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.
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.
