ALL-SIG

ALL–SIG

Accessibility in Language Learning

言語教育のアクセシビリティ研究部会

Who are we?

In 2016, the Act for Eliminating Discrimination against Persons with Disabilities became Japanese law. This change mandates that teachers and teaching organizations are aware of and use accessibility pedagogies, materials, and strategies to optimize educational outcomes for learners with special needs including psychological, physical, cognitive, and communicative disabilities and learning differences. As learner needs are diverse and vary by context, there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” pedagogy. Therefore, there is a growing need for a forum for accessible language teaching and learning.

The purpose of the ALL-SIG is to improve educational equity by providing a focus for current and future members for collaboration, sharing of experiences, practices, theoretical perspectives, and research to target compliance with the EDPD Act.

The ALL-SIG community offers insights to teachers, researchers, and students regarding contemporary best practice and practice-oriented theory such as increasing awareness among teachers, and school administrators on accessible design in materials and methods.

Important Notice

The ALL-SIG website is currently a work in progress.

We would like for this website to be a hub and resource in the near future where anyone can contribute information, stories, and other relevant resources. We would greatly appreciate any and all input our members and others have about what you would like to see on this site. Please share suggestions, ideas, and opinions through the "Opinions and Ideas on the ALL-SIG Website" form.

What's New?

On-going Projects

Project 1

Build a SIG website which has both a repository of resources for the information to our SIG members and also create a database which allows you to share your issues and experiences with special educational needs students. The goal is to be able to easily find strategies or resources to better accommodate these students. Our intention is hopefully, sometime later in the academic year, we will be able to make our website public.

Project 2

Create an easy to use TO / NOT TO DO List to to create inclusive classrooms and online accessible language teaching. This would be for the use of ALL-SIG members and also for other SIGs and chapters to consider how to improve the accessibility of their events.

Project 3

A collaboration with Lifelong Language Learning LLL-SIG. We are planning to co-host a joint-forum with LLL SIG at PanSIG 2022. At the conference, we are hosting breakout rooms focusing on accessible language learning. A priority is making these sessions bilingual so that not only English teachers, but also Japanese teachers are welcome to join us. More on this soon.