Topic 7 – Assistive Tech & Intentionality in Technology Enabled Learning Design

keirathompson

Water Skiing in February

photo of a boat in a boat launch on Skaha lake with 3 people around it, the surrounding mountains are lightly dusted with snow.
I took this photo over reading week in February. Skaha lake was particularly flat and my brother was encouraged to go water skiing; the temperature was -3C. It was a very cold boat ride but my sister, dad, and I enjoyed watching my brother ski for a few minutes, I am sure there were people snow skiing at the ski hills around us, but Cody wanted to waterski!

Reflection on Digital Accessibility

I think that there are many digital accessibility practices that are missed often, I am fortunate enough to not require any of these technologies to allow me to browse the internet freely so I am sure that I am guilty of not including these practices as often as I should. For example, adding descriptive alt text was something that I never thought of before, but it makes complete sense that people with visual impairments would not be able to see the image. Describing it in order for a computer to read it out would be something missed frequently but takes only a second to create and has a huge impact on someone trying to enjoy content. Also, ensuring sufficient colour contrast is often forgotten, or decided against. As someone who really values colour themes in everything I do, I know that sometimes I choose something for the aesthetic instead of the practicality, and this prevents people who don’t interpret colour the same way as I do to have issues reading content.

Personally I do not think there is a down side to making content accessible for everyone to enjoy, there is a little bit of an extra time commitment, but if you are already spending time creating a post, a photo, or other content, then it does not take much more to add in digital accessibility practices.

This brings me to why I think many of these practices are not more well-known or commonly used. For example, there is limited awareness to many of these technologies and practices because if you don’t need or use something personally, then you may never think about the fact that other people may require it. I also think that in the teaching world many professionals are already overworked, and adding in accessible practices may seem like an extra step that there is no time for. Even though I have not experienced their workload yet, I do not think that these practices take long to implement, especially if it is an established routine. One of the biggest trends I have noticed is that accessibility tends to be reactive instead of proactive, and when this approach is taken I could see how many best practices take longer to add.