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Breakout 1C
9:00 am - 9:50 am Central Time
Learn How and Why to Host Accessibility Cafes: Increasing Faculty Engagement with Accessibility and Universal Design
Presented by
Mary-Colleen Jenkins, Instruction Accessibility Specialist, University of Washington
Session Description:
Informal results of the "Accessibility Cafe" pilot project indicate that interactive sessions can be a promising tool for building faculty skills for enhancing the accessibility of their course materials. Learn how to host these guided, department-focused events, where faculty gather with colleagues to learn about and fix low-level accessibility issues in their course materials. Faculty leave with the know-how to continue making incremental progress and feel more confident in continuing to make fixes on their own. The Accessibility Cafe framework can be easily adapted for multiple focal topics in accessibility, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and other inclusive teaching practices.
Speaker Bio:
Mary-Colleen Jenkins is an Instruction Accessibility Specialist on the UW-IT Accessible Technologies Team (ITAT). Her area of focus is outreach and faculty development. In this role Mary-Colleen supports faculty in making their course materials, especially digital content, accessible to students with disabilities. Mary-Colleen spent many years as a college instructor herself, so the philosophy she shares with faculty who are learning ways to apply Universal Design for Learning and new accessibility skills to their courses is one she applied in her own teaching career: “Progress over Perfection.” Each step forward is an important step forward.
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