Title:  Inclusivity Unpacked: Addressing Current Accessibility Gaps in K12 Education

00:00.43

Erin Evans

Thank you all for joining us today for this episode of Tech In EdTech. This is Inclusivity Unpacked: Addressing Current Accessibility Gaps in K12 Education. My name is Erin Evans, and I'm delighted to have Sharron Rush, who is the Executive Director of Knowbility joining us today. Sharron, welcome.

00:22.21

Sharron Rush

Thank you, Erin. Thanks for having me. It's great to be with you.

00:27.57

Erin Evans

Absolutely! Let's give our audience a little bit of background about you and Knowbility if you don't mind.

00:34.68

Sharron Rush

Sure, um, so as you said I'm Sharron Rush I'm the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Knowbility, which is a nonprofit organization based in Austin, Texas, but we like to say that we serve a global constituency because accessibility digital accessibility is such a global issue in the way that we all use technology. We were founded in 1999, so we're coming up, February 3rd is our twenty-fifth anniversary I didn't think I'd still be talking about Accessible Tech after 25 years, I thought we would have solved it by now. But you know, it's funny how that works.

01:11.90

Erin Evans

You know? Yeah, it's a yeah I don't think solving is the way where we're gonna be right I think we're just going to be on a continuous path of making things better which is good which is good.

01:27.24

Sharron Rush

It is good that we keep trying to make things better and I think what I didn't really figure into the equation was how much and how quickly technology would continue to change and I think we're going to. We're going to talk about some of those changes today. But in general, Knowbility operates. We do community programming. We have ah a web design contest that we call the Accessibility Internet Rally or AIR. We teach web developers about accessible design then we've got a conference every May, called AccessU, where people can come and get the training that they need to be good designers and developers. We have a lot of other community programming but those are our 2 major programs through the year and I'd love for your listeners to learn more about that and come play with us sometime around. We like to approach the idea of digital access from the point of view that it's not necessarily um, as hard as people think it is it benefits so many people and it really is a creative challenge.

02:35.14

Erin Evans

Yeah, I echo that sentiment that accessibility isn't necessarily a hard thing to do. It's just being aware of what needs to be done and I've personally benefited from some of the. Materials from Knowbility and I think it's a great place to get information and then share what you've learned as you go through.

02:57.55

Sharron Rush

Thank you. I think that's very much a part of this community. Yeah, the accessibility community and the disability community in general tend to share resources pretty effectively.

03:11.95

Erin Evans

I would agree with you 100% on that all right? So let's um, talk about assistive technology in the K-12 education space as well as accessibility in the K-12 space. Um, can you talk about how you have seen the provision of excessive assistive technologies; and how those have evolved over the past twenty-five, thirty years in the K-12 education space?

03:40.30

Sharron Rush

Well, you know, ah when I knew I was going to be on this podcast I had to do a little research because as much as we operate in the space of digital accessibility. We are not primarily. AhKTwelve organization although of course it's 1 of the most important areas. So I went and did a little research on this. You know what are the trends, how have things been going in these last twenty-five years my own experience unfortunately is that it doesn't seem that things have changed enough. To accommodate more kids I mean that's that was how I was feeling from my own personal experience with Knowbility in the schools that we do work with but I thought well you know there's a whole world out. There. Let me go do some research and I found. Um, Hanover Research did a paper called 2023 Trends in K-12 Education and EdTech I found that report to be very helpful in painting the big picture and I would recommend to your listeners that they look at that they talk about how? Artificial intelligence, AI, is disrupting personalized learning some of the impact that that's having which you know how could it not impact education when it's having such a broad impact on the rest of technology and how we use it I think um, one of the things.

05:11.19

Sharron Rush

That I have really been impressed with and encouraged is the idea of student-centered assessment. You know and because summative assessments so often have that bias that's built into them and so Ed tech products that. That Proffer formative assessments allow teachers then to use those immediately to shape how they're doing their lessons and how they're engaging students and um I find I find that technology has great power and effectiveness in that idea of. Formative assessment and having that an immediate interchange between how kids are doing and how you're teaching and how you might modify that to suit their learning needs. So Um I think I think that idea of how we use. And how we respond to assessment Data has maybe been a ah really positive change.

06:13.27

Erin Evans

So Thank you for that. You mentioned at the beginning of that response that you know Knowbility doesn't just focus on the K twelve space which is fine So I was curious if you could tell our listeners how Knowbility does interact and involve within K-12, and where you have seen the biggest impact that you guys have been able to make as you're working through and talking with the K-12 system?

06:42.67

Sharron Rush

We have an application that we call ATSTAR and it stands for Assistive Technology Assessment Resources and Tools and we what we try to do with that is to make. The expertise around a t more immediately accessible to classroom teachers. You know a lot of a lot of classroom teachers aren't really trained in in special education or necessarily even in assistive technology. Maybe they of course teachers are now prepared to use technology in the classroom. But maybe they don't really understand how assistive technology works and The IEP process and all that so ATSTAR takes classroom teachers through very short modules step at a time to say here is the process here's what you need. If you have a student who you think might benefit from assistive technology and it walks them through that process and I didn't mean to say that we um that we haven't been in the classrooms because we certainly have as I said I think that's one of the most important aspects of the work that we do. But that's not, that hasn't been our central or our only focus and so I think, some of your questions I may have to defer to people who are actually in the classrooms which I think is something that we should all be doing listen to those teachers listen to the classroom. The people in the classroom.

08:17.16

Sharron Rush

And understand what the challenges are that they're facing and that they're having to deal with above and Beyond assistive technology but certainly including that.

08:28.00

Erin Evans

So I Fully agree. It's It's a form of I would call it former user testing the user focus right? to see the people that are there and doing the work and using the Technologies. What is their feedback which leads me to a question about the At-star Program. And what kind of responses have you guys had from those people who are able to participate in that, get the information and what kind of questions do they tend to bring to you?

08:57.45

Sharron Rush

Well I think I think one of the one of the nicest things that I ever heard was when someone said well you know I was always afraid of assistive technology, but now I realize that it doesn't have to be a complex piece of Software. Assistive technology can be as simple as a straight edge that you use to correct your handwriting slant or you know it can be very simple things. A pencil grip can be an assistive technology and I think um, you know we really need to think about what constitutes assistive technology because it's very individualized. I think the key to optimizing the student experience and and the ability to learn is that we, as educators and as society, really provide choice and Accessibility. So if students can approach learning with the tools that they prefer not the tools that the system says oh you have to use this. Or you must use that. I mean so many kids with disabilities in the classroom were given these big clunky tools and those were you know automatically told the world. Oh, I'm a special Ed student whereas when they're given an iPad. They're just like the other kids. And that iPad, for them, becomes an assistive technology. So I think one of the challenges is just the very idea “Oh you need an assistive technology, you're a Special Ed kid. You're different from the rest of us. Is. That's one of the challenges. So Kids tend to reject their assistive technologies because it sets them apart from other students and somehow signifies them as being different.”

10:58.90

Erin Evans

And that's a really good point and one of the things that we've seen in the industry is especially as technology in general is more widely used in classrooms it's evening that divide, right? like it is showing that. All of the students are benefiting from the same device the same technology and kids don't necessarily look over to their neighbor and think oh gosh you have a disability because you have something that I don't have and I think and a benefit to what we've been seeing in the industry thinking about some of the information and the way that the technologies are used in the classroom. Let’s switch a little bit to the way that the content, the curriculum the elements that are being looked at on those iPads are used in the classroom. How do you see those from an accessibility perspective? What challenges do you think still are there and what challenges have those curriculum developers overcome in the past twenty years or so?

12:13.18

Sharron Rush

Oh dear, this is a this is a dismal question Erin because but it really is. I'm sorry to report that over the past 25 years, I think that a lot of the people who make curriculum products have been very resistant to the idea of accessibility and um and the absolutely biggest obstacle is that so many of the edtech products are not accessible. They do not work with assistive technologies. They don't have the accessibility features built into the interface that allows the um, the assistive technology to be effective and you know we we tend to measure that by conformance with the wick egg standard or section five 8 or these design standards that have been around now for quite a while right? The first wiccag standard I think was published in 1998 so this isn't a surprise nobody snuck up on curriculum product developers and said oh you have to do this by tomorrow.

13:16.41

Erin Evans

Aha.

13:26.20

Sharron Rush

There's been a lot of time but I think that always the or often I should say often because there are some people who do this well but we just did an assessment for a very large school district and they wanted us to assess. The top hundred tools that they used in their classrooms or in their administrative tasks. So well just guess how many of those do you think met basic Level A WCAG Standards?

14:03.62

Erin Evans

Of the top 100 I would say maybe 10 to I was close.

14:09.59

Sharron Rush

There were 2, yes, you were close so that was really disheartening that was really discouraging and um and for some of them. You know some of them. It was like okay they kind of tried they fell off a few things fell off the edge of the table not not terrible but the vast majority of them were like we're not even going to try to make this accessible and that was really discouraging So I'm just wondering. What it's going to take in our society to make that clear I mean I think the schools and I hate to give the schools more work to do. But I think there's going to have to be a um, ah movement among the schools. To just not buy stuff if it's not accessible.

15:02.51

Erin Evans

Yeah, and I can say from the Devil's Advocate, the flip side of that, that you know, we have seen the progress that is being made to improve those accessibility features and improve the accessibility. Of those curriculum products but kind of as you said you know Knowbility's been around. We've been talking about accessibility for 55 Years nothing is happening fast and I think that that is probably the place where it gets to be ah the most challenging because. We know that there is a need to support all learners and it's not necessarily easy to do in a massive update when you're working on a curriculum that may only update once every seven years and have to go through all of the.

15:56.92

Sharron Rush

Yeah, yeah.

16:00.26

Erin Evans

All of the hoops and all of that as well. So I do understand where it can be a challenge but I do think that within the industry I I can say that we've seen progress over the last ten years on awareness investment and.

16:13.22

Sharron Rush

Yes, awareness.

16:17.35

Erin Evans

Improvement but it's definitely not where it could be.

16:22.34

Sharron Rush

Well, you know it's interesting about awareness because as we talk to people who develop um curriculum products electronic curriculum products for K Twelve. We haven't found that there's much awareness of what it means to really design things to be accessible. Think they think you throw a few alt texts and ah you know name your buttons correctly and you're there but they don't really understand what it means to design an inclusive product that can that is universally accessible and I Think. You know we we confuse things like you you'll hear schools talk about a framework such as Udl Universal design for learning now I think that is a great framework but you have to have accessibility as a foundation.

17:14.97

Erin Evans

I have.

17:17.59

Sharron Rush

For UDL to be effective. You can't have a universally designed product or instructional practice If. It's not designed with that accessibility baked in and that's I think where the disconnects sometimes happen. They oh they use Udl We don't have to worry about accessibility right? and I think. I think one of the um so accessibility is a technical field. It has technical standards and the most common pitfall for Ed tech companies often is that they really don't take it seriously. Ah, they think oh it's just for a very small percentage of people. We don't have to invest in that, so they tend to do the bare minimum, and the irony in that to me is that - so much research has shown that when you design accessible products you make products that are better for all students for everyone. It's the same thing as in a building, you know, you've got this automatic door that's supposed to be for wheelchair users or a wheelchair ramp. Well it's not just people in wheelchairs who use that it's people traveling and pulling their luggage behind them or parents with kids and strollers the delivery driver the mailman and all kinds of people use those affordances and the same is true with accessible designs in curriculum products or any kind of computer-based interface, that when you design with accessibility in mind you provide more options. You make it easier for everyone to use and that's the irony to me I wish, somehow, we could get that message to the people who make classroom products.

19:09.16

Erin Evans

Well, that's definitely a goal that we have here at Magic and one of the goals of this podcast right? We um we had a previous conversation a couple of them actually on the UDL

19:12.27

Sharron Rush

I Agree you do, y'all do a good job!

19:25.28

Erin Evans

Guidelines, how we can build those in what some of the larger curriculum development companies are doing and you know where to go it is it's I sometimes talk about you know, eating the elephant right? It's one bite at a time and it is.

19:38.99

Sharron Rush

(Laughs)

19:42.16

Erin Evans

It is a lot. You know we in Accessibility. They're so funny because we have a lot of different catchphrases right? like boiling the ocean and that kind of stuff but definitely agree that the universal design for learning specifically in the education environment and then just. General U DL principles out there are intended to support everyone and the more that we can align to those and have an understanding of that will also benefit the technical compliance side of a build. And then there's the usability testing and the user experience right? We were talking about that earlier about going into the teachers, classrooms, and finding out what's working and what's not from the teachers and the students in principle when you're building something what does that look like and how is it supporting the people who are using them.

20:38.65

Erin Evans

I have only a couple more questions for you. You mentioned, a little bit, the individualized education plans and what those look like from Knowbility's perspective and from an accessibility perspective. How have you seen the impact of those and what possible improvements would you guys think about in making those more effective?

21:01.66

Sharron Rush

Well, that's I think that is a great question and that is a question for somebody who has ah a more formal background in education I think because what what I see the benefit of the IEP is um is the personalized nature of it and I think that personalization is something that we must try to protect and and retain. It needs to be reinforced though, I think, we need better mechanisms to support IEP teams and the team members so that they have more choice in the toolkit to choose from. You know, ah expense is not supposed to be a factor but we can't deny the fact that it is a factor in schools whose budgets are so constrained. I think also just awareness. The IEP team can't make recommendations for tools or affordances that they don't even know exist. So how can we provide more, I don't know if it would be federal or regional, services that are really and truly reaching everyone regardless of whatever. There are parts of, so we're in Austin Texas and we work real closely with the assistive technology specialists over there, and we have through the years we worked with them. That's how we got involved with ATSTAR - we were the advisors on the technical aspects and they were the subject matter experts and, ah you know, there are schools in that in the Austin Independent school district that have never called their AT Specialists at the District level. They've never called them. They've never been there. So do you think that's because oh those schools don't have any kids that need assistive technology or do you think it's because oh those schools have solved all their assistive technology problems? They don't need District-level Support? No. It's because they don't have the bandwidth. They don't understand the need and they just, they don't know to call and get the help they need for those kids. And I just, you know, you think that the kids that tend to get the best services are the ones that have the most ferocious Mama Bear kind of parents and I don't think that parents of students with disabilities should have to fight so hard to just to get basic services and you don't want a kid's success in the classroom to depend on the advocacy skills of their parents. So I just think we've got to rethink this process so that it's an equalizing force and that effective services are available and proactively available to everyone. That's a wish I don't know I wish I could be more practical and say “And Erin, here's how we're going to do it” but ah.

24:09.73

Erin Evans

No, but think it's a fair point and I think you're right I think you know we were talking earlier about the members of the accessibility community and how we are consistently ah raising that awareness. Building and that advocacy and you know what else is out there. How else can we partner where else can we go and there's a lot. It's clear that there's a lot and there's a lot of opportunities.

24:35.60

Sharron Rush

And truly there are I mean if we had more standardization about the systems that record the IEP recommendations and we have systemized ways to measure and track now with the technology we have. We should be able to do that, to to notice if the IEP has actually been enforced or followed. Doesn't it still feel like it's the Wild West when it comes to applying these some of the districts we've seen have very standardized systems and some of the more advanced states, standardize it at the state level. But so the problem is there are so many different tools and variations in how the services are considered delivered and recorded. It's really hard sometimes to know if the IEP teams are really succeeding. So I don't know I think collaboration, standardization, support, from either the State or the Feds, would be helpful.

25:48.31

Erin Evans

Let's wrap this up with one last question which is where is Knowbility going from here and how are you guys going to continue your advocacy and your awareness methods not just in the K-12 space, but in general, and you know what the future looks like for you guys?

26:06.26

Sharron Rush

Well, that's that is a great question because we've been doing this for 25 years. What Knowbility really works for and what we can have always tried to do is to address the root causes of what we call “digital discrimination” - that we need to create a world, like the built environment in the United States you cannot build a public space anymore without taking into consideration the rights of people with disabilities to participate in that space, on an equal basis, to be able to move around in it and I think that we have to figure out a system now that we can agree to and educate people to so that when the developers and the designers are learning about design, they learn about accessibility and it becomes part of that. You know in the in the so I'm in Austin. It's a tech hub we have startups doing everything in the world making apps for this or that or the other thing and they have this understanding of what is a Minimum Viable Product. They call it the MVP. That's the minimum viable product. Well in my opinion, it shouldn't be considered viable that v should not be in there if it doesn't include accessibility until we start thinking about the fact that this is a public accommodation this access to technology and bringing people in and making sure that everyone who's learning about making technology understands and incorporates that into their work. I think we'll still be like playing whack-a-mole you know, knocking this over here and that one over there. It's kind of crazy because I just don't think that we can expect universal access or equal access unless we have a standard that is, I mean I mentioned earlier procurement officers, don't buy it if it's not accessible. Don't buy it if you're an investor in startups, don't invest in it if they're not incorporating accessibility into it. So that's what Knowbility will probably just keep working on all that stuff and we do try to approach. I'm very cautious about saying we need more standards or we need more enforcement because that doesn't really motivate people. That's not, people don't say oh I'm so excited to do this because it's the law right? But they will say when so I told you about the accessibility internet rally, it's a challenge it says we want you to design a website for this. Local community group. It's neighborhood Associations Church groups small nonprofit organizations and as we're gonna give you eight weeks to do it and we're gonna teach you about accessibility first before we unleash you on this on this nonprofit group or sometimes it's a school. And so it becomes then oh I can show how smart I am, I can win this contest, I can really you know show off my skills which is a kind of a motivating thing to do and and that's what we try to tell people who make products. When you do this your products are going to be so much better. They're going to excite people. People are going to want to use these things because they are such a delight to use because you've thought about your user, you've thought about all your users and you've made products that are more accessible. You know I think we've still got a lot to do so we'll probably be working on this for a while but it is exciting and it's challenging and um and I do think you know I I'm sorry if I sounded so negative about out of a hundred only two because I do think what you said is true about awareness. Awareness of this has grown and so now we need to take that awareness and motivate people to actualize it, to take that awareness that they have now and apply it to the work that they're doing to make technology and to make technology work for everybody.

30:47.70

Erin Evans

Thank you so much for joining us Sharron it was a delight to have this conversation and to have you on our podcast. To our listeners, thank you for joining us and listening to this conversation and we hope for you to be able to join us when the next episode comes out.

31:02.59

Sharron Rush

Well, thanks for having me. It was great to be here with you, Erin.

31:15.70

Erin Evans

Absolutely!