GAAD: What You Are Saying When You Don't Say Anything

Happy Global Accessibility Awareness Day folks! My blog is early this week because I need some time this weekend to delve into the 60-minute talk on John Ruskin (ask me about this if you want, it's a long story) I am giving at the beginning of June and also it is a long weekend here so I also want some rest and reflection time as well.

This year's accessibility awareness day brought with it a lot of the performative things we have come to expect from GAAD. Posts saying they care about accessibility with no alt-texts,  videos and clips with no captions, you know the usual. But one of the highlights is that someone created a GAADBot which quote tweeted all the alt-text missing posts and basically made that performance more visible. There were also places that were incredibly quiet about GAAD. Did your workplace post about it? Mine didn't, but did you know that tomorrow is World Bee Day? I mean don't get me wrong, bees are super important, but you know what is also super important, accessibility.

So this brings me to my point for today, which is people notice what is prioritized in certain spaces. This week I went to an incredible talk with so many great teachings and reminders, like "empathy is not lived experience" and "say what is meant to be said" (Keith McCrady) and "use your privilege productively" (Monica Forrester). To be in that space and hear these words and engage with their meaning was important to me and the work I do, but I also wished it was seen as important to others and the work that they do and that they would have showed up to hear these things.

Accessibility is a foundational part of inclusive pedagogical praxis. When accessibility days on a global scale are not acknowledged, that suggests that the foundational piece isn't really that foundational to that space. Or alternatively when you work in inclusive pedagogy, and everything you say is about this, but your social media practice is exclusionary (no alt-text, no camel case etc.) then there is a disconnect there. There are many folk who are willing to teach and show how to do this, and have done so many times, but there are folk who are simply not invested in learning how to make spaces of information exchange like social media, accessible. 

Some will say well how does social media connect to pedagogy? It connects greatly; it can be a space of learning, and it can also be a space of knowledge exchange. It can also be formative environment for all kinds of learners. Someone who works in universal design for learning (UDL), should know accessibility principles because they are part of creating an inclusive environment. UDL is not accessibility, but accessibility supports UDL. I am not saying you need to be a website UX/UI expert, what I am saying is there are some foundational things that are readily implemented in pedagogy especially around document and information exhange. So when I go on about alt-texts on here it is because I want folk to reflect on how images are used to support meaningful learning and knowledge exchange, just like I would want folk to reflect on how poor document design can be a barrier to learning. All of these things are connected and when the foundational importance of accessibility in the work we do in HigherEd is not acknowledged, it makes it  clear just how much work is still to be done, and how days of awareness that should already be days of action, are needed more than ever in educational spaces.