In this section, I will focus on the changes in the EU Accessibility legislation and policy.
Currently, all Public sector bodies are undergoing a dramatic shift in their websites and digital / learning materials.
New accessibility regulations came into force in September 2018. This is known as The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018. The Equality Act (2010) already protects disabled students from discrimination. The latest regulation implements the EU directive on the accessibility of the websites and mobile applications of public sector bodies into UK law.
This makes explicit the need for digital materials from public bodies to be accessible. University teaching, learning and research platforms are included as part of the directive.
All university platforms and services must publish an accessibility statement from:
- New websites published after 23 September 2018: 23 September 2019
- Existing websites: 23 September 2020
- Mobile apps: 23 June 2021
There are exemptions and different deadlines apply to some content types, such as intranets, archives and pre-recorded media published before 23 September 2020.
To deal with such rapid change, an EU Accessibility Directive Group was created (of which I am a member). As part of this group, we discussed the issues that would face staff and students and (amongst other statements for separate platforms) created the Oxford Brookes University Accessibility statement for the website.
Several meetings of the EU Directive working group have now taken place, I have included the minutes from the August 2019 meeting (names -apart from mine- and file URLs have been redacted) as 3a evidence.
A subgroup was created to develop a series of workshops, planned to assist academic staff in the changes of the law, the pedagogical shift in practice and ‘Creating Digitally Accessible Learning and Teaching Materials’. This was pre-COVID-19 and the sessions were run face-to-face. Two colleagues and myself ran several sessions in the faculties and for special interest groups, below is a handout created by myself and another colleague for use in the sessions.
After September 2020 existing content on Moodle has become applicable to this law change. Sadly, although it is good practice to be as accessible as possible with learning materials, not all follow this practice. As such the decision was made to acquire Blackboard Ally to automatically increase awareness and provide detailed insight and guidance to staff on how to improve the accessibility of their courses / modules, and to improve the overall student experience with (automatically generated) alternative formats for students.
Upon reflection, I personally feel we should already have been doing this and it should not have needed a change in the law to prompt us to become more accessible and inclusive.
I have for several years developed courses and modules with accessibility and inclusivity in mind, giving the option to students to choose how they want to learn rather than a single approach. However this change in legislation has made me increasingly aware of a variety of circumstances that affect students (and staff). These circumstances are very often hidden, from the general ‘user’, however I am glad to be exposed to them as not only does it allow me to fix an issue effecting a student / staff member but also allows me to learn how better to support others in the future (like the member of staff who had a visual impairment I assisted in section 2b).
Even though I aim to conduct all my work with accessibility and inclusivity in mind. I still do find it a challenge to pursue it in all of my projects. While not all technologies are accessibility and inclusivity ‘friendly’ (for example, not all H5P activities are accessible, and this must be kept in mind when course designing) often there are workarounds to make them so, it just takes more time to design this into projects, which can become problematic when dealing with tight deadlines. However, especially now with the legislation change accessibility and inclusivity are at the forefront of my mind when course designing or creating learning materials (or in fact anything).
This change in the mindset of academic staff to produce their learning materials in to a more accessible ‘format’ has been difficult. Furthermore, this has also put more of a burden on the faculty eLearning technologists who are already close to capacity, especially so during COVID-19 when their time is in high demand.
As part of the mindset change (and during COVID-19’s extraordinary affect to teaching), I specifically created several interactive guidance pages to provide self directed ‘on the ground’ assistance for academic staff. I created the below pages to help staff acclimatise and learn how to make their teaching and learning materials more accessible. I curated the ‘top ten essentials’ for ensuring digitally accessible materials to help academics get started, and also listed further resources for when they are ready to delve deeper and create high-quality, accessible learning materials and communications.
