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Okay, it's 2 o'clock go ahead and get started So you're mindful of everyone's time welcome.

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Hopefully. Everybody joined us for accessibly summer camp last Friday.

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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.

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We'll have those up on our website accessibilityict.org.

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And then you can also watch that website throughout the year for information on next year's conference.

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So let's kind of your gateway to everything that we're doing here with accessibilityict, anyway.

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So welcome to ASC Live. This is Episode Number 5, and ASC.

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Live is brought to you by our summer camp sponsors.

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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,

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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

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the captions located on the toolbar by clicking the "Live Transcript" icon, and then selecting, show subtitle or view full transcript.

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So you can read the whole thing if you want to do it that way.

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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%.

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When ASC Live concludes, we will make a recording available with corrected captioning.

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Within a week of this broadcast you'll be able to find that recording on the ASC

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Live tab again at accessibilityict.org. We're excited about our guests today.

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Kate Sanka, who is the executive director,

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Pardon me, of Teach Access. Our topic of discussion today is accessibility, collaboration between education, industry, disability, advocacy organizations.

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So we're gonna talk a little bit about all that stuff Kate.

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Welcome to the show or the podcast or video cast, or whatever we want to call this.

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That's a little bit about you and your role that teach access and some of your passions.

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[Kate] Yeah, Thank you so much, Cliff. Thanks for having me here for your whole team.

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Really excited to be with all of you today. live, and then hello to all of you, listening.

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Later. My name is Kate Sanka. I use she her pronouns?

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I am the executive director of Teach Access, which you will be hearing a lot more about throughout the next hour or so.

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I first just wanted to say thank you for making time to be here.

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I know there's a lot going on out in the world today, especially in and in general.

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So i'm happy to have you here in whatever way that you're coming here today.

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So about me. So I currently am living in Michigan in Lansing, Michigan.

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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.

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My background academic background is in bilingual by cultural education.

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So I have a masters of education and those in that area.

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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.

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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.

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Certainly food is one. I would, you know, cooking, eating, trying new things.

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Travel is another. I've been really fortunate to travel a lot around the world in my life.

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So. Yeah, I think those are those are those are the ones i'll highlight right now.

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There's certainly others. But that usually gets people going So yeah, i'll pause there.

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[Cliff] I can certainly relate to the food i'm a Nelson.

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We love to eat, and that's just the way life is and i'm not ashamed of it.

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[Kate] Yeah, right? right? [Cliff] I just bought a watermelon that's delicious.

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So I just had a piece. [Kate] absolutely. [Cliff] Tell us, maybe you wanna expand a little bit more on your higher education experience.

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And especially when it comes to accessibility. [Kate] Absolutely thanks for that.

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So as many people maybe in the audience here have experienced often.

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We kind of end up finding ourselves in these roles doing accessibility work for any number of different reasons.

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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,

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faculty development. not so much focused on accessibility.

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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.

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Accessibility is a thing. we care about it. Could you do something with it?

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And that that was maybe 2014 and at that point I really did not know that word at all.

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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

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you know their students what was happening in the classroom?

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And so, when I was introduced to that term I was like oh, this makes sense.

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We're talking about ways to to make education accessible and inclusive for students with disabilities, perfect,

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let's go. So that's really how I got into It was just kind of a hey?

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We need someone to be focused on this in the college arts and letters.

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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.

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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.

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I love working with people, I love finding new ways to come together, and think about and solve questions, challenges whatever people might have

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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.

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Some of your universities are pretty large as well.

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And so at Michigan State University enrolling 50,000 students there's a lot of people working there.

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And so my work really kind of expanded from there.

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So it always came back to How are we best supporting the students in our classrooms?

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What do our faculty need to be able to teach? in accessible way?

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And from there there are different initiatives that came up.

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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

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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.

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Disability advocacy groups, and really understand what's going on get answers to your questions, and so forth.

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And we ended up having by the end. I think we had the last year that I was there.

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About 600 people register for it. so it it had some legs.

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It was out there doing some some you know, making making space for good conversation.

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Some of the other programs that I was a part of.

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We had something called the Faculty Accessibility Fellows Program.

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So we were awarded a group of us from 3 different colleges as well as our disability services office.

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We're awarded an internal grant and essentially the idea

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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.

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What does it mean to teach in an accessible way?

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How does that impact my teaching? various topics that that might be familiar to some out here?

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Things around universal design for learning, or UDL for short and so forth.

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It was sort of a phase approach so the beginning was meant to be Here's what accessibility and disability is.

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And then let's look specifically at your course and then the last piece was really going to be.

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And now here's how you can be an advocate on your own campus, because I I firmly do believe that you can.

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You can do this work in whatever role you're in However, that was spring of 2020.

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And we all know what happened that spring. So the program kind of was not kind of.

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It was impacted. But yeah, that was that was one that I was really excited

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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.

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Beyond that I got involved in each Teach Access as a volunteer, which I'll talk more about, of course and so forth.

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So a lot of varied sorts of accessibility activities.

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[Cliff] When was the the last year that you had the accessible learning conference?

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[Kate] The last year that I was there would have been in fall of 2021.

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Wait. What year is it? 22? Yeah, No fall of 2020?

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Was the last year that I was a part of that.

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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.

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[Cliff] So it's still it's still going ? [Kate]  I think so. Yeah,

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I I know there's a small group who was working on it for this past fall.

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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

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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

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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

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classrooms or colleges. And so the conversation I had seen was already starting to shift into different spaces.

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You know it was less about kind of the what is it?

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And more about great let's let's talk more about these bigger challenges that we're having in our departments or colleges.

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And so yeah, the future of it, you know. I hope it keeps going.

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It was great. It was a great way to bring together people from the MSU community, and beyond.

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But yeah, don't don't know for sure what will happen this fall, but it's if it's happening.

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Check it out. [Cliff] Hopefully, hopefully, keeps rolling any chance that we have to have free access to

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information, tools, training, learning, education, anything that we can do to help level the playing field for all students.

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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.

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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.

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We're we're about to outgrow our ability to handle our group.

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But so we've had to branch out and  get some help, and works out pretty well. [Kate] It's a good.

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It's a good space to find yourself in I mean it's it's something to navigate for sure but

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The fact that awareness grows that way is is a good sign.

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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.

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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.

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When it comes to this whole thing. [Kate] Yeah, so I could talk for the whole time, just about these.

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[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.

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And then i'm happy to to share out more information or or you know, talk with anyone more about that in detail later.

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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

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building, I think, is what I finally landed on. But really the idea is the various ways

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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.

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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.

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That means that we believe that they can be successful, whatever that definition of success looks like for them.

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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.

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And so you know that often resonated with a lot of faculty, because faculty do care about their students.

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And so student success was one. just getting faculty to understand that this is a this is a dimension of student success.

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But if things are accessible in your classroom, that students can be successful.

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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

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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.

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So a lot of scholars and professors. this this is their work is social justice on various ways.

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And so talking about how disability is part of that conversation and the intersectionality that people have.

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Are the the way that people people come to our classrooms with various various types of

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What sort of looking for identities? and disability is one of those.

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And so, for if we're caring about social justice, we should be also caring about disability as well

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Another One, of course, was universal design for learning which I suspect you've talked about here on this pod a few times.

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But again, thinking about the actual teaching practice and the pedagogical choices that faculty are making.

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What can you do in the name of universal design

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for learning as a way to get started and creating a more inclusive or accessible classroom.

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The fourth one was community impact. and this one could be taken.

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Any number of ways. So it could be about a faculty member specifically themselves in their scholarship or their teaching.

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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

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you in the classroom. and you know thereby what does that do for your community impact?

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If if that's if that's something that's important to you as a faculty member.

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Of course it's also important anytime we're talking about disability, that we are including the disability community.

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So. Maybe some of you have heard the phrase out there.

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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

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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.

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How else are we including the community in these conversations?

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The next one was legal I never led with this one or the sixth one, which was like the business case for it.

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Because I never thought that that was a sustainable way to motivate faculty, to want to care about accessibility.

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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.

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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.

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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

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they're not my go to but I can't ignore them. because they do sometimes resonate with with people.

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So those are kind of the 6 I can run through again.

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Student success, social justice, UDL, community impact, legal, and then the business case for accessibility.

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So any combo of that I would use when talking to faculty administrators and so forth.

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[Cliff] Yeah. and those are great great ways to to look at that.

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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

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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.

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It's it's like well you know when you give to charity, do you do it

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because those people need that, or because you want to be recognized and so it's it.

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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.

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[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.

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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.

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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

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conversations more about hey, I I think that you're going to care about this.

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I know you have the capacity to care although you have a lot going on.

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So you know. How can we make this work for where you're at right now?

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Is is, I think, an important way to approach that, too.

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But believing that people do want to care about this once they know about it, they just might not know about it.

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So, [Cliff] and I think I think a lot of them do just like anybody that's in your class.

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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

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challenge. Well, good. So let's let's walk into what you do.

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Okay, tell us a little bit about what Teach Access is all about.

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And i'm gonna put , website in the chat so people can go to the website.

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[Kate] Perfect. Thank you. I should say it is also under construction a bit.

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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.

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Or maybe we've talked around it for these first couple of minutes.

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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.

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Add captions to your videos and alt texts. A lot of those sort of basic or entry level, I should say.

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But important accessibility moves that you can make and so that's all in the name of teaching accessibly meeting.

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How can your students access your content? What ways can we make it more accessible to them?

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Incredible, great. We have to keep doing that. What Teach Access is focused on is a notion of teaching accessibility.

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So we are about teaching accessibility more than we're about teaching Accessibly, and by that I mean we are focused on

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how do we support faculty in teaching about accessibility to students?

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So both can exist. They aren't at odds with each other.

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It's just a different or additional way to think about what we're doing so.

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Essentially where Teach Access came from back in 2015, 2016

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There were some colleagues at working at big tech companies

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Facebook, now known as Meta, Yahoo, who are kind of talking to each other, and from the accessibility teams.

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They're realizing, you know, when we hire recent graduates college graduates.

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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.

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Very few of those recent graduates were raising their hands to say that they'd heard about it or knew about it.

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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?

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Because it seems like we're all dealing with this like when we talk to each other.

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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.

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We. We have some colleagues and friends who work at universities as well as disability advocacy groups.

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Let's see what can happen and that's where it was born out of this notion of

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How can we help train and how can we support faculty and teaching accessibility to students?

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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

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this super cool new app it's so it's revolutionary it's amazing.

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But it's not accessible which means a significant portion will not be able to use it.

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Un, unless that company says all right we're gonna throw some more money at it to make it.

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You know, remediate it or we know that this happens in some cases.

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Whatever just send it out, anyway. we know it's an accessible Sorry to those people who can't use it.

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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.

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In fact, we aren't focused on that we're looking at broad, broad scale.

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How can those recent grads be sitting at a table talking about a new product raise their hand and say this is really exciting?

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Let's just make sure that we're including accessibility from the beginning.

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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

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came from We have right now. we are. We are a nonprofit.

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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

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volunteers. And so these are volunteers coming from across higher Ed.

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Colleges and universities in the US. across industry.

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So we certainly started out of the tech industry. in sort of Silicon Valley space Seattle area.

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But we're absolutely expanding, bringing in more industry because anyone could can be

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Anyone should be including accessibility in their in their work.

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And then, of course, the nothing about us without us we would not be doing this work.

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If we didn't have strong partnerships with disability, advocacy, nonprofits, and so forth.

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So we are a distributed organization. We don't have the headquarters of an office.

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In Michigan. people are all over and that is what we're working towards.

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I know we'll talk a little bit more about some of our projects and programs.

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But that is where we came from, and where we where we are it's good.

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[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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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Yeah crickets out there, either you're saying compelling stuff, really?

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Or are you in your [Kate]  or it's just a Friday, ,

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[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.

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Here. I had spelled it the same twice. yeah talk.

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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.

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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.

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But if you aren't looking there just aren't ready to go there.

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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

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behind the survey that they sent out was to give a sense for kind of tied back to again.

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This is 2017 that kind of tied back to Teach Access's origin of what is the employment situation like out there?

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And so we, The survey ended up, having about 70 respondents or so from tech spaces.

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So from the larger tech companies and the idea was to kind of get a sense for

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Our companies able to find students recent graduates that have the skills they're looking for and so forth and so

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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.

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So that's really kind of where a lot of our work has grown from is how, how do we close this technology

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Accessibility skills gap? And when I'm talking about a about the skills I really am talking about.

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Basic concepts or fundamental concepts and skills i'm gonna drop another link in here.

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This is from our website. this is a list it's about 4 pages long.

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A bullet list. happy to share this out later to anyone.

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But the ideas that to hire Ed, together with industry, put together.

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This list. that kind of spreads to this accessible technology skills gap.

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And the idea is really, what is it that companies or organizations industry would want students to know about accessibility and disability?

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On a basic level. I can't stress that enough we are not trying to make a bunch of experts.

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Sometimes that happens. A student learns about accessibility. they get excited.

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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.

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But but for the vast majority if students understood just the basics.

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How would that change The approach, like I said to creating new products and services, and so forth.

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And so this list really lays out things like understanding disability.

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Just definitions, demographics, societal context, and historical perspectives.

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Then things like user interface, common assistive technology, best practices for product development.

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And then some applied techniques for disciplines like computer science, and so forth.

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And so we've been working on how to continue closing the accessibility skills gap, so that companies are able to find recent graduates.

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Who have these basic skills. and I know we might get into some of the talk about the programs that we have.

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But yeah, that's that's where we're at we are, I should note because the survey is a few years old now.

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Of course. we are. We have a group of Teach Access members who are working to refresh that survey.

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Update it a bit and then get that sent out and circulated hopefully to more companies this round to see is the noodle.

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The the What am I looking for? the needle not noodle?

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I've got food on the brain is the needle moving at all?

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Are we still kind of in the same place we were confronting many years ago.

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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.

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[Cliff] Both those things that you shared with this there's some great information there.

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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.

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The top 5 organizational impacts of a skills gap that's that's good.

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And how the elaborates on that. And I love this bulleted list here.

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It gives you a good start at really realizing all the things that that we need to be aware of.

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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.

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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.

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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

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for the buck from our sponsors. Even you know their sponsors.

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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?

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And so the all those things help us. So these are great handouts.

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I hope everybody takes some time to save those or read them, or whatever the cases.

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So there's some good stuff there. [Kate] yeah I think I wanna build off that quickly.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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It's never going to be complete we're all doing it the best that we can.

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We're continuing to learn like you said when we receive feedback.

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That's something we thought was pretty accessible, isn't What's our first response?

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Not to, you know, be upset or angry. Maybe it is.

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But to say thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate it.

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Incorporate that learn from it and keep going it's.

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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.

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Things change so quickly. so what was accessible yesterday may not be accessible today?

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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

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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.

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I think that is a good space to get to

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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

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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.

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And then some people just complain they'll say anything or don't let you know who they are.

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So you can let them know that you're working on it

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Just one more thing before we kind of get to some of the programs that you're doing kind of build on.

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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.

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So It's that's Why, the more people that merrier that we can get to change the culture, again

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there's that word. Change the culture so that we're designing that stuff from the outset, instead of reacting to it.

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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.

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Then the mechanic goes in there. try to work on them so I can't work on this.

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So they have to redesign it so they can work on it it's.

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It's really no different than that. so it's not just really, that runs into that issue [Kate} Absolutely. [Cliff] Okay.

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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.

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So one that we've been running for a few years is our well.

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We have. We have a few, of course, and I can talk about any of them for a long time also.

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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.

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So what sorts of things can we do to directly support faculty?

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We have a few What can we do to directly support students?

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We have a couple and then what does that look like to engage specifically with industry?

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Because they are a part of this conversation, because our students will eventually go out and and and want to be employed.

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How do we bring those those organizations into the conversation And so one that i'll highlight for our faculty.

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Direct faculty. support is our faculty. Grants program.

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And so the ideas that we provide on, an if we run it usually in the spring, is when the the CFP

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will open and we provide stipends to faculty small stipends of about $5,000.

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Usually at 2 faculty that can be used for any number of things.

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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.

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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

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on when you're teaching that could be a slide back it could be, you know, lecture materials.

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It could be student projects, whatever it might be, whatever makes sense for your course.

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Because the idea is, what can you do now? recognizing to say, Hey, just create a whole new course on accessibility.

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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

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I've done versus how do we again speak to this large scale sort of change where we're trying to include accessibility everywhere.

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And so the idea is, Can you introduce an hour of it to your course?

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Where it doesn't already exist or can you build a module about accessibility.

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That still speaks to all of your learning objectives of the course,

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And so this faculty Grants program we just awarded our fourth round of funding

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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.

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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,

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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

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That will be free and open that if you're teaching an intro to computer science

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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.

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You could go to this repository, use them under a Creative Commons license, adapt, create something new, whatever it might be.

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So that's to help faculty and thinking about what do they need to be able to teach.

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We have future goals of more faculty professional development. and training around that, because sometimes materials aren't enough.

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We know that from the student standpoint we have something called the Study Away program.

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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.

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Rather than abroad prior to the pandemic.

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We did this in person, where we took students out to Silicon Valley for a week.

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Each day they visited a different company, learned about accessibility.

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The accessibility landscape. got to see these companies.

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Their campuses. pandemic happened, so nothing in 2020

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And then the last 2 years last 2 springs and 21 and 22 we ran it virtually,

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And so our future goals with this are to keep running it virtually in various ways.

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It gives students a chance to hear directly from industry, directly from disability.

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Nonprofit groups. learn these basic skills and concepts.

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But we also have goals to get back to an in-person when it's safe.

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And and seems okay to do again. and not just in Silicon Valley.

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Right. We know that there are tech hubs all over the place.

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So how can we? Maybe keep growing that program?

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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.

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And then we finally have something called the accessibility skills Hiring toolkit.

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All of these programs are on our website. You can poke around there.

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But this toolkit is a essentially created by our community of of people that teach access.

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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

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they are bullet points you can copy and paste into your own job postings.

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That that show or ask for specific skills around accessibility or basic skills.

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I should say because all we're not focused in the employment. Specifically, it is sort of that piece of the puzzle.

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Students are learning it, and faculty are teaching it. How do students know if a company will value that that knowledge?

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To show that that is a company that is thinking about that.

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So people are welcome to go find those plug those into their own job postings.

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There's some sample interview questions as Well, so those are 3 of our kind of big projects.

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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

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tools and all the things that are out there, and programs that we have, and conferences and all these fun things.

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What are some of the most common road blocks that prevent accessibility, or even learning about accessibility?

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[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.

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But of course, time is always question there's so much going on so many demands on people's schedules.

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To ask to spend some time doing something. How do we make that work?

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And so, considering the ways that you know something like like a fellowship program again, I know that's an ask of time.

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But what what might faculty be able to get out of that?

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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.

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But still time is continually the thing that people have to have to figure out and how to make that work.

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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

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people just don't know what they don't know and so how how do you get?

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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

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university or in your organization. is a big one, and then I mean resources always.

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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.

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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.

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Where does that funding come from? And so, considering funding, is often a roadblock that I was seeing as well as resources of people.

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Which does go back to time, but also just sometimes people are an office of one.

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You know whether that's a single person on an entire campus thinking about this and doing this work?

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Or you know on a campus. a large campus where there's a dozen or more colleges there's one person in the college.

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And so how? how? How can you start to build community and reach out to other people doing this work?

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Maybe outside of your organization. So that it feels less like you're just out there floating by yourself.

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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.

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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.

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And now, how do I make this work with everything I have going on?

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At least in my experience. it's not usually a cool thanks for sharing that I don't care about it.

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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.

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[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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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That's the wrong way. but it we got you know spreads and people get to.

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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

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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

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complicated for basic accessibility. Fear is a huge obstacle to overcome until you can get them.

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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

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That may seem. [Kate] Yeah, I think that I totally agree totally agree with that [Cliff] great points there.

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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?

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[Kate] Yeah, I I'm seeing more and more people sharing more broadly about teaching in an accessible way.

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So I was trying to come up with specific people but really it's it's definitely spreading, I think

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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.

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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

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kind of the basics like here's how to make your syllabus accessible that's great that's still important.

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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

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impacting your teaching and so I see that that's changing in these conferences.

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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

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of North Florida. if I can pull that link up I'll get to a quick.

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But they're really looking at this idea of how are we teaching in an accessible way.

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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.

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We also have some great colleagues at Iowa State University.

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In their IT department and also part of their design college of design.

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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.

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if you're you're probably familiar with that shorthand for accessibility.

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But A11Y started as kind of this fun way to to to spread some awareness about disability.

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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

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there's some really great work that undergrad and graduate students are doing together with faculty.

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There. So you know There's really interesting and then of course so many schools who've been doing this work for so long.

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University of Washington has incredible programs, Rochester institute of technology, and and on and on

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So there's really interesting research and scholarship happening around, and with accessibility.

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We've also seen the American Foundation for the Blind or AFB for short

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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.

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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.

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This is their first. they're in the first year of it this summer.

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Bringing in some number of students a couple of dozen to work with the AFB team for some time.

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And learn how to do accessibility work, accessibility checks, remediation, etc. with a mentor, you know there's a good mentorship program setup.

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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

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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
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. same is from Lisa Olson She's [Kate] Thanks, Lisa, thanks for being here

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[Cliff] She's she's been involved with our summer camp from the outset.

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[Kate] That's great [Cliff] out there in California. Nice place to be yeah I like to visit.

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I don't know if I wanna live out there I like Kevin man.

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[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.

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I know it's you've gone through a whole list of stuff.

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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

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them. I I encourage you to save those and give it a good read.

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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.

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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.

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So if anyone out there is like, Wow, this is cool. I wanna get involved.

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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.

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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

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to get connected with people who are doing this work, and so forth.

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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

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can do better as far as our conference goes. So those are good at assets to us as well.

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So we appreciate that [Kate]  absolutely. [Cliff] okay. Well, we're wrapping it up here that look like we're really had any questions.

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So the last thing I ask everybody, Kate, and you know I already warned you.

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[Kate] You did and I have been thinking about it i'm ready I'm ready.

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[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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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I I'm not gonna dip my toes in that lead from where you are.

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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.

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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.

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It's like I said it's that sort of understanding that lifelong commitment to I want my learning spaces to be more inclusive.

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Or I want to provide more opportunities for students. to do this work as they graduate.

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So lead from where you are, whatever that looks like. it can be small steps.

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00:57:11,796 --> 00:57:16,796
It can be big steps. but that would be. That would be my takeaway.

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[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.

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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.

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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

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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

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this broadcast would be made available on accessibilityict.org

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under the ASC Live tab which is on the furthest right you'll be able to view a recording of this particular ASC

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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
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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.

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It can do nothing but to benefit you as as a individual and as an organization.

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So thank you for that. Thank you for joining us. everybody. Kate again, Thank you.

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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.