We had a great presentation this week by Tracy Humphries, from BCEDAccess Society. This is a volunteer-run organization, which is almost unbelievable in the 21st century, that this service is not funded by the Ministry of Education. Tracy highlighted some of the main issues faced by students with special needs and their parents, such as denial of tech, outdated tech, problems with access, and no training support for parents/teachers.
This was a really interesting presentation about accessibility and access to education. Tracy has the unique view of a parent with children with special educational needs and a person with special educational needs herself.
Accessibility can mean so many things to students with different abilities. It can be ensuring text is large enough for students with sight impairment to read, it could also be ensuring text is highlightable on your website to allow text to speech reading, image descriptions and alt text on websites, captions and transcripts for videos…the list is endless…but what it ultimately means is that every students deserves to accessible education, regardless of their different abilities.
As a teacher, this brought up many valuable points to consider in the classroom and working with both students and parents. Ensuring accessibility for every student and their parents to the classroom, online platforms and all areas of education is vital to create an equitable and fair school environment.