Improving accessibility in the classroom

Though the number of disabled students in higher education in England increased by 47% over the last five years, they continue to be underrepresented and suffer worse education and employment outcomes. In a conversation with Nicole Brown (University College London) and Nicola Martin (London South Bank University) about institutional ableism, belonging, and good practice around disability, Claire Gordon (LSE) explores how disabled students can be better included in higher education institutions.

This panel discussion is part of the 3rd CIVICA Inclusion Workshop: Approaches to the Inclusion of Disabled Students.

Podcast to be released soon.

This course builds on our digital accessibility course on Moodle, which introduces the basics of digital accessibility. You are encouraged to complete this asynchronous course in Moodle before attending the synchronous session

In this synchronous course, we invite colleagues who have taken part in the Moodle course above to share their reflections and challenges of creating and maintaining digitally accessible content. For the most part, this session will focus on working through a series of teaching scenarios focussed on digital accessibility both in the classroom and online spaces of learning.

Who should attend: Lecturers, class teachers, programme administrators who are involved in teaching and supporting students studying on campus or online.

Tuesday, May 24 (2-3.30pm)

Please sign up here.

In this session, Chloe Farahar, an Autistic academic, scholar, and expert, walks attendees through examples of practical things educators can do to make learning environments neurodivergent-inclusive. To be neurodivergent-inclusive in the classroom, it’s important that we acknowledge, accommodate, and normalise inclusive practices.

We also discuss how to make the teaching environment neurodivergent-inclusive for staff who are neurodivergent, themselves (e.g. Autistic, attention differences, dyslexic, dyspraxic, anxiety).

 Thursday, May 26 (12-2pm)

 Sign up here.

“Which door should I enter through?”: race and disability in higher education 

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives” (Audre Lorde, 1984, 138).

 Staff and students have multiple identities and therefore will face multiple levels of challenges and exclusion in the university. This raises questions for staff and students who identify as disabled and racialised.

In this session Dr Amita Bhakta will discuss their paper “Which door should I go through?” (In)visible intersections of race and disability in the academy’ . This will be followed with a discussion on how the intersections of race and disability are experienced in the classroom and consider how we as educators can better interrogate our practice and understanding of intersectionality facilitated by Dr Amita Bhakta and Dr Akile Ahmet.

Date TBC.