Session Title: One Size Does Not Fit All: Supporting Diversity Through Inclusive Design
Presenter: Jutta Treviranus, Director, Adaptive Technology Resource Centre, University of Toronto
Time & Date: 11:15 A.M. - 12:00 P.M., Friday, August 14, 2009
Location: Rm. C150
Session Description: All learners learn differently. Differences can originate from a learner’s culture, language, background knowledge, learning approach, interests, attitudes, resources, environments and abilities. Effective and engaging learning experiences can be designed to support this diversity. Inclusive design leads to greater creativity and innovation but also ease of updating and therefore longevity, better interoperability, simpler localization and translation, improved searching and indexing and improved portability. For the learner, inclusive design enables individualized learning leading to better learning outcomes.
Many learners around the world experience significant barriers to education. Learners with disabilities must deal with multiple compounding disadvantages. People with disabilities represent one sixth of the world?s population. Further, an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of people with disabilities live in low-income countries, compounding disability with poverty and lack of access to education, employment and necessary social supports. Open education has the most to offer this group of learners as resources are pooled from many sources and can be adapted without copyright concerns. However most open education resources are not designed accessibly. The recent UN Convention on the rights of people with disabilities is being ratified in over 100 nations and has very specific commitments regarding equal access to education. Unfortunately the response to this and other accessibility legislation is most often concern for costs and legal liability without an awareness of the considerable benefits of inclusive design for all learners or awareness that learning resources designed accessibly from the start do not cost more. Among the many other benefits, educational resources that are designed to be accessible also address the learning needs of second language learners, learners who are aging, learners in challenging contexts and learners under stress.
Methods of meeting legislative and policy commitments to inclusive design while improving learning for all learners will be demonstrated. An integrated, sustainable approach to accessibility will be outlined. The presentation will propose a roadmap to an inclusive open education resource initiative.
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