This section is split into two, focusing on how I demonstrate understanding and engagement with policies and standards through both supporting the practice of others (Part A) and in my own practice (Part B). I have combined the reflection for both of these examples at the end. I have chosen to focus on meeting The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2022 through engagement with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) standards developed by W3C and best-practice guidance from Microsoft in relation to Microsoft Office-related files. I draw upon a large number of examples across this case study.
Part A: Supporting others to engage with policies and standards
Description
I have led a project to produce simple and practical guidance for educators, which I named the Designing for Diverse Learners poster. The poster is based on the Home Office (2016) accessibility posters. While the Home Office (2016) posters are a robust set of guidelines, the breadth of information can be challenging to interpret for educators trying to develop educational resources that need to work for as many learners as possible. For this reason, the Diverse Learners Project created a poster to address a broad base of design requirements that, if met, will support the majority of users. This is essential following the introduction of the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 which was later amended in 2022 to apply post-Brexit. I have taken the lead on typesetting the work, designing easy-to-understand visuals, creating the project website and incorporating wider feedback. This work is supported by underlying literature and research into effective practice. To ensure this work continues to be theory-led and tested in practice, I presented this work at the ALT Winter Conference (Fallin, 2018) in the form of an edit-a-thon. This opened up this work for collaborative editing in the learning technology community, gaining detailed contributions from over 20 other individuals. Based on the edit-a-thon, I enhanced the guidance, and its accessibility (Fallin & Watlin, 2019; 2021), partnering with partnered with Kate Wright from Aberystwyth University to translate the guidance into Welsh. The most recent development involved partnering with Thomas Tomlinson (University of Hull), leveraging his technical skills to launch a fully-accessible HTML version of my Designing for Diverse Learners guidance (Fallin et al., 2022; Tomlinson et al., 2022) which we launched at the Association for Learning Development in Higher Education (ALDinHE) annual conference.
Evidence
The Supporting Diverse Learners guidelines have been impactful in a number of ways. Copies of the Supporting Diverse Learners poster have been disseminated across the university through several training events co-led by me, my colleague and others. More importantly, the work has been distributed more broadly within the sector. What follows is a brief overview of the substantial impact this resource has had:
Designing for Diverse Learners has been adopted at Aberystwyth, Edinburgh Napier, UCEM, HYMS, Newcastle, UCL and others. This has been made possible as the work is published online and available under a Creative Commons licence in line with the original work from the Home Office (see: University of Hull, 2020). I’ve has the opportunity to reflect on the importance of licencing via the Copyright Licencing Agency blog: Practical Steps For Creating Accessible & Inclusive Content | CLA
I have started to see an impact from this work within the institution, the sector and beyond. In particular, this work has formed the basis of the York St. John University (2019) Digital Accessibility Checklist and has been used by an NHS trust to develop its digital resources. This work has also received hundreds of likes and retweets across multiple posts on Twitter, with many replies detailing its use in practice to assess learning and teaching materials.
Statement of support: Kat Sanders, Hull-York Medical School:
Lee has been instrumental in providing the driving force to make our learning and teaching materials in the medical school more accessible. On multiple occasions he has spoken to staff at the school (ranging from one-to-one sessions, to all staff meetings with over 100 people in attendance). Lee goes beyond simply telling us what we should be doing to make our resources accessible and inclusive. He takes the time to emphasise why it is important to do so, shows us step-by-step how we can do it, and what impact it can have on everyone’s experience interacting with our resources (including us!). My teaching practice, and that of my colleagues, has changed for the better because of the interactions with Lee!
Statement of support: Dr Martha Kemper, Head of Learning & Development, University of Hull
Inspired by the ‘Designing for Diverse learners’ poster which Lee created, we (the Disability Confident working group at the University of Hull) developed a short ‘accessibility’ course for staff. Housed on Canvas it is practical in nature and links to the issues and suggestions that Lee led us to. The poster helped us to think through the lens of the individual and has been an invaluable tool.
National Teaching Repository Award
Statement of support: Dr Dawne Irving-Bell NTF, Edge Hill University
I am delighted to be able to provide this statement in support of Lee’s work.
It was during an #LTHEChat that a colleague mentioned the exceptional resources that Lee had developed to support colleagues to support students with diverse learning needs. The colleague suggested he share them on The National Teaching Repository (@NTRepository) and I was delighted when he did.
Lee’s work in this field is exceptional, and the global response to it was immediate.
You can access the Altmetric data yourself on the repository, but to illuminate the global reach, value and impact of Lee’s work and thus his esteem in this field, to date his first poster, which has been re-tweeted 141 times, has recorded more than 4,000 views, over 500 downloads accessed in 14 countries, located across 4 continents.
Statement of support: Mary Jacob, Aberystwyth University
I developed a training session for Aberystwyth University staff about how to make their documents and presentations more accessible. I spotted Lee Fallin’s poster and recognised that it provided a concise and easy-to-understand summary of key points. I contacted him and used it with permission as a handout in our session and posted on the wall outside my office. I was happy to see his bilingual Welsh-English version, because I work in a Welsh university and this enables us to use the material without translating it.
Statement of support: Alistair McNaught, Alistair McNaught Consultancy Ltd
The Designing for Divers Learners “Dos and Don’ts” poster is an excellent summary of simple good practices that make the (sometimes abstruse) practices of digital activity achievable. The combination of exemplar illustrations and simple, active plain English statements makes for a memorable and effective training aid. I have personally referenced this in conferences, on Twitter and in advice and guidance for clients. It has been an equal to the SCULPT guidance and the Home Office posters.
Statement of support: Clare Thomson Heriot-Watt University (previously Ulster University)
Lee, I have used and shared your accessibility posters many times in sessions and support materials, they are visually professional, brief and very clear for staff within the university. This is a recording of an open talk for Ulster University staff (note the link starts at the point of your posters):
Altmetric
In recognition of Designing for Diverse Learners and the impact this has had on inclusive learning design, I was shortlisted alongside my colleague Thomas Tomlinson for the Inspired in Hull Awards category for Social Justice and Inclusion in Practice:
Nomination extract:
The adoption of the resource as 9 HEIs, including Hull, means that a significant number of students other members of the learning community will benefit directly from their work.
They are removing significant barriers to learning and the use of digital resources to a huge number of people.
As a dyslexic person myself I can see first hand the significance and impact of their work.
The work continues to be adapted and adopted by new institutions, demonstrating that longer-term impact. The University of Reading has recently launched its own version:
Scholarship
I have two publications on the Designing for Diverse Learners project. The first is Fallin & Tomlinson (2022), an innovative article that serves as a conference proceeding, inclusive of community reflections on our work. The second article, Fallin et al. (2023) is a brief communication designed to raise the profile of the project. Both these articles follow a string of conference presentations on this project:
- Edit-a-thon: Supporting Diverse Learners
ALT Winter Conference 2018, Online - Designing for Diverse Learners
ALDinHE Conference 2022, Northampton and Online
This work has been presented at conferences:
Feedback on the latest JLDHE article:
Part B: Using policies and standards in my own practice
Description
Given my leadership on accessibility, there has always been pressure to follow those practices in my own work. I try, as much as I can, to lead by example. Making all content technically accessible is an ethical imperative. If the content isn’t inclusive, it is exclusive. I actively utilise and implement the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (World Wide Web Consortium, 2018) in my online work—these guidelines specify three standards: A, AA and AAA. My goal is to achieve the AA standard wherever possible, moving towards AAA standard in the future. A significant aspect of my work was supporting others to engage with accessibility policies and standards. This has become even more important as a Lecturer in Education Studies as the School of Education has expertise in inclusive education. My experience and track record in this area has given me the opportunity to contribute to this area of the curriculum.
Evidence
Through engaging with policies and standards as measured by Siteimprove, I have led the enhancement of Library compliance with WAI guidelines. This has seen our measures of quality assurance, accessibility and search engine optimisation reach the sector benchmark. I continue to ensure we exceed these measures to ensure a truly accessible experience for our students and staff.
I am also a Microsoft Inclusive Educator, and my wider work on accessibility was another core component of my Certified Leading Practitioner (ALDinHE) recognition.
I have started to lead on putting these standards into practice across my department, for example, putting accessibility at the heart of our University Library Social Media and Marketing Strategy which I wrote.
Statement of support: Chris Awre, University Librarian, University of Hull
Lee has a longstanding passion for ensuring that technology can be used for everyone and benefit them accordingly. A key part of this was ensuring that the online services we provide as a Library are web accessible, using SiteImprove to regularly identify improvements that could be made to a web presence (and enjoying the gamification of this!), as well as taking the lead in developing accessibility statements for the systems he had ownership of. He also created accessible Powerpoint templates for the Library and was regularly called on for advice and guidance on materials the Library would be sharing with others.
Combined Reflection
The core principle behind the poster is support for ALL learners. The reason I take this approach is that ‘adjustments’ traditionally associated with making something ‘accessible’ actually benefit all users (Foley & Ferri, 2012). Examples include video transcripts, navigation heading styles, and following simple content structures. These things should not be framed as ‘adjustments’, but as fundamental principles that support everyone.
I am quite overwhelmed by the success of Designing for Diverse Learners. It’s a beautifully simple guide – and that is why it is so popular. Often, educators need to battle through resources like The World Wide Web Consortium’s (2018) WCAG guidance. This is not approachable for most educators, and so it puts them off. Designing for Diverse Learners breaks this trend. From the launch of the new guidelines at the ALDinHE Conference (Fallin & Tomlinson, 2022), I have been able to recruit new people to the project. Ellie Davison from Lincoln and Gemma Spencer from UCLan have joined Tom and I to take the project further. We’re excited to investigate the use of this guidance with students – to help them communicate accessibly too. We’ve just launched our first resource in this space: Designing for Diverse Learners – ALDinHE and have our first paper out (Fallin et al., 2023). This excites and energises me in equal measure. I can’t wait to see where it goes.
Due to my work on the Designing for Diverse Learners project, I took a more significant role in my old team to ensure accessibility and inclusion are embedded within our learning development practice. This has included supporting colleagues using this poster when developing their own activities and resources. In moving to my new role, my leadership in this area was quickly recognised, and I was invited to present my work to the School of Education. I’m looking forward to seeing where I can take this next, especially as we move towards assessing with rubrics. While these are shown to support assessment and student assessment literacy pedagogically, I have grave concerns over how we make rubrics technically accessible.
At the heart of my practice, I try to instil the need for accessibility at the heart of everything we do. This does not just apply to formal learning opportunities but our whole website and social media presence. This ensures all learners can participate in what the university has to offer. As part of this, I have continued my support of helping colleagues in their use of technology to facilitate this learning.
I have taken a leading role in redesigning the Skills Team website and supporting other colleagues to develop web pages that meet the requirements of the new 2018 Accessibility Regulations. With this in place, I have been working with colleagues to ensure these regulations reflect in everything that we do. This has included highlighting the accessibility features within Microsoft Office and providing training on their use. We are developing principles to ensure the development of singular inclusive resources instead of multiple ‘alternative’ resources. This ensures students with different learning requirements can all benefit from the same resource. This is still a sizeable ongoing project as existing resources will need auditing, but this ensures all future output meets regulations as much as possible.
For me, compliance with ‘policy’ and ‘standards’ just doesn’t cut it. This is about doing what is right – and is something I am passionate about.
References
Fallin, L. & Tomlinson, T. (2022) Designing for diverse learners. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (25).
Fallin, L. & Watlin, S. (2019) Designing for Diverse Learners. Hull: University of Hull. Available online:
https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Aa30c31e3-7888-4d91-8ae1-deda6b81fa21 [Accessed 25/06/2020].
Fallin, L. & Watlin, S. (2021) Designing for Diverse Learners Poster [3.2.2]. Available online: https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.16840531.v1 [Accessed 20/12/2022].
Fallin, L., Davison, E., Spencer, G. & Tomlinson, T. (2023) Supporting inclusive learning resource design with Designing for Diverse Learners. Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education (26).
Fallin, L., Tomlinson, T. & Watlin, S. (2022) Designing for Diverse Learners. Available online: https://designingfordiverselearners.info/ [Accessed 20/12/2022].
Foley, A. & Ferri, B. A. (2012) Technology for people, not disabilities: ensuring access and inclusion. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12(4), 192-200.
The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations Order 2018 (SI 2018/852). London: The Stationery Office Ltd.
Tomlinson, T., Fallin, L. & Watlin, S. (2022) Designing for Diverse Learners Poster [4.0]. Available online:
https://doi.org/10.25416/NTR.20141498.v1 [Accessed 20/12/2022].
University of Hull (2020) Supporting Diverse Learners. University of Hull. Available online: http://libguides.hull.ac.uk/diverselearners [accessed: 11/08/2021]
World Wide Web Consortium (2018) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Available online: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG21/ [Accessed: 04/10/2021]
Revisions for reassessment:
The main expansion for this area has focused on evidence for impact. I have included multiple Statements of support written by colleagues internal and external to the University. These show the breadth and scope of my impact in this area. I’ve also been able to more fully draw on my scholarship in this area, including scholarly articles and conference presentations. Additional evidence includes details of an Award I won for global research and impact from the Advance HE NTR. I’ve also drawn on Altmetrics to show further engagement. Numerous style and grammar changes, including general updates to reflect recent developments. I’ve also expanded my reflection and included numerous new references to demonstrate reach and scholarship.