Orientations to teaching more accessibly in postsecondary education

Mandated, right, pedagogically effective, nice, and/or profitable

Dados Bibliográficos

ID12312596
AutoresLee De Bie (0000-0002-9364-9487, Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation, and Excellence in Teaching, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, autor correspondente), Elizabeth Marquis (0000-0002-7362-678X, Arts and Science, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada), Megan Suttie (English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada), Olivia Watkin-McClurg (Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada), Cherie Woolmer (0000-0003-3173-7657, Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation, and Excellence in Teaching, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada)
Ano2020
Volume37
Fascículo5
Páginas849-874
Data de publicação2020-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoDisability & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0968-7599 • E-ISSN: 1360-0508
EditoraTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09687599.2020.1848803
OpenAlexW3107500367
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas47

This paper describes five orientations informing the efforts of postsecondary educators to teach more accessibly, including commitments to accessibility as the mandated, right, pedagogically effective, nice, and/or profitable thing to do. These orientations emerged from focus groups and interviews with instructors and teaching assistants at a research-intensive Canadian university. By attending to these underlying orientations, we can grapple with important, but often unexamined, complexities, such as messages we may be inadvertently endorsing and contradictions between intentions and potential outcomes and their ramifications. We encourage support for educators to reflect on the limitations and complications of their orientations and associated efforts to advance accessibility, as well as cross-pollination with other areas of critical scholarship beyond that focusing on Universal Design and accessibility-specific principles.Points of interestUniversity instructors and teaching assistants seek to teach more accessibly for a number of reasons.This paper describes five reasons – or ‘orientations’ – for teaching more accessibly informed by: (1) legislative or university requirements; (2) equity and social justice; (3) effective teaching practices; (4) kindness; and/or (5) profit.Paying attention to these orientations for teaching more accessibly is important because they may impact which accessibility practices are implemented, when and under what conditions, and for whose benefit.Some orientations may also promote negative ideas of disability, such as disability as costly or a burden, even while they encourage teaching more accessibly.We reflect on the challenges and limitations of applying ‘accessibility’ language and principles broadly to ‘all’ students, instead of intentionally focusing on reducing barriers for students with disabilities

Equity (law · Political science · Scholarship · Disability Education and Employment · Disability Rights and Representation · Down syndrome and intellectual disability research · Law