This event tool place on 20 Nov 2020 as part of the Embracing Accessibility series. The event was jointly organised by ALT East England and East Midlands Learning Technologists' group. Thanks to those who attended and presented.
There are many free edtech tools available for staff to use and there has been an explosion in growth in response to more teaching being online as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Third party edtech tools can be a great way to increase active learning in both the classroom and online but how easy is it to determine if these apps and tools are accessible or if they might cause issues to students, especially those with either declared or undeclared disabilities. This presentation will look at:
Can the Digital Accessibility Regulations 2018 help decide if a third party tool is appropriate to use? Using VPATs and Accessibility Statements as a guide to accessibility.
How can we provide easy to access guidance to staff to help them to decide if a tool should be used or not? Providing a traffic light system to show if tools are accessible (and GDPR compliant).
Are we getting too worried about the accessibility and could we in fact be having a detrimental effect on all our students' learning? Do we think some of the tools flagged as inaccessible on our traffic light rating actually add benefit to our disabled students.
I have spent the last 18 months developing materials and training colleagues to carry out basic accessibility assessments on their systems. We have written accessibility statements to communicate accessibility levels to the user and developed a recording / monitoring process for the actions for improvements. Alistair McNaught has advised and reviewed our process and reported on our success and areas requiring further development. We achieved a dark green tick on the GDS initial check.