>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Good afternoon, everyone, or evening, depending on where you are in
the world.
This is Gillian Fielding here from Blackboard.
Welcome!
The webinar will start in eight minutes.
Do feel free to post in chats if you have any questions or where you have from.
It's quite interesting to see where people are joining us from.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Good afternoon, everyone, or evening, depending on where you are in
the world.
This is Gillian Fielding here from Blackboard.
Welcome!
The webinar will start in eat minutes.
Do feel free to post in chat if you have any questions or where you are from.
It's quite interesting to see where people are joining us from.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Hello, again, this is Gillian Fielding again from Blackboard just
to say we will be starting in three minutes.
Welcome!
Thank you for joining us.
I see people are joining from all over the world and all different times of the day.
So feel free to put in the chat box what type of institution you're from.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Hi, again, this is Gillian Fielding.
I am based in the UK, but you will see in the chat we have people joining from all different
institutions from across the world.
Welcome, everybody!
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Okay, we currently have 63 people on the call.
We have around 400 registered and may or may not join us in the last minute.
But we'll get going, it's 1:00 here.
Welcome everybody, my name is Gillian Fielding.
I work for Blackboard as a Customer Success Advocate based here in the UK and I will be
chairing today's session.
We have on the call Professor Helen Petrie who is a Professor of Human Computer Interaction
at the University of York.
Alistair McNaught, who is a Subject Specialist in Accessibility and Inclusion for an organization
called Jisc, which works across the higher education sector in the UK to support those
organizations.
And Alistair is based in Bristol in the UK.
And we have Nicolaas Matthijs, who is Blackboard's Ally Product Manager, who is also based in
London.
He is from Belgium, but today he is calling in from California in the states.
We also have some Blackboard staff on the call who will be helping moderate, which is
Natasha Davidson who is Head of Marketing International and she is calling from the
UK today.
And Dominic Gore who is the Manager for our Solutions Engineering and he is in Birmingham.
And Nathan isn't on there, but he may be helping, too, Nathan Copper.
You may also notice that we have closed captions on today's session and Bonnie from A La CARTe
is doing the closed captions.
You can alter the size of those and the fonts.
You have a message at the top asking if you want to see closed captions or not.
So just to run through, I just want to check that people can hear me okay.
Next to your little head and shoulders icon here, at the bottom center of your screen,
you will have an option to the tick, if you hoover over the tick, you will get the options
to show where you are happy or sad.
So if you could use the happy to indicate that you can hear me okay.
And [indiscernible] so I'm just checking if people can hear.
If anybody is having problems and need to troubleshot the audio, if you hoover and then
click on the profile, so that little head and shoulders, again, up there, then you can
get to the audio sessions there.
If you have any questions, can you put them in the chat box?
And the moderators will answer them as we go through.
We will open up for questions at the end of the webinar after the speakers.
And I've also added a link to the technical support and the webpage in case anybody needs
to call them if they encounter problems.
It's looking like everybody's okay and can hear fine.
That's great!
So just to go through a couple of the accessibility feature that is we've got in Collaborate,
you can adjust the captioning.
And you can also zoom into the slides if you need to increase the size of them.
And you will find this view control at the top, left hand side of the screen area, and
then you can zoom in and out.
So you can suit your own personal preferences.
If you are using a screen‑reader, we've got the recommended brands in there that you
can use with your screen‑reader.
If you are using keyboard shortcuts, the standard shortcuts work, but also there's a link to
extra ones as well listed on the website.
So what ‑‑ I mentioned who was going to be speaking already, I've done a quick overview.
In a second I'll be handing over to Helen, actually, who will talk about accessibility
in the learning environment at the University of York.
Following by Alistair McNaught from Jisc will be talking about improve can accessibility
and the learning experience.
After that, Nicolaas will talk about the latest developments.
And then we'll talk the questions and answers.
As I said, feel free to add your questions in the chat as we go through.
The presenters won't be answering at that point, the moderators may do, but we will
also store them when we get to the end we can ask the questions then.
So at this point I'm going to land it over to Helen to do her presentation.
So, Helen, over to you.
>> HELEN PETRIE: Okay, fine, hello, everyone!
It's very nice to be talking to you.
Thank you for the invitation.
I'll just turn on my video for a minute so you can see what I look like.
There we go, you should be able to see me in the corner of your screen, I'm waving to
you now.
It's nice and sunny in Yorkshire as I was saying.
I'll turn off the video now so I don't distract myself.
As Gillian said, I'm the Professor of Human Computer Interaction in the computer science
department at the University of York.
I'm a psychologist by training and I have been working on Assistive Technologies and
access to technology for people with disabilities, including a lot of work on students with disabilities
since the mid‑1990s when I worked at the National Institute for Blind People in London.
And I'm very excited about accessibility for people in life and in learning.
Oops, I've pressed the wrong button there.
I'll get the hang of this.
So I'm actually the Equality Champion of the Computer Science Department at York.
Each department has an Equality Champion, so I champion not only the right of students
with disabilities, but sexual orientation and other things.
And I'm also the chair of the University's eAccessibility forum.
I'm originally from Australia, but I'm now living in the north of England, which people
find strange because it's rains a lot in the north of England, but I love it here.
So what I want to tell you about today ‑‑ oops, sorry, I have moved my slide forward too much.
I'm not used to these buttons yet.
Right, okay.
The importance of eAccessibility, not everyone uses this term, so if you have not seen it
before, the idea of accessibility around digital devices and digital materials.
And one of the things I've found at my own University and many others is that people
have put a lot of money and effort and thought into the physical accessibility of the University,
and I know at York we spent quite a lot of money continually trying to improve the physical
accessibility, and I've got an image there of some beautifully accessible steps which
include a ramp, but strangely, given one of our key objectives at the University is learning
and teaching, the accessibility of particularly the digital learning environment for students
has somewhat lagged behind.
And one of the roles of the eAccessibility forum is to really push for accessibility
of the digital environment.
And I think that's particularly important because on the one hand, when students are
in classrooms, you should be able to understand whether a student is having difficulty accessing
the learning experience.
I know that doesn't always happen, but it should be there in front of you.
But when we move, as we increasingly are moving into digital environments for learning, it
may not be nearly as obvious as to what the barriers are, who is experiencing particular
barriers, and how can we solve them?
And part of the problem is that, I'm afraid, the accessibility at the moment is not an
easy thing to solve.
So the challenges are complex.
At the moment they're not always completely well understood and that's partly because
the technology is constantly changing on us.
I'm still amazing that now my students come to physical classes and they all sit there
with their SmartPhones.
And at first, I was quite upset about this.
I'm thinking, why are they texting on their SmartPhones when they're in class?
And then I actually, actually, they're taking notes.
They have my PowerPoint slides up and they are taking notes on their SmartPhones.
So the world is changing rapidly.
And students have many different needs.
Often the solutions can cover students with different needs and that can be very scary
initially, but we do need to consider that, as Alistair will talk about later, when we
talk about accessibility, it's not a unified thing.
What might be accessible for one person, isn't accessible to another person.
So one of the ways I try and break the problem down in the University learning content, when
I'm talking to people, is to think of the different layers that we need to consider.
Oops, next slide.
Starting kind of from the bottom, we have the hardware or devices that a student might
be learning with or using.
Some students, for example, this is a picture of a one‑handed keyboard for a student who
perhaps only has one hand or can only use one hand, so they bring a particular assistive
device with them.
Students who are blind may have Braille displays that they use.
In the UK, the responsibility for that is now moving from the institution more to the
student to supply and decide about that.
And to some extent, we don't have to worry too much because usually those devices work
well with mainstream technologies, but we do need to be aware that they're there.
Then some students may be using assistive software rather than assistive hardware, so
blind students very typically use screen‑readers, which convert the visual material to audio.
Partially sighted students may be using screen magnification.
Dyslexic students may be using special spell checkers and grammar checkers or software
that highlights word‑by‑word for them when they are reading text.
And I should have mentioned at the beginning, I am dyslexic myself so I have good experience
of those as a user.
Then the middle layer, and this is where Blackboard comes in, but also others, usually now in
Universities and other educational institutions, we use a learning environment, a platform
which needs to be accessible to the students and needs to be kept up‑to‑date.
But then, for me, the really critical point is we have, I think, a thousand Instructors
at the University of York and they are all uploading documents, PowerPoint slide decks,
PDFs, readings, et cetera, et cetera and they need to be accessible to the students.
And that is an endless discussion of how do we ensure that?
And then even within documents, we have particular elements like tables, maps, images, graphs,
diagrams, and there may be accessibility issues, particularly for blind or partially sighted
students in accessing those particular elements.
So we have this multi‑layered system where we have different accessibility challenges
and we need to be monitoring in different ways and persuading different groups of stakeholders
to try to ensure accessibility or improve our accessibility.
So what do we do at the University of York?
I'm very involved a number of activities.
First of all, a small triumph, I feel, is I have just recently persuaded the University
to put the inclusive learning environment, they decided to call it, but this a site code
word for eAccessibility on the agenda for the top University plan for the next three
years.
So it has been agreed that we will work to raise awareness amongst staff of the need
for a truly inclusive learning environment for all students, with the aim of University
providing an exemplary learning ‑‑ exemplary, inclusive and working environment.
I think you can tell I'm dyslexic because I find it very difficult to read carefully
like that.
So that's very encouraging.
And to implement that point in the plan, we are now working on inclusive learning, teaching
and assessment policy.
Other institutions may have policies like that and I would be very interested in hearing
from you and discuss how you have achieved that or trying to achieve that.
Please contact me by my e‑mail address which was at the beginning of my slides.
And then as I mentioned before, I'm chair of the eAccessibility forum, which has Representatives
from all of our faculties and all our support departments, so we have a representative from
exams, we have a representative from the library, and so on and so forth.
And we try and monitor what's happening in the University, promote group practice, inform
and raise awareness, so really all the points which were in that point that's going into
the plan.
So some of the things that we do, we have a leaflet that we provide to all staff at
the University about the importance of eAccessibility and links to resources that are available
for everybody.
So that goes out once a year.
We also do audits of different materials around the University, so at the moment we're doing
an audit of all the different teaching department websites because we've realized that people
have recent ‑‑ fairly recently discovered, I think, that putting up videos of students
talking about how wonderful it is to study archeology or history or whatever or a lecture
talking about their interesting course, these are good marketing materials for departments
and the University policy is that they should be subtitled.
And we are getting about 50/50 whether they are not.
And I'm writing polite letters to heads of departments reminding them of that University
policy.
And we do different audits of different things at different times.
And another thing we're trying to do, again, with some success, but not complete success,
is that when the University procures new software or new computing equipment that will be used
either by staff or by students, that as part of the procurement policy, we do some testing
with students with disabilities to see whether it really is usable by students with disabilities.
And we try and test with three blind students, three partially sighted students, and three
dyslexic students.
And that's because in my research, I've found that if you do that testing, you pick up about
80% of the accessibility problems.
It's not perfect, but it's not too expensive to do.
And it's a good initial test of accessibility.
And obviously, we ask people who are bidding to provide equipment to give us information
about the accessibility of their equipment or their software as well that's part of the
process.
And a final point I didn't put on the slide, I forgot, we have a project about trying to
crowd source with students the description of the images and diagrams in the teaching
materials.
So if a group of students are taking a course and the lecture is providing PowerPoint slides,
for example, which have images, which is almost always the case, we're trying to set up a
system where all the students in that course will describe the images for blind and partially
sighted students in the course.
And we're having mixed success with that as well.
If you would like to know more about that, please contact me.
And finally, I just wanted to end ‑‑ oops, I've gone too far.
Oops.
I've gone back to my other slide.
No, no, I'm not.
Ah.
Last slide here.
I just wanted to end by mentioning that there's a lot of emphasis now on eAccessibility and
accessibility for students, but we should also remember accessibility for staff, particularly
in my instance teaching staff.
So an example I had last year, which it's really about physical accessibility, but it
does relate to teaching with digital materials is I actually organized a conference at the
University and we had a number of speakers who were in wheelchairs and we realized that
the teaching rooms, the podiums where you put your materials and look at your slides
are not wheelchair accessible, they're too high.
So we had to provide a desk, it's not very clear in the photograph, but you can see a
gentleman sitting at the desk, we had to provide a desk specially.
We could pull down the monitor so he could see his PowerPoint slides, but then we had
hearing‑impaired people in the audience and he couldn't use the hearing loop, but
‑‑ because that was up on the podium, so that's the point I'm now raising with the
University that we need to think about accessibility for teaching.
So thank you very much for listening.
And I'm happy to answer any questions later on.
And I now hand back to Gillian.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Yes, thank you very much, Helen.
You raised some interesting points there.
We got some questions in the chat.
So thank you, that was really interesting.
And without any further ado, I'm going to hand it over to Alistair now.
>> ALISTAIR McNAUGHT: Hello, good afternoon.
Or good morning, indeed, if you are in another part of the world, or good evening.
Can I check if somebody can pop into the text chat that you can actually hear?
Yeah, that's looking good.
Thank you, Gillian.
And everybody else.
Brilliant!
Okay.
I love optical illusions and one of the things I love most about optical illusions is you
look at something and you look at it one way and suddenly you see something in a completely
different way.
And that paradigm shift that takes place in your head when you are looking at an optical
illusion is really something I find exciting, I find it creative, I find it inspiring and
challenging.
And that's what accessibility should be about.
So we're going to be looking at some optical illusions and we're going to use these in
order to ‑‑ I'm having the same problems that Helen had there, slightly unresponsive
button that I clicked twice because I thought the first one didn't work.
So let's look at some optical illusions.
This is a lovely image.
I really like this image.
I think it's possible from the other side of the Atlantic, but I just love the way you
can look at that and see the houses built at these very odd angles, where, of course,
if you turn your head slightly, you realize it's a very steep hill.
Now with accessibility, we often look at things the wrong way around because we don't see
that bigger picture of the houses in the background.
So a student has a problem accessing content.
They are supported by a disability specialist.
The barrier is overcome.
A ladder has been provided to take them over the obstacles, but was the disability the
problem or was the problem the lack of disability awareness or the lack of confidence in using
digital technologies that would have allowed the disabled learner to be more independent?
Would the student from the problem at all if the tutor had created the resource to meet
basic accessibility practices?
And the irony in education is that we often applaud organizations for the size and the
quality of their ladders, but a big ladder to support a disabled student is actually
the sign of an unresolved wall or unchallenged barrier.
I would suggest we are often rewarding the wrong things.
Perhaps we should be looking at the barriers instead of the ladders.
Why do we focus on ladder makers?
And why do the inspections in the UK in further education of schools?
We have an organization called Ofsted that goes around inspecting organizations, and
so often I have seen a report from Ofsted that commends a school or a college for their
disability support.
And if I then visit that college and have a look at what they're doing, yes, they've
got really good disability support, but they are supporting students over barriers that
need not be there in the first place and nobody had spotted.
If the barriers were smaller, we might not need long ladders.
And on the slide here, some of the barriers to overcome include, you know, making sense
of practicals.
If somebody is trying to juggle their notes and jiggle a test tube out in the field and
it's raining and blowing, trying to make notes, there are all sorts of ways practicals and
fieldwork with create barriers, making sense of lectures or classroom experiences, lecture
notes, making sense of the presentations afterwards, the need for peer support, the accessibility
of the eBooks you use, making understanding of references and reading list, writing assignments,
having the self‑skills for writing and organizing and so forth.
All of these barriers are barriers you can support students with using technology.
Or, you can leave the barriers in place and give them a nice long ladder, which is a lot
more expensive.
So perhaps we reward the wrong things.
But let's look at this optical illusion here.
I think there's often a misconception about accessibility that accessibility is some kind
of fixed point, rather like beauty, you know, is there a fixed definition of beauty?
Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think there's a sense to which accessibility
is in the eye of the beholder.
If somebody asks the question regarding an exercise or a resource or an activity, is
it accessible?
Then the answer is actually not necessarily straightforward.
It could be, well, it depends who you are.
The optical illusion on the screen is one of these fantastic twisted perspective staircases.
And depending which of these characters you are on the staircase, you may think that you're
at the top of something, you may think you're at the bottom, you may think you are facing
a barrier, you may think it's all downhill and it's very easy.
And we have an important role in education to try to be as mature holistic about accessibility
as we can be because there are genuine issues with education and accessibility.
Education is not just about conveying information.
It's also about engaging.
It's about exciting people.
It's about challenging people.
It's often about entertaining.
And the one, perhaps, interaction rich simulation that you found online and is fantastically
engaging your learning with ADHD may have too many buttons and things going on for their
attention span.
It may be inaccessible for screen‑reader.
You can switch it around, the Braille notes which are fantastic for a blind reader and
give a really good explanation of something are not accessible to anybody else.
So there is this content to accessibility and there are balancing act that is are better
handled by positive alternatives than by rigid policy saying, you can't have that on the
virtual learning environment, you can't have this.
So rigidity is something, I think, we need to be careful of.
However, having said that, the main problems are more often to do with negligent practice
in everyday experiences.
And part of this is accessibility training must be differentiated.
I would have a completely different expectation of an eLearning Manager or an eLearning Technician
than I would of a teacher who is just at the first point of using digital resources and
putting something online.
It would be unrealistic for me to expect somebody who has never uploaded a video before, never
even taken a video, if I then say to them, every frame of that video, or every section
of that video has to be subtitled and synchronized, they will be put off.
So I will only get a little bit of the video.
So you need to give expectations that are appropriate.
With the video, I would say initially because you are getting used to using video, make
sure there's a summary of the key teaching points, the five key teaching points next
to it, so that's not having to subtitle it, it's not even an entire transcript.
It's saying why you need to watch the video, what are the things you must come back with?
And the reason this is important is because if we have unrealistic accessibility expectations,
you end up with less accessible teaching and learning because nobody pays any attention
to the unachievable.
So it's got to be achievable.
Now the next thing I want to look at and the really positive thing about all of this is
that when you get that buy‑in, when you can give the right level of the challenge
to people irrespective of their role, as soon as they see what they can make a contribution
to, you get something apparent which is the spontaneous creation of new opportunities.
When you stare at this set of black squares, you will see gray dots appearing over every
interaction.
Not a single one of them is there, but they are generated by you looking across the image.
Now there's a similar sort of way, when you create a culture of inclusion and you enable
people to not only take responsibility, but also have a sense of creativity about not
just meeting somebody's laws, but actually getting the principle of, let's be inclusive,
let's try experimenting in different ways of teaching and learning, suddenly you find
people inventing things themselves, trying things with students, and you create things
that you never would have created yourself.
Okay, the next point I want to consider is the importance of inclusive digital practice.
We started looking at barriers versus ladders and very clear the barriers are still there.
You know, whatever you do, your students still need to make sense of practicals, make sense
of lectures, of presentations, and so on.
There are certain things that learning is about.
But instead of providing one massive ladder to get over them, we can use technology in
creative and inclusive ways.
And almost all of these have free options to them.
You can use technology in ways to provide lots of little stepping stones.
So the making sense of practicals, you can use videos, you can use feedback clips, so
whenever they hit a barrier straightaway, they can revisit it, look at the video again,
they can pop something back on to a feedback tool like Today's Meeting and get immediate
feedback.
Yeah, you forgot to add the indicator at this stage, whatever it may be.
For every one of these, and these slides are available afterwards, I believe, right, Gillian?
For these barriers there are third party tools that can help you get over the barriers.
If students become more self‑aware and more self‑supporting in terms of their needs,
that is to the benefit of everyone.
And what you'll find is that the benefits accrue not just to your 10% of students with
disabilities, but they will accrue to the other 90% of students who suddenly find they
can be a lot more productive and creative and engaged than they otherwise might have
been.
And then the last slide is just to make it clear that it's not just technology.
Technology can offer us some fantastic affordances, but actually humans are at the heart of accessibility
when it comes to technology because it's humans that have the vision.
Helen talked very clearly about the University of York where so much of the technology solutions
that are taking place are actually driven by an overarching vision.
So much of the technology solution that is are being brought, are being driven by choices
that are informed by accessibility awareness.
And these are all human‑type decisions that people are making.
You can give people training to help their practices become more accessible.
If you skimp on the training, don't expect the practices to change, don't expect people
to structure their Word documents if you have not told them what a fantastic difference
it can make to a reader or any learning.
I am feeling very privileged to be invited here because the things Blackboard has been
making, and Nicolaas will talk about this in a moment, Blackboard with help you with
the inclusive elements of the technology, reducing some of the barriers.
And my organization, if you are in the UK in higher education or further education,
we can help make that accessibility and inclusion part of your strategy, your vision, and your
daily practice.
If you are a Jisc member, we can do that for free using its link that's there.
If you are elsewhere, we can still do it, but it wouldn't be for free.
So I hope you have enjoyed the illusions.
The most important thing of all is that when you look at an illusion and suddenly you get
it, it's actually not a burdensome feeling, it's, wow, this is quite releasing, this is
really fun.
Accessibility can be like that.
It's not a bunch of laws, it's actually a bunch of creative opportunities, and that's
what I love about it.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Thank you, Alistair, that was great.
I so agree with your statement that accessibility makes education more accessible for everybody.
And I'm smiling at you saying it's fun because when I use the text to speech facility for
proofreading when I'm tired, you know, it's fun.
I'm relieved I can do that.
So I'm going to hand over to Nicolaas now, who is going to speak for just a moment about
Blackboard and he is the Ally Product Manager.
>> NICOLAAS MATTHIJS: Hi, good morning or good after noon, depending on where you are
calling from.
I have to say I really like the later analogy that Alistair used.
I think I'll be using that myself, it's a really powerful analogy.
Today I'd like to take a few minutes to talk about what we are doing around accessibility
at Blackboard as an Educational Technology company and how we're essentially trying to
partner with institutions around accessibility.
So basically at Blackboard, we're ‑‑ we try to take a three‑part approach towards
accessibility, which starts with making sure that the platforms that we make available
to institutions are as accessible as possible.
Followed by trying to help the institution make the content that's put inside of those
systems, so the content that's created by Instructors, by students, as accessible as
possible.
Added with additional Consulting Services that we can bring in if additional help is
required.
So starting with our platforms and this includes things like ‑‑ this includes our range
of products which is things like Blackboard Learn, things like Blackboard Collaborate,
which is what we are using right now, and many others.
And our commitment there is fairly straightforward.
We are committed to making everything ‑‑ every product that we ship, WCAG 2.0 AA which is
the accessibility guideline compliance.
And we put several processes in place to help ensure this.
That includes things like we have embedded accessibility experts into all of the different
product themes.
We actually have the ability to block new product releases when a particular accessibility
issue has been identified.
And we do independent accessibility audits where an independent third party organization
goes in, evaluates the product, and also produces the associated disability documentation.
And next to the commitment of making the products WCAG 2.0 AA compliant, and I'm happy to say
this is a trend we are seeing without the educational space.
And there are additional accessibility that we are adding to the platforms and we try
to work with a number of institutions and organizations around this as well.
That's the first part of our required approach.
The second part is really looking at, how ‑‑ is the content that people put into
the systems, is that content accessible as well?
And that's really where our Blackboard Ally product comes in.
And so the way in which ‑‑ so Ally is a product that really focuses on trying to
make that digital course content more accessible and it does that by integrating very closely,
very seamlessly into the virtual learning environment, into the Learning Management
System.
And we actually are, and this is also something I'm very excited about, we are making this
available to all of the major Learning Management Systems, including things like Moodle, and
so on.
And the way in which it works, as an Instructor, as you add content or create content in the
LMS, Ally will automatically pick up on it, run it through an accessible checklist, will
run it through a number of different algorithms and will do three main things to make that
content more accessible.
The first thing it will do is it will automatically try to generate a number of what we call more
accessible alternatives to the Instructor's original.
In order to do that, there are things it will generate, like it will generate different
formats.
Things like semantic HTML, an audio version of the content, an electronic Braille version
of the content.
If it's a scanned version, we will automatically OCR it.
We take all of those different formats and make them available to the student within
the Learning Management System, within the context of where that content is being used.
And so in this first part of what Ally does, we try to do as much as we can in an automated
way to provide a more accessible starting point to the student, pretty much in an immediate
way.
And I think it's fair to say some of these formats are for students with specific disabilities,
like the electronic Braille format, but the audio format are much more widely applicable.
It can be used to offer modality and basically enhance the overall learning experience for
the students.
So that's the first part of what Ally does.
The second part of what Ally does, which comes back to the training side that Alistair was
referring to, is Ally will also provide feedback within the content of the LMS, will provide
feedback to the Instructor on how accessible the content is, some of the issues within
the content, as well as detailed guidance to help them improve the accessible of the
original.
So we are really trying to engage with the Instructor and trying to get them make the
original as accessible as possible so we can over time embed some of those best practices
into the Instructor's work flow and try to sort of raise awareness, raise visibility
of some of these issues as well.
And then the last thing Ally does, it will also generate ‑‑ so based on doing this
in its Learning Management System, it will produce an institutional report.
It's difficult to know how you are doing from an accessible point of view just because of
how much content is out there and this institutional report tries to provide some insight into
that and some understanding so you can understand how you are doing, as well as understand where
the problems are, as well as identify what else you can do yourself as an institution
to help further improve things.
So that's the sort of ‑‑ the content side of things.
The last part of what Blackboard offers as well is there's a range of different Consulting
Services that we offer.
So in the case ‑‑ in cases where you, as an institution, need additional help, there
are things that we can do like come in and help define an institutional accessibility
policy, help define an implementation plan for that policy, it can be things like reviewing
the full student digital life cycle all the way from enrollment down to graduation.
There are specific sort of course audits we can do where we can come in and sort of look
at the overall accessibility of the course, look at the pedagogy and create content creation.
So there are a number of options that are available in case any additional help in required.
So that was a very high level, very quick introduction into what we are doing at Blackboard
to try and help with accessibility.
If you want to find out more about this, I think the seventh webinar in today's webinar
series, we'll be covering this in a little more detail.
We will be covering things like, what we are doing in Learn, Collaborate, and so on.
We will provide a deeper introduction into Ally, as well as give you a sense of how it
works, what it looks like, and we'll provide additional options about the consulting ‑‑ some
additional details about the consulting options.
So if that's of interest at all, you should consider joining the seventh webinar which
is taking place at 3:00 PM eastern U.S. time, 8 PM UK time and that's Pacific, noon, I believe.
Thank you.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Thank you so much, Nicolaas, that was great and generated some more questions
in the chat.
And Ally, it's worth mentioning, if you interested in seeing it in practice, we are in the process
of organizing a webinar specifically on Ally on Thursday the 22nd of June at 1:00.
An e‑mail will come out and it will go in the newsletter and so on.
So if you are interesting in seeing that, join the demonstration then.
And it is worth mentioning, it is platform diagnostic so you can use it on any LMS.
So let's answer some questions.
Going back to the one that is were in the chat, Helen, when you were speaking, Jessica
asked a question about how do students with disability influence policy and practice at
the University of York?
>> HELEN PETRIE: That's a very good question.
Thank you, Jess.
But we have student representatives on both the eAccessibility forum and on the University
level Disability and Accessibility Committee or working group.
We have students and graduate students on both those committees so students can have
direct input into policy.
That's very important to us, that we include students in the decision‑making process.
Has that answered that question?
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Well, if there is anything back from Jessica, you can put that in the
chat.
And we will go to another question.
I think you have left the session, but he can go to the board to see the answer or message
him.
Are the students paid?
>> HELEN PETRIE: Yes.
We recruit students and our policy is we try to pay as much as they would earn working
in McDonald's or Starbucks, so we pay, I think currently we pay 13 pounds an hour for their
time, plus endless free coffee and biscuits, so it's not something we expect people to
do for free.
It's real work that has to be taken seriously and is, therefore, paid for.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: And Jess came back with the following question, asking if you involve
students in the Blackboard practice.
>> HELEN PETRIE: Sorry, could you repeat that question?
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Sure.
>> HELEN PETRIE: Oh, I see the questions now.
Yes we involve students in reviewing Blackboard.
In the same way.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: That's good.
And [indiscernible] also had a second part of the question, he is interested in ways
we try and balance the workload and testing against the primary purpose for being there.
So about how much time does it take students to get involved with this?
>> HELEN PETRIE: The time commitment is quite small, so typically we might be doing testing
once every three months and particularly for students with dyslexia, we have quite a number
of students with dyslexia at the University, so we have no trouble finding volunteers to
do that.
For students that are blind, we don't have so many students and we try not to burden
individual students, but it's done on a voluntary basis.
And often students will say, I can't come now because I'm preparing for examples, so
we find other students to do it.
So it's not something we impose on students, we just ask for volunteers and we usually
find volunteers quite easily.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Thank you.
That's great.
And I think Denise was next asking a question about you sharing your audit lists.
>> HELEN PETRIE: Yes, I'm very happy to share the audit lists.
I put a message back to Denise in the chat.
I wasn't sure whether she wanted the audit to do with the subtitling that we're doing
or the testing we do with students during procurement.
We actually have the webpage about that second aspect which I can share with people.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: That would be great.
I've got a question for Alistair now, so perhaps you can share that in the chat.
Sorry, it's not a question for Alistair, it's a question for Nicolaas that Alistair asked
and it's about whether the publishers will be able to use Ally to make their published
content more accessible.
>> NICOLAAS MATTHIJS: That's a great question.
The way in which Ally is being built is in a way that would allow it to be integrated
into several different platforms or workflows at the same time.
We are actively talking to many of the publishers to see how Ally can fit into some of their
processes, whether it can help provide the formats, as well as accessibility checking,
so we can try to bring as much of the work as possible upstream.
So those are conversations we are actively having.
That will probably take some time to come to fruition, but that is definitely part of
where we are trying to go.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: That's great.
Thank you.
And I have another question, but I can't ‑‑ or I didn't note who it was from, however, this
is to either Helen, Alistair, or Nicolaas, do any of you have any ideas about good inclusive
learning environments?
And it was Jasper, some of the Jasper, does the panel have any ideas about good inclusive
learning environments?
Some of my students enjoy the aspects of flipped classroom, which is very helpful but obviously
others can find it noisy.
Do you have any suggestions on that?
>> ALISTAIR McNAUGHT: Yeah, I think that's a very good point and it's one of the things
I was discussing with some colleagues recently on a European project.
It's about making sure that your inclusive practice attempts to be varied, attempts to
be engaging in different ways to different people at different times.
So I think it's not a question about finding some kind of mythical ideal for accessible
practice in a classroom and then just sticking to the same thing all the time because that
would inevitably benefit others and provide less benefit for others, but I think it's
about what you are doing at the moment, Jasper.
You are trying the flipped classroom, trying different things.
Try flipping the classroom in different ways.
Try using the class time for different activities so it's not all noisy discussion.
You can have quiet discussion or one‑to‑one work, some can be outside and some can be
inside.
The real joy of the accessible teaching practice is that it's constantly stimulating, you trying
different things, and working with the students.
It's ultimately about really good practice and teaching, which brings that variety about.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Thanks, Alistair.
And I'm just going to ask the moderators if there are any questions that I've missed.
It's a little hard to keep track of the questions and where we are at.
So Nathan, Dom, or Natasha, are there any other questions that you spotted that I missed?
>> DOMINIC GORE: Gillian, this is Dominic.
Just a couple of questions, one again from Jasper, does the panel have any ideas about
good inclusive learning environments?
Some of my students enjoy the aspects of flipped classroom, which is very helpful but obviously
others can find it noisy.
Do you have any suggestions on that?
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: We actually covered that one, Dom.
Was there another one?
>> DOMINIC GORE: Yes, can you describe what Jisc is doing to break down the barriers and
invoke University design and practices?
>> ALISTAIR McNAUGHT: Yes, the evaluation and side posting service which we have just
started I think has attracted people because to some extent there's [indiscernible] environment.
The changes in the UK, well, England, let's be accurate about that, has put additional
responsibility for institutions making the ladder rather than the one‑on‑one support.
It's recognizing that the old support mechanisms were unsustainable.
But very often the most important thing we do is we help people to join up the bits that
they don't realize need joining up.
So it's talking to library staff to help library staff understand that the eBook offer that
they have could be actually really helpful in terms of dyslexic learners because they
can use text to speech with it, or it can make it easier for accurate copying and pasting
of references, et cetera.
It's about using all kinds of different tools, so if your eLearning team is talking to your
library team and your academic team and your disability support team is aware of the in‑built
accessibility, it's all these little things.
And I think the real success is not giving people a sense of massive things that nobody
can do, but giving people an almost crowd source sensed that accessibility really works
when you have 900 staff in an organization making 900 small changes rather than one or
two people making 900 changes in one go.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Thank you for that, Alistair.
We're going to stop the questions there, but we will come back to the ones we haven't answered
either in e‑mail or [indiscernible].
I'm just going to move on to a couple of points I want to cover here at the end.
One of them is the community site that Blackboard has.
I'll mention that in a second.
Just for the last minute, I wanted to highlight there are a couple of accessibility MOOCs
that are starting at the beginning of June.
And this one that's on‑screen at the moment is one by Blackboard in construction with
the [indiscernible] University.
It's aimed at teaching staff.
It starts on the 5th of June, and it's looking at how to make your learning environment more
accessible.
Similarly, we have another one starting on the same date that Blackboard is not involved
with, but we promote it, which is run out of the UK.
It's a European‑funded project that's being organized through Future Learn.
And, again, it looks at exclusive teaching and learning practices.
They are both short, they are both three weeks.
And then this is the community site I just mentioned.
The community site is an area that Blackboard hosts where we have all sorts of discussions
going on on different Blackboard topics and different Blackboard products.
It can be Learn, it could be Collaborate, but we have an accessibility discussion area
in there.
Dom has just posted the link in the chat.
You will need to just log in.
You need a name, e‑mail address for registration and either use the link or there is a search
tool up at the top, right hand side of the screen.
But there are all sorts of discussions going on about accessibility in there.
Of course, [indiscernible] locater.
And I just wanted to highlight the newsletters, particularly this one, the theme is on accessibility.
So if you have not registered for that already, there is a link in chat which will take you
a webpage where you can see the newsletter or you can register for it.
It comes out every month.
It's themed every month on different topics like flipped classrooms or in this case accessibility.
And another thing quickly to point out in the recent newsletter is the accessibility
checklist that is linked in there.
Nice, simple checklist, easy to use.
It has a link to the contrast checker in there.
So easy and a nice resource to share.
And finally, we will be sending out a survey link for you to give us feedback on the webinars.
I mentioned the chat already, but the recording from today's session and the slides will be
shared this afternoon, hopefully, on the public community site.
And if you have questions, we have an e‑mail address there, please contact us.
And the presenters have put theirs in the chat or in the slides as well.
Everyone will be happy to carry on the discussion, whether by e‑mail or through the community
site.
Thank you all for attending.
Thank you particularly Helen, Alistair, and Nicolaas for your time and the great presentations
today.
It was really interesting.
And thank you to all of you for joining.
>> HELEN PETRIE: Thank you very much for inviting us.
It was very interesting.
>> GILLIAN FIELDING: Thank you.
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