Let's Talk Accessibility!

Accessibility in Education

I want to talk about accessibility for a moment. The modern education system is rapidly expanding its accessibility measures now that instructional design has a foundational purpose. But what does that all mean? How does accessibility affect education and learning? The idea of instructional design is to make education accessible to as many people as possible. This means researchers had to redefine the meaning of  "learning." 

My experience in education is about the same as that of everyone else who went to high school before 2010. I was smart, perceptive, and extremely imaginative. I favored English and science. Except I did not know I was neurodivergent at the time. The older I got, the more difficult it became to comprehend the texts I was reading without an audio version. Now that I know how my brain works, so many opportunities have become possible. I know how to learn properly with the brain I was born with. And that means that I can help other people with brains like mine to learn how they were meant to learn. I believe learning is a spectrum, and if we can find our place on it, we can learn just about anything we want.

  My goals in education are to make the learning experience achievable for every student by providing resources that help them learn in ways that benefit them. This means I want to create or find alternative educational materials that will help school districts better serve their students. When I discovered software for reading long texts using voice-to-text or other screen readers, I began absorbing as much material as I could. In doing so, I learned tricks that will help other learners. My most important goal is to begin any creation with accessibility in mind and to treat every barrier as an opportunity for improvement.