Let Accessibility Bowl You Over
Photo of bowling ball about to knock down pins by Michelle McEwen on Unsplash
Want to make your workplace more inclusive? Follow Dr. Shelley Moore’s advice and avoid the 7-10 split.
Let me explain. In a brilliant and oft-quoted analogy, Dr. Moore uses bowling to explain how to make learning truly inclusive.
Moore contends that educators should be aiming to reach the learners on the margins, just as professional bowlers aim to hit the pins on the outside. Targeting the outer pins creates a domino effect that ensures all pins get knocked down. Directing the ball down the middle, however, is more likely to result in the classic 7-10 split – just as aiming to reach learners in the middle often leaves those on the fringes behind.
In other words, when we use strategies designed to reach learners with diverse abilities, everyone benefits. Another term for this approach is Universal Design for Learning (UDL).
The analogy and its associated principles are used widely in education, but in today’s knowledge economy, they should be applied in the workplace, too. George Brown College has been a huge proponent of UDL, having run many workshops for staff on how to integrate UDL principles into teaching and learning practices. Since continuous learning is a requirement for most jobs, it is my hope that workplaces will start to consider how they can integrate this approach as well.
Here are ten relatively low-cost, easy-to-implement actions to improve everyone’s learning and working experience by making accessible learning the norm at your workplace:
Encourage workers to take advantage of MS Office 365’s immersive reader function (assuming, of course, your workplace uses MS Office 365). The immersive reader alters the appearance of text so that it displays in a large, readable font and will read the text aloud to users if they so desire as well.
Encourage workers to use voice-to-text dictation if that supports their writing; this feature is also readily available in MS Office 365.
Allow workers to wear headphones and/or provide quiet spaces when they need to concentrate.
Ensure all training videos with audio are properly captioned.
Ensure all training videos afford learners control over the pace with which they take in content, allowing them to easily skip forward, backward, and repeat as needed.
Do away with timed learning experiences unless there’s a legitimate reason for timing the learning that ties directly to a specific outcome. For example, healthcare professionals are sometimes required to undergo timed assessments that reflect the time-pressures they will be under in emergency medicine.
Train employees on how they can use GenAI tools to their advantage; such tools can be great levelers and time-savers with the right know-how.
Implement accessible fonts like Arial as the corporate standard.
Encourage employees to use the accessibility checker on all PowerPoint presentations.
Encourage a culture of plain language that supports ease of readability in all documentation.
