Module #6: Accessibility in Education

October Already?!

I am absolutely mind blown that we are already in October and wrapping up the first quarter of the school year! I feel as if this is around the time that the students are finally starting to get a hang of things and summer thoughts have officially worn off. We are currently exploring the Age of Enlightenment and the American Revolution in US History, and are creating travel brochures for our "Athens vs Sparta" unit in World History. I am absolutely amazed at the level of creativity and artistic ability that I am seeing in my sophomores this year! Although students are creating brochures using actual paper and writing utensils, I am considering doing this sort of project again in the future digitally. It might be neat to see how creative young people can be with technology.

 Accessibility Findings

This week's module on accessibility truly opened my eyes to the amazing features that exist on the devices that we interact with on a day to day basis. As educators, it is so important to become familiar with these features, especially if your students regularly use or have access to a device, such as a Chromebook or iPad. This is especially important for teachers with students that have special needs. In Eric Curts' article on accessibility, he discusses many accessibility features found in Google products. Other than the usual text-to-speech features, I was particularly interested in finding out there are reading comprehension Google Chrome extensions that summarize text for you. I imagine that the summary feature, if used properly, can be used in a very efficient and beneficial way for our students. 

One of the more interesting articles that I read from this module was blog post from Karwai Pun which discusses the "dos and don'ts on designing for accessibility". Karwai Pun gives a lot of great insight into how to design lessons and activities for all levels of students, including those with special needs. I was interested to read about all of the ideas for students on the autism spectrum and how to accommodate to them, as well as what not to do. It is interesting that things such as text walls, that are so common in most general classrooms, can be very complicated to process for students on the autism spectrum. 

 Chromebook Accessibility Features

 Below is a poster I made showcasing some of the useful accessibility features of Chromebook devices. I chose a Canva poster because I find myself to be a visual learner. As I was reading through the various articles on accessibility, I found myself drawn to the Karwai Pun blog post due to their use of visuals and posters. I teach at a school where Chromebooks are 1:1 and students use their devices in almost every class. It can be very difficult for students to find success without access to a fully charged Chromebook device. Some of the accessibility features that I have both used and am interested in using can be found on this poster. Some of the features that I have used and found success with have been the text-to-speech feature, the on-screen keyboard, and font size adjustment. These features have been useful for myself, as well as my students, both those with special needs and without special needs. The features that I do not have much experience with, but can definitely see the benefit of are the large mouse cursor and the color inversion feature to help students that have color blindness.