186: edtech for IT: Accessibility

Welcome to today's deep dive. I am, I'm so glad you're joining us today because we are starting

off with a bit of a thought experiment. Oh, I love these. Let's hear it. Right. Okay. So I want you

to imagine you are trying to navigate through a sprawling, densely populated city. You have a

critically important meeting to get to, but there is a major catch. There's always a catch.

Always. All of the street signs, all the subway maps, even the crosswalk signals. They only appear

if you are wearing a very specific, very expensive brand of glasses. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. If you don't

have those glasses, the signs are just, you know, blank metal plates. The maps are empty paper.

The city is still there bustling all around you, but the infrastructure you need to understand it

to actually move through it is completely invisible. That's, I mean, it's a profoundly

isolating image. You were essentially locked out of the flow of information. And the reason it's so

striking is that it perfectly captures the daily reality of the digital landscape for millions of

people. You know, when accessibility isn't baked into the design from the start, that's exactly

what it feels like. And today, we are going to explore how that exact scenario plays out

in one of our most critical environments, which is the classroom. We are pulling from an incredibly

insightful article by Gary Ackerman from his site, hack science dot education. Yeah, his work

is fantastic. It really is. The piece is titled edtech for IT accessibility. And as a quick

side note for you listening, Ackerman also produces this really cool micro audio series called

crow plus classroom. Oh, yeah, the short ones. Exactly. It's brilliant because he tackles these

massive complex topics like 88 compliance and inclusivity. But in these incredibly tight

90 second bursts, I mean, it is pure distilled insight. Taking the sprawling complexities of

educational technology and distilling them into actionable bite sized information is a rare skill.

He manages to cut right through the academic jargon, which is so refreshing. Totally. So our

mission for this deep dive is to take Ackerman's insights and uncover how the legal mandate of

accessibility in schools has evolved. It's no longer just about, you know, checking a bureaucratic

compliance box just to avoid a lawsuit. And right, that's the old way of thinking. Exactly. It

is actually transformed into this secret underlying engine that improves the digital learning

experience for absolutely everyone. Okay, let's unpack this because the way we handle accessibility

has fundamentally shifted, right? Let's start with the history. It has shifted massively. Yeah.

If we look back to the baseline, we really have to start with the Americans with Disabilities Act

or the ADA, which became law back in 1990. Right. 1990. Yeah. And this is a foundational civil

rights law in the United States. Its core intention is to ensure that all individuals,

regardless of their disability status, have equal access to public resources.

You think so? So when we translate that legal mandate into the realm of education,

it means that every single material used in a class, textbooks, handouts, media, whatever,

it must be available to all students. So in the physical classroom of the 1990s,

that basically meant if a teacher handed out a traditional printed textbook,

the school was legally obligated to provide a braille version for an audio cassette version

for a student who needed it. Right. That was the baseline. But think about the logistics of

that 1990s model. The burden of creating those accessible materials largely fell on massive

publishing companies. Right. The textbook giants. Exactly. These giant publishers had entire

departments, workflows, massive budgets dedicated entirely to producing alternative versions

of their resources. They printed the standard textbook, then stamped out the braille textbook,

formatted the large print textbook, which is part of the pipeline. Yeah. It was a known,

highly managed variable in their commercial production cycle. But flash forward to today,

and the landscape of education has changed drastically. I mean, we aren't just handing out

identical textbooks anymore. Not at all. Teachers are constantly creating their own custom

digital materials. They're throwing together slide decks on a Sunday afternoon,

recording instructional videos, building custom web portals, formatting digital quizzes.

And that is where the dynamic completely inverts. When teachers become the primary creators of

instructional materials, they simultaneously inherit the legal and ethical responsibility of

making sure those materials are accessible, which is huge. It is. The burden moves practically

overnight from a multi-million dollar publishing corporation directly onto the shoulders of the

individual educator. It makes me think of building a house. Those massive publishers,

they're like commercial contractors building a skyscraper. They have architects, legal teams,

and compliance officers, ensuring every single inch is built strictly to code. Right. They know

the regulations inside and out. Exactly. But individual teachers, they're like DII-ers building home

extensions on the weekends. They are passionate. They're working incredibly hard, but they are doing

it in their spare time, often late at night. How on earth does a weekend DII-er know if their custom

built digital materials are actually, you know, up to code? That is the core tension Ackerman points

out. A teacher might design a highly engaging, visually stunning digital lesson, but if a student

using a screen reading software can't access it, that lesson is fundamentally broken. Right. It's

the invisible city again. Yes. And teachers, for all their deep expertise in pedagogy and child

development, they are rarely trained as digital accessibility compliance officers. They need a

standardized blueprint, which brings us to the manual. Because if you have thousands of DIY

teachers trying to build equitable digital extensions, they need a rulebook. And that rulebook

arrived in a major way in June 2018. It did. That is when the worldwide web consortium, which is the

international community, that basically develops web standards. Usually we just called the W3C. Right.

The W3C. Yeah. They adopted the web content accessibility guidelines version 2.1. We usually

just abbreviate it to WCAG 2.1. This became the absolute gold standard. It specifies the exact

characteristics that digital media must possess and to be considered truly accessible.

So Ackerman breaks us down into four mandatory characteristics or pillars. And I want to walk

through how a teacher actually applies these because let's be honest, reading a web standard manual

sounds about as fun as reading a stereo instruction booklet. Oh, it is extremely dry material.

Right. So let's say I'm a teacher and I upload a graphic showing the water cycle. The first WSAG

pillar says my material must be perceivable. I assume that just means making sure the image isn't

blurry. Well, no, it's actually much deeper than visual clarity. Perceivable means that the

information must be presentable to users in ways they can actively perceive through multiple sensory

channels. Okay. It cannot be invisible to all of their senses. In the case of your water cycle

graphic, a student who is blind and using a screen reader cannot perceive those pixels on the screen,

the image essentially doesn't exist for them. Okay. So how do I fix that? I mean, I can't verbally

describe every single image to the student during class. You build the description into the code

of the document itself. You use something called alternative text or alt text. When you upload that

image, you attach a hidden written description to it. Like a tag. Exactly. Now the how is really

important here. Bad alt text is just leaving the file name like, you know, IMG 4092.jpg. Oh,

and the screen reader, which is read that out. A screen reader will literally read that out loud.

IMG underscore 4092.jpg, which tells the student absolutely nothing. Right. That's useless.

Good alt text translates the visual data into verbal data. So for your graphic, it would say

a diagram showing the water cycle, evaporation from the ocean, condensation into clouds,

and precipitation as rain. Wow. Okay. So when the screen reader hits that image code,

it reads your description aloud. And suddenly that visual information is transformed into

an audible format. The image becomes perceivable. That makes so much sense. You're giving the

computer the script it needs to translate for the student. The same would go for video. Right.

If I upload a video lecture, I have to add closed captions because the deaf student needs the audio

translated into a visual format they can perceive. Precisely. You're providing multiple sensory

avenues to the exact same information. Okay. So I've added my alt text to the water cycle.

I've captioned my video. The student can perceive it. But the second pillar says the material

must be operable. If they can already see or hear it, what does operable actually mean?

Operability is all about how the user interacts with the digital environment. The most common hurdle

here involves navigation. Think about how you typically scroll through a web page or, you know,

click a link. It just grabbed my mouse and click it. Right. But using a mouse requires a very

specific type of fine motor control and hand-eye coordination. Many individuals with motor disabilities

rely entirely on a keyboard to navigate a computer. Just the keyboard. Just the keyboard.

Using the tab key to jump between links, the enter key to select, the arrow keys to scroll.

If you design a custom digital quiz that requires a student to drag and drop answers using

amounts and you haven't coded a way to do that using just the keyboard. Oh, you've completely

locked them out. You've completely locked that student out. They can perceive the quiz, but they

cannot operate it. Oh, wow. I wouldn't have even thought of that. If the software doesn't recognize a

tab keystroke, the student is just stuck staring at a quiz they can't take. And Ackerman also

mentioned something under this pillar about flashing displays. Yes, this is a critical safety mechanism.

Content must not be designed in a way that is known to cause seizures or physical reactions.

Rapid strobing effects or certain high contrast animations can trigger photosensitive epilepsy.

Operability isn't just about being able to click a button, it is about ensuring the digital

environment is physically safe to interact with. Which brings us to the third pillar.

Yeah. Let's say the student can perceive my quiz and they can safely operate it using their

keyboard. The third requirement is that the material must be understandable. This feels a bit,

I don't know, redundant. If it's perceivable and operable, isn't it inherently understandable?

Not necessarily. Think of it this way. Perceivable and operable deal with sensory and physical

access. Understandable deals with cognitive access. It is about the logic of the user interface.

Okay, give me an example. So if your student is tabbing through that digital quiz using their

keyboard, the order their cursor moves should be logical. It should go from question one to answer

a, b, c, then to question two. If the focus jumps randomly from question one,

down to the footer of the page, then back up to question four. That would be incredibly confusing.

Exactly. The operation isn't understandable. Oh, I see. It's about predictability.

It's also about clear communication when things go wrong. If a student makes an error on a digital

form, the error message needs to explicitly explain what went wrong and how to fix it.

Just flashing a generic red X isn't understandable. Yeah, that's just frustrating.

And the navigation of a class website should be consistent. You don't want the main menu on the left

side on Monday and then hidden in a drop-down menu on the right side on Tuesday. Keep it logical,

keep the cognitive load low. I'm with you. But now we hit the fourth pillar and I have to be honest,

I need to push back on this one. What's here? The fourth pillar is that materials must be robust.

Ackerman notes this means materials must be compatible both forward and backward in time.

That is the standard, yes. But technology changes at an absolutely lightning speed.

Telling a busy teacher that the digital worksheet they're scrambling to finish on a Tuesday night

needs to be compatible forward and backward in time. Sounds completely unreasonable.

It does sound like a lot. I mean, I remember trying to code my MySpace page back in 2006,

and if I put one bracket in the wrong place, the whole page got fire.

How is an algebra teacher supposed to future-proof their lesson against whatever operating

system Apple is going to release in 2030? What's fascinating here is that the requirement for

robustness isn't actually asking teachers to be fortune tellers or master programmers.

It is asking them to rely on clean standard coding practices rather than chasing the newest

flashiest technological gimmick. Okay, but how does standard codes survive time better than new tech?

Because assistive technologies like screen readers or specialized Braille keyboards are often

incredibly complex and highly customized for the user. Students in schools simply cannot afford

to upgrade these expensive devices every time a software company releases a minor update.

Oh, that makes sense. The hardware is a bottleneck.

Right. If a teacher builds a document using standard HTML text and basic heading structures,

which have been around for decades, it will be robust. A screen reader from five years ago

can parse that standard code perfectly, and a screen reader five years in the future will still

be able to parse it because it's the foundational language of the web. Ah, but if the teacher

decides to use some proprietary, highly animated flash in the pan widget they found on a random

education blog. That's where the material breaks. If that fancy widget only works on the absolute

newest version of one specific web browser, it violates the robust pillar because as soon as

that browser updates or if the student is using an older assistive device, the code shatters.

So it's about simplicity really. Yes. Robustness simply means maximizing compatibility by sticking

to the basics. Without that unshakable foundation, educational equity is entirely at the mercy of

the next random software update. Yeah, completely flips my perspective. It's not about anticipating

the future. It's about building a foundation so solid that it doesn't matter when the wind changes.

Exactly. But let's take a step back. Ensuring that every single digital material is perceivable with

alt text, operable via keyboard, understandable in its layout, and robustly coded. That is a massive

checklist, especially when traditionally we think of this effort as being for a relatively small

subset of students who have documented disabilities. It sounds like a monumental heavy lift for a

niche outcome, but this is the exact moment where the narrative around accessibility transforms.

Here's where it gets really interesting because Akerman points out a massive, unexpected payoff to

all this work. While these WK standards were originally engineered to provide access for those

with specific disabilities, educators are finding that resources meeting these standards actually

improve the learning experience for all students. Universally. It is a phenomenon that physical

accessibility advocates have known about for decades and seeing it map perfectly onto digital

education is just incredible. It's the curb cut effect. For anyone of familiar, the curb cut effect

comes from physical urban planning. Back in the day, sidewalks just dropped off sharply into

the street at an intersection. Right. A literal step down. Yeah. Disability advocates fought

incredibly hard for curb cuts. Those little ramps carved into the corner of the sidewalk,

specifically so individuals in wheelchairs could cross the street independently. It was a targeted

interventions for a specific group. But once those physical curb cuts were installed, society realized

something unexpected. Right. Everyone started using them. Parents pushing heavy strollers didn't

have to lift them over the curb. Travelers dragging rolling luggage could glide right into the crosswalk,

delivery workers with hand trucks, kids on skateboards, a design mandate intended for wheelchairs,

ended up making the physical environment smoother and more efficient for the entire population.

And that exact same dynamic occurs in the digital classroom. Let's look at those WK

Kaga pillars again, but this time through the lens of the digital curb cut. Take closed captions on

a video. The ADA mandates them so a student who is deaf can perceive the content. But who else uses

closed captions? Oh, a student will try and watch a lecture in a noisy cafeteria who forgot their

headphones. Or a student whose first language isn't English, who heavily benefits from reading the

words while hearing them spoken to reinforce their comprehension. Exactly. Or consider the

requirement for structured digital text and clear navigation cues, the understandable and robust

pillars. Originally designed so screen readers could logically parse the code of a document.

But who else benefits from a cleanly formatted document with clear, predictable headings instead

of a giant wall of text? A student who is just exhausted. You know, running on coffee, studying

it two in the morning on a tiny phone screen, they don't have the mental energy to hunt through a

chaotic layout. The clear structure lowers the cognitive load for them too. That is the ultimate

mechanism at play here. Cognitive load. When you design for the margins for the extreme use cases,

you inherently remove friction from the core experience. Wow, that's a great way to put it.

And when you remove digital friction, the mental energy that a student was wasting just trying

to access or navigate the material can be redirected toward actually understanding the concept.

It transforms accessibility from a burden of compliance into a literal strategy for excellence.

But even knowing that this curb cut effect benefits everyone, we are still asking our DIY

weekend warrior teachers to write alt text, test keyboard operability, and audit their code

for robustness. It's a lot to ask. That is a massive amount of technical overhead for someone

whose primary job is teaching eighth grade history. They cannot be expected to manage this

technical audit alone. Nor should they be. And this is where a critical, often overlooked group

steps into the spotlight. Ackerman explicitly calls out the vital role of school IT professionals

in this ecosystem. I'm so glad he brought this up because I think people often view school

IT departments purely as the folks who unblock the jammed printer or reset the Wi-Fi route when it

goes down. Right, it is a very reactive perception of their role. But Ackerman argues that IT professionals

must be the proactive infrastructure supporting teachers in this endeavor.

If teachers are the DIY builders, IT professionals are the building inspectors providing the

specialized tools. So what does that look like mechanically? How does an IT department audit

thousands of documents created by hundreds of teachers? It starts by configuring the technical

environment so that accessibility is the default setting rather than an afterthought.

For instance, most modern productivity suites like Microsoft Office or Google Workspace,

they have automated accessibility checkers built right in. Oh, really? Yeah,

they work a lot like a spell checker, but for code. As a teacher types, the software scans the

document and flags if an image is missing alt text. Or if the color contrast of a font is too low

to be readable. Like a little red squiggly line. Exactly. The IT department's job is to deploy

these tools domain-wide, ensure they are activated, and train the teachers on what those warnings mean.

So it's about empowering the teacher with automated feedback right at the point of creation.

Yes, but IT also carries a broader auditing responsibility. They use specialized software that

acts almost like a search engine spider. This software crawls the school's internal network,

scanning learning management systems and public websites, generating reports on compliance failures.

Oh, wow. Yeah, they can instantly see, okay, 40% of the videos uploaded this semester lack close

captions. They are the ultimate quality assurance team. If we connect this to the bigger picture,

the IT department is really acting as the crucial bridge here. So think about the span of that bridge.

On one side, you have a foundational civil rights law from 1990, the ADA. In the middle,

you have a highly technical set of international web standards from 2018 WCAG G2.1. And on the far

side, you have the daily, messy, fast-paced reality of a teacher trying to deliver a lesson

to 30 distracted kids on a Wednesday morning. The IT professionals are the translators.

They take the heavy legal mandate and the dense technical code and they build the invisible

infrastructure that allows the teacher to actually deliver equitable education. Yeah.

Without IT running those domain-wide scans and setting up the automated checkers,

the law is just words on a page. And the standard is just a theoretical ideal.

They make the invisible infrastructure visible and functional.

So let's bring this all together. We started with the isolated city and we've walked through

how digital accessibility and education has evolved. It is this intricate, shared ecosystem.

You have civil rights laws setting the moral baseline. You have international web guidelines

providing the technical manual. You have teachers doing the hard work of building the daily learning

materials. And you have IT professionals acting as the backbone, ensuring the whole system holds

together. It's a profound shift in how we view the responsibility of digital creation.

So what does this all mean for you? Even if you aren't a teacher or a school IT director,

this applies to your life right now. Whether you are drafting a corporate memo to your team,

designing a basic landing page for your small business, or just sending a highly complex email

outlining a project plan, you are a digital creator. We all are really. We are. And if you apply

these four pillars, making sure your content is perceivable with descriptive text,

operable without bizarre constraints, understandable with logical flow, and robust enough to work

cleanly across devices, you will make your communication infinitely more effective for whoever

receives it. You are building digital curb cuts in your own daily life. And that leads to a fascinating

implication about the future of how we interact with information. We have spent this time talking

about how accessible design makes information clearer and more robust for human minds,

but consider what else relies entirely on clear, structured digital data to learn and operate.

Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence. Large language models and web crawlers

read the internet in a way that is remarkably similar to how a screen reader operates. They don't

have human eyes, they parse code, structure, and text description. Wow, I never thought of that.

This raises an important question for you to ponder. As we integrate AI deeper into our daily lives,

could strictly following human accessibility standards like WCAG 2.1 soon become the baseline

requirement simply to ensure your content is visible to AI systems. We might soon find that

designing for digital equity is also the ultimate strategy for digital survival in the AI age.

That is an incredible thought to leave on. Designing for the margins might end up being the key

to communicating with machines in the future. Thank you for joining us on this deep dive.

Next time you encounter a blank digital wall, we hope you remember the power of the

invisible infrastructure. Until next time. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Victory Lane?

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