Stuck in the Middle With You

I was on my computer for close to 13 hours today so that I could try to make a dent in the triple digit inbox I have because it is start up (fun fact the first of the triple digit is not a 1). So I did what I could before my shoulder decided that it was enough mousing for today and I decided to go for a walk to try to process all the things. And as I was walking I could not get Stealers Wheel Stuck in the Middle With You out of my head. I have the kind of neurodivergence that does non-relational echolalia often in the form of song lyrics when I am processing something. Because I was really thinking about the stuckness, and the middleness, and the impact of the choices that people are making in educational spaces so the song of course appeared. 

Stealers Wheel is as a way into all the processing I am doing around how we are now in a time in eduspace where one group is trying to prove a point with another group and sadly it is the folk doing accessibility work and disabled folk who are being stuck in the middle. Because of course fiscal choices don't make things and humans and needs disappear, as much we want to dream the difficult away. The lack of nuance of grey space that I have spoken about in relation to generative AI is creating "let's use it to do everything" (even the things you really really shouldn't that involve data that should not be shared that way) or the opposite "no devices allowed anywhere". Neither of those are great solutions, but nuance requires time and resources and we are collectively short on both in eduspace.

That means someone prioritizes a group over another in the access friction needs assessment and it is often the disabled, and multi-marginalized folk who are left out. The person who may need their phone to check their insulin is told no devices. The reality that people get sick with things like COVID, the flu, or even break a leg at hockey or soccer, is forgotten in the design or maybe not forgotten but purposefully left out because austerity means the teaching team is a lot smaller. Pedagogical decisions that are influenced by resourcing create the stuck in the middles.

This is happening everywhere at every level of education from K-12 to post-secondary. Choices are not without consequences. In the course I am teaching in Monday's lecture we are going to talk about upstream and downstream health interventions. All these pedagogical choices that are happening because of lack of policy, infrastructure, resourcing, and nuance are downstream approaches to generative AI. What was needed are upstream approaches that are more holistic and contextual to discipline and learner demographics. As much as we are in a time where so many reports and white papers are telling us the horse has left the barn and we will never be able to put it back when it comes to the environment, the alternative hand wave shoulder shruggery that is happening will continue to create more downstream patch work design. Did I just search "guy with tape on water tank" I sure did because this is exactly what it feels like right now in education.

And if you are spending your time being the guy with the tape, then that means other things are forgotten or ignored or de-prioritized. Because today in between all the emails and the text messages and the internal strategizing I was trying to do to see how to make a situation work a friend texted me asking me when the next episode of Accessagogy is coming out. And I know she meant well, but golly that text did not land the way it was intended unfortunately.

Because when everything is on fire around you, you don't know when you will find time to do the things that are supposed to fill the cup. And also you are not sure if the podcast does fill any cups anymore, or if it is needed anymore because honestly there is so little capacity to care or implement accessible pedagogy right now. This is incredibly sad to say, especially from my mouth, but it is also the truth. The burnout is real, the systems of oppression continue to oppress in micro to macro ways. The only accessible pedagogy with traction anywhere in HigherEd right now is the accessibility discourse that comes from a very small niche set of humans based in the US who follow the same keynote trajectory across conferences and institutions. I know I am lucky if I get maybe 100 engagements on anything I put out there anymore when I used to get several hundreds even in slower times of the term. The algorithm is not kind to accessibility, inclusion, or Canadians. 

Even in under 10 minutes, folk don't seem to have capacity to meaningfully think about accessible pedagogy right now with everything. I am looking at how all the podcasts I used to listen to regularly that were close to an hour an episode are now producing 30 minute episodes because the capacity to both produce and for the audience to engage with anything longer just isn't there. And this is also an outcome of being stuck in the middle between engaging with things you care about, but also knowing the resourcing isn't there to do things in the inclusive way they should be done. As I say very often the systems be systemy and that's what they put in place exactly for advancements in inclusion to not happen.

All of this to say I may have an episode of the podcast next week and it may be about this exact thing, who we are prioritizing in our design and how to do accessibility when the priority has shifted so drastically that it's causing folk to want to play arm-chair diagnosticians (everyone is Gregory House MD apparently in ChatGPT times). And they are using research to support this diagnostic tendency, citing popular articles flippantly shared on LinkedIn or maybe BlueSky (who knows I am not on there) and it is research that doesn't have disabled participant representation (because the research system is also broken) and only has neurotypicality and able bodyminds in their participant demographics.  Making choices for "the good of the learners," is often thinly veiled attempts to play the middle against itself and it sounds a lot like "watch as I try to un-disable you for your own good", "have you tried drinking more water," "it's the phones I tell you," "it's okay to try hard things, what do you mean you are blind and can't see the screen just try harder." If we are to make it to December we have to stop using disabled folk and multi-marginalized folk as the pawns in a game of resource gap chess. Because a middle space without meaningful relationship building and reflection is what neo-liberal capitalism loves, and how we continue to make things harder for everyone when it could be so much easier.