including the disability community. 145 00:16:47,796 --> 00:16:50,796 So. Maybe some of you have heard the phrase out there. 146 00:16:50,796 --> 00:17:07,796 Nothing about us without us. So when we're talking about disability when we're talking about accessibility, making sure that we are talking about and including the community that we are working working with that we're working with them. So community 147 00:17:07,796 --> 00:17:14,796 impact there's more there, of course, that that's kind of where, like the accessible learning conference comes in or something like your ASC. 148 00:17:14,796 --> 00:17:19,796 How else are we including the community in these conversations? 149 00:17:19,796 --> 00:17:27,796 The next one was legal I never led with this one or the sixth one, which was like the business case for it. 150 00:17:27,796 --> 00:17:33,796 Because I never thought that that was a sustainable way to motivate faculty, to want to care about accessibility. 151 00:17:33,796 --> 00:17:43,796 But it's still is something that can be in your back pocket for getting people to care or again, it depends on the audience. 152 00:17:43,796 --> 00:17:55,796 So maybe, for the individual faculty member who's teaching you know threat to the lawsuit, or you know whether this is good good for the bottom line. probably won't resonate with them. 153 00:17:55,796 --> 00:18:08,796 But if you're talking to a dean or you're talking to an administrator, these these might be one way to get them to to want to hear about what you're talking about so I always leave those till till the end 154 00:18:08,796 --> 00:18:17,796 they're not my go to but I can't ignore them. because they do sometimes resonate with with people. 155 00:18:17,796 --> 00:18:20,796 So those are kind of the 6 I can run through again. 156 00:18:20,796 --> 00:18:27,796 Student success, social justice, UDL, community impact, legal, and then the business case for accessibility. 157 00:18:27,796 --> 00:18:36,796 So any combo of that I would use when talking to faculty administrators and so forth. 158 00:18:36,796 --> 00:18:40,796 [Cliff] Yeah. and those are great great ways to to look at that. 159 00:18:40,796 --> 00:18:55,796 I know I struggle with why people just don't do it because it's the right thing to do as opposed to we're doing it because we have to. And if we can get in the mindset and change our culture and 160 00:18:55,796 --> 00:19:03,796 we talk about culture a lot when we talk about accessibility and changing the culture and making sure that we're doing this all with everybody in mind, etc., etc. 161 00:19:03,796 --> 00:19:08,796 It's it's like well you know when you give to charity, do you do it 162 00:19:08,796 --> 00:19:14,796 because those people need that, or because you want to be recognized and so it's it. 163 00:19:14,796 --> 00:19:26,796 It becomes difficult to help motivate people to actually care because It's the right thing to do, not because you're being, you know, legal action against you. and I know there's struggles with that with many people. 164 00:19:26,796 --> 00:19:31,796 [Kate] I think I think that's a fair point I think you know I always want to believe in the good people first, you know I don't. 165 00:19:31,796 --> 00:19:40,796 I I never, wanna go into a conversation with faculty member thinking let it's It's not that they don't care about it. 166 00:19:40,796 --> 00:19:51,796 It's just maybe they aren't aware of it you know there's a lot on everyone's plate at all times, and so sometimes people just don't know what they don't know and so entering into those 167 00:19:51,796 --> 00:19:54,796 conversations more about hey, I I think that you're going to care about this. 168 00:19:54,796 --> 00:19:59,796 I know you have the capacity to care although you have a lot going on. 169 00:19:59,796 --> 00:20:03,796 So you know. How can we make this work for where you're at right now? 170 00:20:03,796 --> 00:20:07,796 Is is, I think, an important way to approach that, too. 171 00:20:07,796 --> 00:20:13,796 But believing that people do want to care about this once they know about it, they just might not know about it. 172 00:20:13,796 --> 00:20:18,796 So, [Cliff] and I think I think a lot of them do just like anybody that's in your class. 173 00:20:18,796 --> 00:20:31,796 You don't know what their background is, you don't know what they're involved in. If you don't know what their experiences are, and trying to figure those things out to get people pushing the right direction is is always the 174 00:20:31,796 --> 00:20:36,796 challenge. Well, good. So let's let's walk into what you do. 175 00:20:36,796 --> 00:20:41,796 Okay, tell us a little bit about what Teach Access is all about. 176 00:20:41,796 --> 00:20:45,796 And i'm gonna put , website in the chat so people can go to the website. 177 00:20:45,796 --> 00:20:49,796 [Kate] Perfect. Thank you. I should say it is also under construction a bit. 178 00:20:49,796 --> 00:20:59,796 So things might look different in a few weeks here but So I've talked a bit about, and we've talked about this notion of teaching accessibly. 179 00:20:59,796 --> 00:21:01,796 Or maybe we've talked around it for these first couple of minutes. 180 00:21:01,796 --> 00:21:10,796 But the idea being oh, Cliff you're teaching a class you know, you should make sure that you run your syllabus through the accessibility checker. 181 00:21:10,796 --> 00:21:18,796 Add captions to your videos and alt texts. A lot of those sort of basic or entry level, I should say. 182 00:21:18,796 --> 00:21:24,796 But important accessibility moves that you can make and so that's all in the name of teaching accessibly meeting. 183 00:21:24,796 --> 00:21:31,796 How can your students access your content? What ways can we make it more accessible to them? 184 00:21:31,796 --> 00:21:38,796 Incredible, great. We have to keep doing that. What Teach Access is focused on is a notion of teaching accessibility. 185 00:21:38,796 --> 00:21:46,796 So we are about teaching accessibility more than we're about teaching Accessibly, and by that I mean we are focused on 186 00:21:46,796 --> 00:21:52,796 how do we support faculty in teaching about accessibility to students? 187 00:21:52,796 --> 00:21:56,796 So both can exist. They aren't at odds with each other. 188 00:21:56,796 --> 00:22:02,796 It's just a different or additional way to think about what we're doing so. 189 00:22:02,796 --> 00:22:08,796 Essentially where Teach Access came from back in 2015, 2016 190 00:22:08,796 --> 00:22:12,796 There were some colleagues at working at big tech companies 191 00:22:12,796 --> 00:22:19,796 Facebook, now known as Meta, Yahoo, who are kind of talking to each other, and from the accessibility teams. 192 00:22:19,796 --> 00:22:24,796 They're realizing, you know, when we hire recent graduates college graduates. 193 00:22:24,796 --> 00:22:39,796 They come into our into our companies, organizations, and during orientation we ask how many of you have ever heard of accessibility and know how to make accessible software products, or whatever it might be. 194 00:22:39,796 --> 00:22:46,796 Very few of those recent graduates were raising their hands to say that they'd heard about it or knew about it. 195 00:22:46,796 --> 00:22:54,796 And so, of course, then the companies were working to train them there, but they started to think, Well, how can we start to solve this on a larger scale? 196 00:22:54,796 --> 00:22:58,796 Because it seems like we're all dealing with this like when we talk to each other. 197 00:22:58,796 --> 00:23:07,796 You know among these tech companies that at least where it started we're all coming up against this. and so they they said, Well, let's let's see what we can do. 198 00:23:07,796 --> 00:23:12,796 We. We have some colleagues and friends who work at universities as well as disability advocacy groups. 199 00:23:12,796 --> 00:23:17,796 Let's see what can happen and that's where it was born out of this notion of 200 00:23:17,796 --> 00:23:24,796 How can we help train and how can we support faculty and teaching accessibility to students? 201 00:23:24,796 --> 00:23:38,796 So that as they graduate or look for internships they know to include it from the beginning of a design process or or product cycle, so that it isn't something that we get to the very end you know we've created 202 00:23:38,796 --> 00:23:42,796 this super cool new app it's so it's revolutionary it's amazing. 203 00:23:42,796 --> 00:23:47,796 But it's not accessible which means a significant portion will not be able to use it. 204 00:23:47,796 --> 00:23:51,796 Un, unless that company says all right we're gonna throw some more money at it to make it. 205 00:23:51,796 --> 00:23:56,796 You know, remediate it or we know that this happens in some cases. 206 00:23:56,796 --> 00:24:02,796 Whatever just send it out, anyway. we know it's an accessible Sorry to those people who can't use it. 207 00:24:02,796 --> 00:24:13,796 So we're working to not have that happen and try and get to a space where recent graduates are coming into companies not just in the accessibility teams. 208 00:24:13,796 --> 00:24:18,796 In fact, we aren't focused on that we're looking at broad, broad scale. 209 00:24:18,796 --> 00:24:26,796 How can those recent grads be sitting at a table talking about a new product raise their hand and say this is really exciting? 210 00:24:26,796 --> 00:24:30,796 Let's just make sure that we're including accessibility from the beginning. 211 00:24:30,796 --> 00:24:45,796 So that it's it's yet one a bit one piece of this of the design phase of the product cycle just like security might be, or any of these other things that we consider and so that's where teach access 212 00:24:45,796 --> 00:24:52,796 came from We have right now. we are. We are a nonprofit. 213 00:24:52,796 --> 00:25:03,796 We have a C3 status we have 2 full-time staff and a student intern we're hoping looking to hire a third person, and in a couple of months here But we're really made up mostly by 214 00:25:03,796 --> 00:25:07,796 volunteers. And so these are volunteers coming from across higher Ed. 215 00:25:07,796 --> 00:25:11,796 Colleges and universities in the US. across industry. 216 00:25:11,796 --> 00:25:19,796 So we certainly started out of the tech industry. in sort of Silicon Valley space Seattle area. 217 00:25:19,796 --> 00:25:27,796 But we're absolutely expanding, bringing in more industry because anyone could can be 218 00:25:27,796 --> 00:25:32,796 Anyone should be including accessibility in their in their work. 219 00:25:32,796 --> 00:25:36,796 And then, of course, the nothing about us without us we would not be doing this work. 220 00:25:36,796 --> 00:25:43,796 If we didn't have strong partnerships with disability, advocacy, nonprofits, and so forth. 221 00:25:43,796 --> 00:25:49,796 So we are a distributed organization. We don't have the headquarters of an office. 222 00:25:49,796 --> 00:25:53,796 In Michigan. people are all over and that is what we're working towards. 223 00:25:53,796 --> 00:25:57,796 I know we'll talk a little bit more about some of our projects and programs. 224 00:25:57,796 --> 00:26:04,796 But that is where we came from, and where we where we are it's good. 225 00:26:04,796 --> 00:26:16,796 [Cliff] We we have all those similar things, you know. We have an accessibility committee and 5 year 3 year plans all those things to to work on, how we can engage folks. 226 00:26:16,796 --> 00:26:28,796 So it's it's refreshing to hear that We're about halfway through the broadcast Let's see if the anybody has any questions at this point before we continue on If you have a question please 227 00:26:28,796 --> 00:26:37,796 just pop it in the chat and we'll look at that, see if we can answer some questions for you, and then we'll get on with the interview, or with the some questions for Kate. 228 00:26:37,796 --> 00:27:04,796 So if you have any questions or comments or your favorite pie, you know, whatever , put that in the chat there. and we'll we'll address those as appropriate 229 00:27:04,796 --> 00:27:20,796 Give it a minute to see if anybody has any questions. Well, sometimes it takes in a minute for it to catch up when people start typing 230 00:27:20,796 --> 00:27:24,796 Yeah crickets out there, either you're saying compelling stuff, really? 231 00:27:24,796 --> 00:27:34,796 Or are you in your [Kate] or it's just a Friday, , 232 00:27:34,796 --> 00:27:46,796 [Cliff] Alright. Well, if we see some questions we'll address those but that lets continue on, let's talk about a little bit you know, talked about teaching accessibility version teaching accessibly, and I notice on my sheet. 233 00:27:46,796 --> 00:27:51,796 Here. I had spelled it the same twice. yeah talk. 234 00:27:51,796 --> 00:28:01,796 Let's talk about the technology accessibility skills. gap. I know, we briefly chatted about that once you elaborate that on that and and enlighten our folks. [Kate] Absolutely. 235 00:28:01,796 --> 00:28:10,796 So I'm also going to drop a link. in the chat I have it queued up here, so if people are really into it feel free to take a look there. 236 00:28:10,796 --> 00:28:15,796 But if you aren't looking there just aren't ready to go there. 237 00:28:15,796 --> 00:28:32,796 or don't want to. So this is something that was a survey done back in 2017 by Peat P-E-A-T, which stands for the partnership on employment, assistive technology accessible technology and the whole goal 238 00:28:32,796 --> 00:28:39,796 behind the survey that they sent out was to give a sense for kind of tied back to again. 239 00:28:39,796 --> 00:28:47,796 This is 2017 that kind of tied back to Teach Access's origin of what is the employment situation like out there? 240 00:28:47,796 --> 00:28:53,796 And so we, The survey ended up, having about 70 respondents or so from tech spaces. 241 00:28:53,796 --> 00:29:01,796 So from the larger tech companies and the idea was to kind of get a sense for 242 00:29:01,796 --> 00:29:10,796 Our companies able to find students recent graduates that have the skills they're looking for and so forth and so 243 00:29:10,796 --> 00:29:21,796 The findings really showed that, the vast majority of the respondents could not find people with the access basic accessibility skills that they're looking for. 244 00:29:21,796 --> 00:29:30,796 So that's really kind of where a lot of our work has grown from is how, how do we close this technology 245 00:29:30,796 --> 00:29:36,796 Accessibility skills gap? And when I'm talking about a about the skills I really am talking about. 246 00:29:36,796 --> 00:29:44,796 Basic concepts or fundamental concepts and skills i'm gonna drop another link in here. 247 00:29:44,796 --> 00:29:48,796 This is from our website. this is a list it's about 4 pages long. 248 00:29:48,796 --> 00:29:53,796 A bullet list. happy to share this out later to anyone. 249 00:29:53,796 --> 00:29:57,796 But the ideas that to hire Ed, together with industry, put together. 250 00:29:57,796 --> 00:30:04,796 This list. that kind of spreads to this accessible technology skills gap. 251 00:30:04,796 --> 00:30:12,796 And the idea is really, what is it that companies or organizations industry would want students to know about accessibility and disability? 252 00:30:12,796 --> 00:30:19,796 On a basic level. I can't stress that enough we are not trying to make a bunch of experts. 253 00:30:19,796 --> 00:30:22,796 Sometimes that happens. A student learns about accessibility. they get excited. 254 00:30:22,796 --> 00:30:32,796 They wanna have a career in it. phenomenal we're always going to need experts, because there will always there will always be really juicy accessibility questions to solve. 255 00:30:32,796 --> 00:30:37,796 But but for the vast majority if students understood just the basics. 256 00:30:37,796 --> 00:30:45,796 How would that change The approach, like I said to creating new products and services, and so forth. 257 00:30:45,796 --> 00:30:51,796 And so this list really lays out things like understanding disability. 258 00:30:51,796 --> 00:30:57,796 Just definitions, demographics, societal context, and historical perspectives. 259 00:30:57,796 --> 00:31:04,796 Then things like user interface, common assistive technology, best practices for product development. 260 00:31:04,796 --> 00:31:11,796 And then some applied techniques for disciplines like computer science, and so forth. 261 00:31:11,796 --> 00:31:22,796 And so we've been working on how to continue closing the accessibility skills gap, so that companies are able to find recent graduates. 262 00:31:22,796 --> 00:31:29,796 Who have these basic skills. and I know we might get into some of the talk about the programs that we have. 263 00:31:29,796 --> 00:31:36,796 But yeah, that's that's where we're at we are, I should note because the survey is a few years old now. 264 00:31:36,796 --> 00:31:43,796 Of course. we are. We have a group of Teach Access members who are working to refresh that survey. 265 00:31:43,796 --> 00:31:52,796 Update it a bit and then get that sent out and circulated hopefully to more companies this round to see is the noodle. 266 00:31:52,796 --> 00:31:58,796 The the What am I looking for? the needle not noodle? 267 00:31:58,796 --> 00:32:02,796 I've got food on the brain is the needle moving at all? 268 00:32:02,796 --> 00:32:06,796 Are we still kind of in the same place we were confronting many years ago. 269 00:32:06,796 --> 00:32:17,796 That is 5 to get a sense so stay tuned we'll hopefully be able to share out updates probably next calendar year. 2023, but that's that's where we're at. 270 00:32:17,796 --> 00:32:21,796 [Cliff] Both those things that you shared with this there's some great information there. 271 00:32:21,796 --> 00:32:28,796 I'm kind of browsing through it as she's talking. I'm not a ignoring her of course, but but just kind of seeing what's there. 272 00:32:28,796 --> 00:32:33,796 The top 5 organizational impacts of a skills gap that's that's good. 273 00:32:33,796 --> 00:32:38,796 And how the elaborates on that. And I love this bulleted list here. 274 00:32:38,796 --> 00:32:46,796 It gives you a good start at really realizing all the things that that we need to be aware of. 275 00:32:46,796 --> 00:32:57,796 I know that, you know, even in our fifth year we're still learning how to be even better at being more accessible when we present our conference. 276 00:32:57,796 --> 00:33:05,796 So every year we get a little bit better and every year somebody reminds us of something we're not doing, and so we can learn and grow from that. 277 00:33:05,796 --> 00:33:21,796 And hopefully, that those people continue to come so they can see that we're we're evolving and we're growing, and all these kinds of things really help us even provide a better service in the in the and even get more bang 278 00:33:21,796 --> 00:33:25,796 for the buck from our sponsors. Even you know their sponsors. 279 00:33:25,796 --> 00:33:32,796 They are sponsoring this accessibility summer camp thing, And are we doing our due diligence to make sure that we're being as accessible as possible? 280 00:33:32,796 --> 00:33:35,796 And so the all those things help us. So these are great handouts. 281 00:33:35,796 --> 00:33:39,796 I hope everybody takes some time to save those or read them, or whatever the cases. 282 00:33:39,796 --> 00:33:43,796 So there's some good stuff there. [Kate] yeah I think I wanna build off that quickly. 283 00:33:43,796 --> 00:33:53,796 Something that I always tell told faculty at MSU and then that I still I mean I still to this day say I'm about to is that we're never done with accessibility. 284 00:33:53,796 --> 00:33:58,796 It's not It's Not a checklist where you check a couple of boxes, and then you're done, and you never have to think about it again. 285 00:33:58,796 --> 00:34:06,796 And so I always encourage faculty the sooner they could kind of wrap their mind around that idea of it's never going to be done. 286 00:34:06,796 --> 00:34:11,796 It's never going to be complete we're all doing it the best that we can. 287 00:34:11,796 --> 00:34:14,796 We're continuing to learn like you said when we receive feedback. 288 00:34:14,796 --> 00:34:20,796 That's something we thought was pretty accessible, isn't What's our first response? 289 00:34:20,796 --> 00:34:23,796 Not to, you know, be upset or angry. Maybe it is. 290 00:34:23,796 --> 00:34:26,796 But to say thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate it. 291 00:34:26,796 --> 00:34:30,796 Incorporate that learn from it and keep going it's. 292 00:34:30,796 --> 00:34:40,796 I mean things change so quickly, and especially hearing about. You know the work that a lot of our tech company partners are doing, and really any company. 293 00:34:40,796 --> 00:34:45,796 Things change so quickly. so what was accessible yesterday may not be accessible today? 294 00:34:45,796 --> 00:35:01,796 Or it's accessible to some people but not to others. based on specific disabilities that someone may have. And so understanding that and kind of being giving to a place where you're comfortable with that of i'm just always going to be doing 295 00:35:01,796 --> 00:35:08,796 this work. it is it's a commitment you know to doing this work and and that's that's what I'm okay doing. 296 00:35:08,796 --> 00:35:13,796 I think that is a good space to get to 297 00:35:13,796 --> 00:35:26,796 So that when when you receive feedback you're ready for it or it's not a it's not a shock or something something like that. [Cliff] and really kind of need to expect that you're gonna get feedback from that 298 00:35:26,796 --> 00:35:36,796 community, and you hope that they will at least be courteous enough to to give you their contact information and get back to them and say thank you. 299 00:35:36,796 --> 00:35:41,796 And then some people just complain they'll say anything or don't let you know who they are. 300 00:35:41,796 --> 00:35:44,796 So you can let them know that you're working on it 301 00:35:44,796 --> 00:35:49,796 Just one more thing before we kind of get to some of the programs that you're doing kind of build on. 302 00:35:49,796 --> 00:35:56,796 That is, is just a comment that you know technology moves so fast it's really hard for us to keep up in the accessibility world. 303 00:35:56,796 --> 00:36:02,796 So It's that's Why, the more people that merrier that we can get to change the culture, again 304 00:36:02,796 --> 00:36:09,796 there's that word. Change the culture so that we're designing that stuff from the outset, instead of reacting to it. 305 00:36:09,796 --> 00:36:18,796 And is gonna be a challenge I mean even in industry. They they don't include the right people, and they build things they build an airplane. 306 00:36:18,796 --> 00:36:21,796 Then the mechanic goes in there. try to work on them so I can't work on this. 307 00:36:21,796 --> 00:36:24,796 So they have to redesign it so they can work on it it's. 308 00:36:24,796 --> 00:36:30,796 It's really no different than that. so it's not just really, that runs into that issue [Kate} Absolutely. [Cliff] Okay. 309 00:36:30,796 --> 00:36:43,796 Well, you you talked about some of the resources that you that you have and Teach Access elaborate someone from the programs that you guys are using to help close that skills gap [Kate] Absolutely. 310 00:36:43,796 --> 00:36:49,796 So one that we've been running for a few years is our well. 311 00:36:49,796 --> 00:36:54,796 We have. We have a few, of course, and I can talk about any of them for a long time also. 312 00:36:54,796 --> 00:37:06,796 But we kind of what we've done is is looked at different ways to approach this, and and how we want to close the skills gap. based on what i'll call audience more or less. 313 00:37:06,796 --> 00:37:09,796 So what sorts of things can we do to directly support faculty? 314 00:37:09,796 --> 00:37:13,796 We have a few What can we do to directly support students? 315 00:37:13,796 --> 00:37:18,796 We have a couple and then what does that look like to engage specifically with industry? 316 00:37:18,796 --> 00:37:26,796 Because they are a part of this conversation, because our students will eventually go out and and and want to be employed. 317 00:37:26,796 --> 00:37:33,796 How do we bring those those organizations into the conversation And so one that i'll highlight for our faculty. 318 00:37:33,796 --> 00:37:37,796 Direct faculty. support is our faculty. Grants program. 319 00:37:37,796 --> 00:37:45,796 And so the ideas that we provide on, an if we run it usually in the spring, is when the the CFP 320 00:37:45,796 --> 00:37:50,796 will open and we provide stipends to faculty small stipends of about $5,000. 321 00:37:50,796 --> 00:37:55,796 Usually at 2 faculty that can be used for any number of things. 322 00:37:55,796 --> 00:38:05,796 Typically it ends up being used for summer salary But the idea being you're already teaching the class that accessibility could be in should be in. 323 00:38:05,796 --> 00:38:17,796 But it's not yet here's some funding to be able to spend some time over the summer developing curricular materials that you can use to introduce into your class you know whether it's fall or spring depending 324 00:38:17,796 --> 00:38:24,796 on when you're teaching that could be a slide back it could be, you know, lecture materials. 325 00:38:24,796 --> 00:38:30,796 It could be student projects, whatever it might be, whatever makes sense for your course. 326 00:38:30,796 --> 00:38:38,796 Because the idea is, what can you do now? recognizing to say, Hey, just create a whole new course on accessibility. 327 00:38:38,796 --> 00:38:47,796 We know that that would take forever it may never happen and then it's just a course over there, and then students take good and feel like Well, I took the one course on accessibility 328 00:38:47,796 --> 00:38:56,796 I've done versus how do we again speak to this large scale sort of change where we're trying to include accessibility everywhere. 329 00:38:56,796 --> 00:39:00,796 And so the idea is, Can you introduce an hour of it to your course? 330 00:39:00,796 --> 00:39:04,796 Where it doesn't already exist or can you build a module about accessibility. 331 00:39:04,796 --> 00:39:08,796 That still speaks to all of your learning objectives of the course, 332 00:39:08,796 --> 00:39:13,796 And so this faculty Grants program we just awarded our fourth round of funding 333 00:39:13,796 --> 00:39:21,796 So we've been doing it for just over 4 years timing is not a the time number of years is not exact to the rounds or cycles. 334 00:39:21,796 --> 00:39:31,796 But the idea is that this supports faculty to keep teaching about it because they've now introduced it into a course they're already teaching The materials that they create, 335 00:39:31,796 --> 00:39:45,796 Were collecting. We have collected and later the summer early fall will be will be kind of releasing in a more refreshed way this repository of these items 336 00:39:45,796 --> 00:39:49,796 That will be free and open that if you're teaching an intro to computer science 337 00:39:49,796 --> 00:39:55,796 course, and you're like Yes, I would like to teach it I don't have time to make new materials, or i'd like to see what other people have done. 338 00:39:55,796 --> 00:40:05,796 You could go to this repository, use them under a Creative Commons license, adapt, create something new, whatever it might be. 339 00:40:05,796 --> 00:40:09,796 So that's to help faculty and thinking about what do they need to be able to teach. 340 00:40:09,796 --> 00:40:16,796 We have future goals of more faculty professional development. and training around that, because sometimes materials aren't enough. 341 00:40:16,796 --> 00:40:22,796 We know that from the student standpoint we have something called the Study Away program. 342 00:40:22,796 --> 00:40:28,796 So if you're familiar with the concept of a study abroad or some learning experience same idea, it's just a study away, because we stay in the US. 343 00:40:28,796 --> 00:40:32,796 Rather than abroad prior to the pandemic. 344 00:40:32,796 --> 00:40:36,796 We did this in person, where we took students out to Silicon Valley for a week. 345 00:40:36,796 --> 00:40:39,796 Each day they visited a different company, learned about accessibility. 346 00:40:39,796 --> 00:40:43,796 The accessibility landscape. got to see these companies. 347 00:40:43,796 --> 00:40:49,796 Their campuses. pandemic happened, so nothing in 2020 348 00:40:49,796 --> 00:40:55,796 And then the last 2 years last 2 springs and 21 and 22 we ran it virtually, 349 00:40:55,796 --> 00:41:01,796 And so our future goals with this are to keep running it virtually in various ways. 350 00:41:01,796 --> 00:41:04,796 It gives students a chance to hear directly from industry, directly from disability. 351 00:41:04,796 --> 00:41:09,796 Nonprofit groups. learn these basic skills and concepts. 352 00:41:09,796 --> 00:41:14,796 But we also have goals to get back to an in-person when it's safe. 353 00:41:14,796 --> 00:41:18,796 And and seems okay to do again. and not just in Silicon Valley. 354 00:41:18,796 --> 00:41:22,796 Right. We know that there are tech hubs all over the place. 355 00:41:22,796 --> 00:41:28,796 So how can we? Maybe keep growing that program? 356 00:41:28,796 --> 00:41:37,796 So, the idea being if a student wants to learn about this come on in maybe you aren't in a position to hear about it or learn about it from a faculty member, yet you could do it directly. 357 00:41:37,796 --> 00:41:42,796 And then we finally have something called the accessibility skills Hiring toolkit. 358 00:41:42,796 --> 00:41:46,796 All of these programs are on our website. You can poke around there. 359 00:41:46,796 --> 00:41:52,796 But this toolkit is a essentially created by our community of of people that teach access. 360 00:41:52,796 --> 00:42:10,796 And they are essentially a bullet, a long, bulleted list of typical sort of entry level positions that students might be applying for, you know, entry level designer, developer, product, manager, content creator whatever and 361 00:42:10,796 --> 00:42:14,796 they are bullet points you can copy and paste into your own job postings. 362 00:42:14,796 --> 00:42:21,796 That that show or ask for specific skills around accessibility or basic skills. 363 00:42:21,796 --> 00:42:28,796 I should say because all we're not focused in the employment. Specifically, it is sort of that piece of the puzzle. 364 00:42:28,796 --> 00:42:37,796 Students are learning it, and faculty are teaching it. How do students know if a company will value that that knowledge? 365 00:42:37,796 --> 00:42:41,796 To show that that is a company that is thinking about that. 366 00:42:41,796 --> 00:42:45,796 So people are welcome to go find those plug those into their own job postings. 367 00:42:45,796 --> 00:42:53,796 There's some sample interview questions as Well, so those are 3 of our kind of big projects. 368 00:42:53,796 --> 00:43:10,796 We have others in the works, and and going on but yeah that's some of the ways we're we're working [Cliff] good, and then great great information for anybody to just take to heart and get moving on we talked about all the 369 00:43:10,796 --> 00:43:19,796 tools and all the things that are out there, and programs that we have, and conferences and all these fun things. 370 00:43:19,796 --> 00:43:27,796 What are some of the most common road blocks that prevent accessibility, or even learning about accessibility? 371 00:43:27,796 --> 00:43:36,796 [Kate] Yeah, I don't. I spend some time thinking through this question I don't know that I came up with anything that will be probably news to anyone here. 372 00:43:36,796 --> 00:43:44,796 But of course, time is always question there's so much going on so many demands on people's schedules. 373 00:43:44,796 --> 00:43:48,796 To ask to spend some time doing something. How do we make that work? 374 00:43:48,796 --> 00:43:56,796 And so, considering the ways that you know something like like a fellowship program again, I know that's an ask of time. 375 00:43:56,796 --> 00:43:59,796 But what what might faculty be able to get out of that? 376 00:43:59,796 --> 00:44:09,796 To attend something like a training something like that. it goes back to kind of the reasons why they might want to go to that training. 377 00:44:09,796 --> 00:44:17,796 But still time is continually the thing that people have to have to figure out and how to make that work. 378 00:44:17,796 --> 00:44:33,796 I also think awareness is a big one I mean we've kind of talked about that a little bit through the way that, like your Accessibility Summer Camp has been growing or the Accessible Learning Conference sometimes like I said 379 00:44:33,796 --> 00:44:38,796 people just don't know what they don't know and so how how do you get? 380 00:44:38,796 --> 00:44:52,796 How do you raise awareness? How do you tell people that this is a thing that they should care about? here's some ways that they can address that. So awareness raising considering the ways that you can change share this information at your 381 00:44:52,796 --> 00:45:00,796 university or in your organization. is a big one, and then I mean resources always. 382 00:45:00,796 --> 00:45:08,796 And of course time is a resource. We know that but funding of course, so great I can't wait to add captions to my lecture videos. 383 00:45:08,796 --> 00:45:15,796 And and if it isn't something I want to do using automated, and I, you know I wanna pay for it, or whatever that looks like. 384 00:45:15,796 --> 00:45:25,796 Where does that funding come from? And so, considering funding, is often a roadblock that I was seeing as well as resources of people. 385 00:45:25,796 --> 00:45:31,796 Which does go back to time, but also just sometimes people are an office of one. 386 00:45:31,796 --> 00:45:37,796 You know whether that's a single person on an entire campus thinking about this and doing this work? 387 00:45:37,796 --> 00:45:46,796 Or you know on a campus. a large campus where there's a dozen or more colleges there's one person in the college. 388 00:45:46,796 --> 00:45:52,796 And so how? how? How can you start to build community and reach out to other people doing this work? 389 00:45:52,796 --> 00:45:58,796 Maybe outside of your organization. So that it feels less like you're just out there floating by yourself. 390 00:45:58,796 --> 00:46:11,796 And more like, Oh, okay, Well, i'm the only one at this place. However, I made a friend over here at this organization who's at least someone I can kind of bounce some ideas off of or maybe they can share resources. 391 00:46:11,796 --> 00:46:25,796 That they have So I think I think that's what I see, because typically, once someone understands what it is and and the importance of it, you know, there's really it really then becomes okay, great. 392 00:46:25,796 --> 00:46:29,796 And now, how do I make this work with everything I have going on? 393 00:46:29,796 --> 00:46:36,796 At least in my experience. it's not usually a cool thanks for sharing that I don't care about it. 394 00:46:36,796 --> 00:46:46,796 So it becomes the How do you help people manage doing this work and figuring out how to make this kind of fit into what they already have going on. 395 00:46:46,796 --> 00:46:58,796 [Cliff] Yeah, a couple of key things. I don't think, I know many universities, and I know even the ones close to home here. 396 00:46:58,796 --> 00:47:13,796 Yeah, you have one deep disability services office, that really can't keep up, you know it's completely reactionary as opposed to being a reactive or proactive. 397 00:47:13,796 --> 00:47:27,796 And I think what's worked well, for some of those and even here at WSU Tech, because we've we've kind of gotten out there to find the accessibility champions that are really taking to heart what 398 00:47:27,796 --> 00:47:41,796 we're trying to do and and and making their classes as accessible because they really care about their students and then so that becomes infectious, you know or not infectious. 399 00:47:41,796 --> 00:47:45,796 That's the wrong way. but it we got you know spreads and people get to. 400 00:47:45,796 --> 00:48:01,796 Okay, Well, if they can do it, I can do it. and I Think what I found besides funding and and administrative blocks that that are out there is the biggest road block I've noticed is fear. people Do not know how to do 401 00:48:01,796 --> 00:48:15,796 it, so they avoid , And then once they find out just by going to a few little either conferences or just a 1 hour training session, and they find out, Oh, I can really do this and It's really not all that 402 00:48:15,796 --> 00:48:22,796 complicated for basic accessibility. Fear is a huge obstacle to overcome until you can get them. 403 00:48:22,796 --> 00:48:28,796 Get their foot in the door just a little bit, so they can really see that is not as hard or as difficult as it is 404 00:48:28,796 --> 00:48:36,796 That may seem. [Kate] Yeah, I think that I totally agree totally agree with that [Cliff] great points there. 405 00:48:36,796 --> 00:48:44,796 Looks like we're doing? pretty good time let's So what are some good things that folks are doing out there that you're aware of? 406 00:48:44,796 --> 00:48:54,796 [Kate] Yeah, I I'm seeing more and more people sharing more broadly about teaching in an accessible way. 407 00:48:54,796 --> 00:49:00,796 So I was trying to come up with specific people but really it's it's definitely spreading, I think 408 00:49:00,796 --> 00:49:13,796 But looking at conference, what sort I want, itineraries or agendas, schedules, whatever word I mean, as aside from specifically an an event like yours, right which is all about accessibility. 409 00:49:13,796 --> 00:49:30,796 Looking at these broader conferences around the discipline area or teaching and learning, or academic, tech, I i'm I've seen in the past, you know, however, many years more and more about accessibility and moving beyond just 410 00:49:30,796 --> 00:49:35,796 kind of the basics like here's how to make your syllabus accessible that's great that's still important. 411 00:49:35,796 --> 00:49:48,796 A lot of people don't know that but I'm seeing at conferences more sort of in-depth ways that teaching in an accessible way, or or if UDL is your thing how that's 412 00:49:48,796 --> 00:49:54,796 impacting your teaching and so I see that that's changing in these conferences. 413 00:49:54,796 --> 00:50:08,796 And then there's some specific things that that come to mind that some of our our organizations that are a part of Teach Access. So there's something called the unite U-N-I-T-E design lab it's housed at the university 414 00:50:08,796 --> 00:50:12,796 of North Florida. if I can pull that link up I'll get to a quick. 415 00:50:12,796 --> 00:50:17,796 But they're really looking at this idea of how are we teaching in an accessible way. 416 00:50:17,796 --> 00:50:27,796 But also how are we teaching accessibility and so that's something that's that's come up across kind of my my desk, so to speak, of late. 417 00:50:27,796 --> 00:50:31,796 We also have some great colleagues at Iowa State University. 418 00:50:31,796 --> 00:50:37,796 In their IT department and also part of their design college of design. 419 00:50:37,796 --> 00:50:46,796 But they've been working on this alley cats game if anyone's familiar out there, it's an ally is A-1-1-Y. 420 00:50:46,796 --> 00:50:51,796 if you're you're probably familiar with that shorthand for accessibility. 421 00:50:51,796 --> 00:50:59,796 But A11Y started as kind of this fun way to to to spread some awareness about disability. 422 00:50:59,796 --> 00:51:15,796 And accessibility. but what's actually happening now, is that They're using these cats to create a game that will eventually be able to be played by people to help them learn about accessibility and disability and so 423 00:51:15,796 --> 00:51:21,796 there's some really great work that undergrad and graduate students are doing together with faculty. 424 00:51:21,796 --> 00:51:28,796 There. So you know There's really interesting and then of course so many schools who've been doing this work for so long. 425 00:51:28,796 --> 00:51:36,796 University of Washington has incredible programs, Rochester institute of technology, and and on and on 426 00:51:36,796 --> 00:51:42,796 So there's really interesting research and scholarship happening around, and with accessibility. 427 00:51:42,796 --> 00:51:47,796 We've also seen the American Foundation for the Blind or AFB for short 428 00:51:47,796 --> 00:52:00,796 They've just launched something called their talent lab and the AFB Talent lab is meant to really help students learn how to do this work, learn how to do accessibility work. 429 00:52:00,796 --> 00:52:11,796 And so certainly you can find more. information on their website I might I probably Won't do a justice, but the but the general idea is through the summer. 430 00:52:11,796 --> 00:52:13,796 This is their first. they're in the first year of it this summer. 431 00:52:13,796 --> 00:52:20,796 Bringing in some number of students a couple of dozen to work with the AFB team for some time. 432 00:52:20,796 --> 00:52:29,796 And learn how to do accessibility work, accessibility checks, remediation, etc. with a mentor, you know there's a good mentorship program setup. 433 00:52:29,796 --> 00:52:49,796 So that as students are graduating they have this knowledge in whatever field that they're in, so there's really fun and great projects like that cropping up more and more. I feel like so yeah good stuff happening [Cliff] Now, a 434 00:52:49,796 --> 00:52:54,796 good deal. Well, we have just a few minutes. if anobody has a question. 435 00:52:54,796 --> 00:53:05,796 Throw it in the chat otherwise we'll wrap things up. But we're certainly willing to answer a question or to you. 436 00:53:05,796 --> 00:53:09,796 Got. You gotta thank you in there at least or kate if you don't look at this. 437 00:53:09,796 --> 00:53:19,796 . same is from Lisa Olson She's [Kate] Thanks, Lisa, thanks for being here 438 00:53:19,796 --> 00:53:24,796 [Cliff] She's she's been involved with our summer camp from the outset. 439 00:53:24,796 --> 00:53:33,796 [Kate] That's great [Cliff] out there in California. Nice place to be yeah I like to visit. 440 00:53:33,796 --> 00:53:38,796 I don't know if I wanna live out there I like Kevin man. 441 00:53:38,796 --> 00:53:51,796 [Kate] It's expensive out there. it is expensive [Cliff] I think we've already kind of talked about the things that folks can do to get involved. 442 00:53:51,796 --> 00:53:55,796 I know it's you've gone through a whole list of stuff. 443 00:53:55,796 --> 00:54:11,796 Those 2 handouts. if yeah strap if you'll repost those 2 links that Kate put in there at the end here. if you go ahead and do that right quick so people can go and open those up and save 444 00:54:11,796 --> 00:54:16,796 them. I I encourage you to save those and give it a good read. 445 00:54:16,796 --> 00:54:25,796 I just glanced over it, and there's some great stuff in there that can definitely help a number of things when it comes to accessibility. 446 00:54:25,796 --> 00:54:34,796 And hopefully, you know, helping us there you go strap thank you there's Teach Access. [Kate] Yeah, I just dropped a link for a contact page in there. 447 00:54:34,796 --> 00:54:37,796 So if anyone out there is like, Wow, this is cool. I wanna get involved. 448 00:54:37,796 --> 00:54:43,796 Feel free to fill out our contact form or you can always email info at Teach Access. 449 00:54:43,796 --> 00:54:54,796 I'll type that into info@teachaccess.org we'd love to have more people join it's free to join as a as a university as a nonprofit org and you're able 450 00:54:54,796 --> 00:54:58,796 to get connected with people who are doing this work, and so forth. 451 00:54:58,796 --> 00:55:13,796 So that is absolutely you're welcome please contact us we can we can send you more info that way, [Cliff] and that's a that'd be a great resource for us to to on your ear so to speak on things that we 452 00:55:13,796 --> 00:55:20,796 can do better as far as our conference goes. So those are good at assets to us as well. 453 00:55:20,796 --> 00:55:27,796 So we appreciate that [Kate] absolutely. [Cliff] okay. Well, we're wrapping it up here that look like we're really had any questions. 454 00:55:27,796 --> 00:55:31,796 So the last thing I ask everybody, Kate, and you know I already warned you. 455 00:55:31,796 --> 00:55:37,796 [Kate] You did and I have been thinking about it i'm ready I'm ready. 456 00:55:37,796 --> 00:55:48,796 [Cliff] I I always want a a takeaway. And so if there was one thing that you would want everyone to remember from our time with you, and we sure appreciate having you on the show today. 457 00:55:48,796 --> 00:56:08,796 I like saying that the show [Kate] Yeah the show, very high level. [Cliff] if there is one thing you would want as a take away, what would that be? [Kate] we we talked about this in various ways, but it would be lead from where you are. 458 00:56:08,796 --> 00:56:15,796 So you know it speaks to a little bit of fear piece that you mentioned earlier, Cliff, and and some of the ways that you can. 459 00:56:15,796 --> 00:56:27,796 You can do this work already or recognizing the resources you do or don't have but don't let you know the Oh, I'm. i'm just in this position or this is my job. 460 00:56:27,796 --> 00:56:31,796 I I'm not gonna dip my toes in that lead from where you are. 461 00:56:31,796 --> 00:56:37,796 Because that makes a difference. and it continues to, you know, move out from there. 462 00:56:37,796 --> 00:56:41,796 You get more into the community, or maybe you spark something in someone else. 463 00:56:41,796 --> 00:56:51,796 That didn't already exist and they want to get into It and so I don't think there's any right position or job that you have to have to do the accessibility work. 464 00:56:51,796 --> 00:57:00,796 It's like I said it's that sort of understanding that lifelong commitment to I want my learning spaces to be more inclusive. 465 00:57:00,796 --> 00:57:06,796 Or I want to provide more opportunities for students. to do this work as they graduate. 466 00:57:06,796 --> 00:57:11,796 So lead from where you are, whatever that looks like. it can be small steps. 467 00:57:11,796 --> 00:57:16,796 It can be big steps. but that would be. That would be my takeaway. 468 00:57:16,796 --> 00:57:29,796 [Cliff] Good job. So you thought , absolutely thank you Kate for joining us today , podcasts or video cast, whatever we want to call them, we'll just say ASC. 469 00:57:29,796 --> 00:57:43,796 Live to make it simple that that that's how we can make this possible. and we're really trying our best to keep accessibility at least awareness, and on on everybody's mind on a monthly basis. 470 00:57:43,796 --> 00:57:54,796 So please get it out there that we do this monthly it's usually the fourth Friday of every month 2 o'clock, so we're cognizant of time zones. We try not to do it 9 o'clock in the 471 00:57:54,796 --> 00:58:04,796 morning. so the folks on the on the west coast get up early, but I know It's a little late in the afternoon, so we appreciate you joining us today. A copy of 472 00:58:04,796 --> 00:58:08,796 this broadcast would be made available on accessibilityict.org 473 00:58:08,796 --> 00:58:18,796 under the ASC Live tab which is on the furthest right you'll be able to view a recording of this particular ASC 474 00:58:18,796 --> 00:58:27,796 Live about a week, and then a couple of weeks after that we'll have all the sessions from the summer camp that we had Friday, which was fantastic. 475 00:58:27,796 --> 00:58:37,796 Everybody. The program was wonderful, and the keynotes were great. So I encourage you to look at those videos and and and really absorb all that information. 476 00:58:37,796 --> 00:58:43,796 It can do nothing but to benefit you as as a individual and as an organization. 477 00:58:43,796 --> 00:58:47,796 So thank you for that. Thank you for joining us. everybody. Kate again, Thank you. 478 00:58:47,796 --> 00:59:04,276 And Strap and Jacob thanks for a manning the chat for us, and if I have a good weekend, and we'll see in 4 weeks.