Why Are Accessible Learning Spaces Important?
Accessible Learning Spaces ensure a diverse range of learners can participate and engage with the activities, physical spaces, digital tools, and content that we have planned and created for them. Accessible learning spaces benefit everyone, not only students with disabilities. Accessible Learning Spaces might be physical spaces, such as a classroom, a lab, a meeting room, the location of a WIL experience, the library; or digital spaces, like online meetings, Learning Management Systems (LMS), digital platforms such as Microsoft Teams, or any other Edtech tools we use to interact with learners.
Learning Spaces convey a message about power dynamics in the classroom: who’s valued in a room? Whose voices are more important? Who is welcome and who is excluded? Learning spaces can unintentionally or intentionally exclude certain voices.
The layout of a classroom or learning space also communicates a message about the educators’ and the institution’s beliefs about teaching and learning. Learning spaces are not just containers; they actively shape the educational experience. For example: flexible seating encourages movement and interaction, fostering active engagement. Fixed seating with learners facing the instructors and their backs to one another may promote passive absorption of information.
How Can I Create Accessible Learning Spaces?
On this page, you’ll discover strategies to foster more accessible and welcoming learning environments. While we may not be able to dismantle all structural and systemic barriers individually, we can take meaningful steps to promote inclusivity for our learners:
- Mindset Shift:
- Challenge Assumptions: Changing our mindset and challenging limiting ideas and assumptions about what a learning space can look and feel like is the first steps to creating accessible learning experiences, where diverse minds and bodies feel comfortable, welcome, and ready to learn.
- Embrace Diversity: Recognize that learners come with varied backgrounds, lived experiences, abilities, identities, and learning preferences. Celebrate this diversity rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all approach.
- Be proactive: Accessible learning spaces are designed proactively with Universal Design principles in mind. Accessible Learning Spaces consider the wide range of needs, preferences, abilities, circumstances, and identities of our learners to create inclusive and welcoming experiences that work for everyone.
- Offer choice and flexibility: By intentionally removing barriers and offering choice and flexibility, we reduce the need for some accommodations. We will still have learners who need individual accommodations, but a purposeful approach to accessibility will allow us to anticipate many needs and come up with inclusive solutions. Giving learners opportunities to take ownership of their learning can help reduce barriers and increase motivation.
- Include your own needs as an educator: Educators are human beings as well. Considering our own needs as educators is essential to create an accessible experience for all.
- Use your creativity: We will encounter situations where two or more learners have conflicting access and accessibility needs. Our needs as educators might also be in conflict with the needs of some of our learners. Addressing these conflicting needs will require flexibility and creativity. We might not get it right every time, but our willingness to listen to our learners' needs and to try new approaches will help us support our learners as much as possible.
- Communication and openness to support learners: An important guideline to creating accessible learning spaces is communicating very clearly and often to our learners that we are willing to accommodate their needs and preferences.
- Feedback Loop: Regularly seek input from learners. What adjustments would make the space more conducive to their learning?
Go Further!
Below, you will find some considerations depending on the type of space where you facilitate learning: physical, digital, or hybrid spaces. Additionally, we offer suggestions to make your Brightspace courses and communities more accessible.
- Physical Spaces
Accessible classrooms, labs, libraries, and meeting spaces allow learners to make choices that work for them, their minds, their bodies, and their circumstances.
- If rooms have flexible, moveable, and sizeable desks and chairs, you may adapt layouts to support collaboration and active learning, different teaching styles, learning strategies, and activities.
- Allow learners to sit, stand, stretch, and move and to choose where to sit or stand.
- Keep traffic spaces clear to avoid accidents and allow for comfortable movement. Learners with wheelchairs or mobility devices need ample space to move.
- Avoid judgement and punitive measures if learners arrive late to the classroom. It is ok to tell them to try to be the least disruptive they can be if they join late or need to leave early.
- Let learners know that they may leave if they need to.
- If lighting can be adjusted, try to accommodate diverse lighting needs (light sensitivities, visual disabilities). If lighting can’t be adjusted,
- Consider using a microphone to improve the projection of your voice. Connect with facilities/ITAC to request microphones for your classrooms or learning spaces. Cordless or hand-held microphones can be connected to the classroom’s sound system.
- Plan for ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation when needed. You may request an Interpreter, Intervenor or Computerized Notetaker for accommodations outside of the classroom.
- Inform learners about accessible exits, elevators, and washrooms. Take 5 for safety
- Describe images, illustrations, graphs, and any other visuals in your slides or materials. You may ask learners to support you in this process.
- Give learners options for how they can participate and share ideas. In the in-person classroom, you may use a tool like Mentimeter, Padlet, Microsoft Form, or anonymous cards to allow learners to ask questions, share their thoughts anonymously or through a medium other than orally.
- When using Active Learning strategies, consider the needs of diverse minds and bodies. Ensure these strategies don’t unnecessarily exclude learners. Consider alternative ways to participate.
- You can use the subtitle function in your PowerPoint. This will generate auto-generated captions as you present live in the physical classroom.
- Resize text and images to be viewed from a distance and according to the characteristics of your space.
- Consider keeping your slide content simple and having handouts or sharing digital documents with more information.
[more on Using PowerPoint - Accessible Campus]
- Online spaces
Online spaces might be accessed during synchronous classes or meetings, or asynchronously through platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Webex, emails, or Learning Management Systems (LMS) like Brightspace.
- Identify yourself before speaking and encourage participants to do the same. Describe yourself.
- Turn on captions in Videoconferencing tools, such as Zoom or Teams.
- Turn on captions when sharing videos or audio.
- Give learners options for how they can participate and share their ideas: using their microphones and/or cameras, using a chat, using private messages, or through other Edtech tools that allow for anonymous/private participation.
- You may encourage learners to engage in collaborative note taking. A few learners might volunteer in each class to take notes which can be shared with the whole class.
- Reduce background noises as much as possible.
- Plan for ASL interpretation when needed.
- Describe images, illustrations, graphs, and any other visuals in your slides or materials. You may ask learners to support you in this process.
- Read out loud chat messages.
- Make sure you have good lighting and look straight to your camera. Avoid covering your mouth or looking away from the camera. When a speaker covers their mouth, it obstructs lip movement, which is important for clear communication and might be crucial for D/deaf or hard of hearing learners. Students rely on visual cues to understand speech, especially in virtual settings.
- Hybrid Spaces
Hybrid spaces will include learners who are present in the physical space and others who are connecting remotely through a videoconferencing tool, such as Zoom or Teams.
- Brightspace
Brightspace has some great accessibility features that can help you create a more accessible and welcoming learning environment.
Use the web editor to format content:
- Add heading levels
- Add emphasis when needed
- Add alternative text to images
- Check color contrast for text
- Check for accessibility and spelling
The Brightspace video creation tool allows you create audio or video notes wherever you can create content in Brightspace: in an announcement, in an assignment, in the content area, or even to provide private feedback to learners. These videos will include auto-generated captions, which you can edit for accuracy and clarity.
References
Considering the Intersection of UDL and Accommodation Needs
Understanding the difference between Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the accommodations process is crucial for creating accessible learning environments. UDL proactively incorporates diverse needs into course design to make learning spaces more inclusive from the start, while accommodations respond to individual needs on a case-by-case basis.
Explore how you can enhance your course design by embedding UDL principles and addressing common accommodation requests, ensuring a more accessible experience for all students. For more insights, check out our guide on Accessibility, Accommodations, and UDL.
