Why Small Changes Make a Big Difference to Accessibility in Higher Education

Sound clip: You’re listening to a Times Higher Education podcast.

Miranda Prynne: Hello there and welcome to Campus Talks, the podcast in which we seek out insights and advice to aid the work of those in higher education. I’m Miranda Prynne and this week we’ll be examining how universities can improve the experiences of their disabled students. Disabled students make up the biggest minority group in US and UK higher education, accounting for about a fifth of undergraduates in both countries. And while efforts to improve access to higher education for disabled students have had positive effects with increased enrolment and greater willingness to disclose disabilities once enrolled, people with disabilities are still less likely than their counterparts to enter college, to feel at home in higher education settings and to secure a degree. In the UK, the recent National Student Survey showed that disabled students felt less well served than their non-disabled peers in several key areas, including student voice and the organisation and management of courses. So, this week I’m speaking to a US researcher who has dedicated the last decade to studying the experiences of disabled students in higher education and the barriers to full access and inclusion for all. Katherine Aquino is a social scientist and educational researcher who currently serves as the executive director for research, training and development in the School of Graduate Studies at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on disability and accessibility in organisational environments and examines the complexity of disability in the postsecondary setting. Her most recent book, The New Accessibility in Higher Education: Disrupting the System for an Inclusive Future, co-authored with Adam Lalor, was published by Oxford University Press last year. We talk about why existing efforts to improve access and inclusion have so often fallen short of their ambitions, why a shift in mindset is needed for systemic change to take hold, and how individuals have the power to drive big change. So, let’s learn more from Katherine.

Miranda Prynne: Hi, Katherine. Thanks for joining me today on Campus Talks.

Katherine Aquino: Thank you so much for having me.

Miranda Prynne: You’ve dedicated many years to studying the experiences of students with disabilities in higher education. What got you interested in this work?

Katherine Aquino: So my background is in both psychology and higher education policy. And for a very long time, I had planned to be a school psychologist, to engage in that K-12 world supporting students and looking at how students participated and could thrive in an educational setting. And as I was completing my master’s, I was noticing that my projects, that my areas of interest really existed in the area of time when a student is in high school and transitioning to that next step, most likely higher education. A lot of my colleagues at that time focused on early childhood. So I thought of myself as a unique bird in my cohort, but I didn’t really want to stop in that area of interest. And as I reflected more and spoke to my mentors, there was really an important shift in my life where I said, you know, it’s really this higher education space that I want to focus my time in. So not to be a practicing school psychologist, but instead become an educational researcher, really to understand what students with disabilities can experience, areas of opportunity where organizations can support. And that led me to completing my PhD in higher education policy. So it’s really important too to, as I stepped into this new path, right, connected but unique. It allowed me to really become more aware that the institution, institutional structures really were creating these unintentional barriers, right? And this is primarily with students with disabilities. So I’ve now been about a decade out of completing my PhD and really focused my energy on understanding really the systems, not just the individuals that really allow the shaping of access and success.

Miranda Prynne: Yes, and we’ll come on to find out more about that. But let’s start with the basics. How big a proportion of university students have a disability in the U.S.?

Katherine Aquino: So when looking at the National Center for Ed Statistics, as of the 2019-20 academic year, it’s reported that about 20, a little over 20% of undergraduate students and a little over, so 11% of post-bacc students report having a disability. And this should be noted, a really important thing here. So self-reporting. So that’s reporting for a particular survey. That does not mean they are disclosing or their institutions, right? So obviously you could imagine, and it’s documented in the literature, that this is very much an under-reported number. So the disclosure experience, right? So for an individual to go to their disability resource office and note, I have a disability, I would like to engage in this interactive process to possibly seek out accommodations, that does not happen probably as much as it could, right? So there is a complication there. And there’s great work coming out and a lot of wonderful scholars that are focusing on how we can then create institutions that really engage students who are not self-disclosing, but still need that support. That’s something that’s really important to explore. Now, I will say this too, those stats that I just rattled off, right? So that’s disability in the aggregate. And I always like to start a conversation to say, you know, these little stats that I’m going to probably sprinkle along the way oftentimes are in that aggregate form, but disability and various disability types, right? There are so many. And it should be acknowledged the importance of noting the difference of what disability could look like and really the multi-dimensionality, right? So, you might identify as having one type of disability, multiple types of disability. So, that should not be forgotten in this conversation.

Miranda Prynne: Yes, and as you say, important to remember when dealing in stats that they are a very blunt instrument and give a very surface-level picture and often don’t reveal certain very important nuances. I’m also very aware, as I use the term disability, just what a vast sweep of conditions, both physical and mental, that it covers. Do you think that is a problem? Should we be breaking it down into slightly clearer constituent parts, or is there enough synergy in some of the experiences to make it quite an effective umbrella term?

Katherine Aquino: So, maybe that’s a yes-and conversation, right? It depends on the situation, it depends on who you’re speaking to, it depends on the initiatives that you are trying to push forward, right? So, the fact that we can discuss disability at various student engagement, student success conversations within the higher education space, right? Just getting disability on the agenda is important. From there, we should then start unpacking: well, what does this mean for an apparent disability? What does this mean for a non-apparent disability? Let’s talk about neurodiversity and what that means to the conversation and the initiative that a particular campus is engaging in, right? Because it’s the retention, it’s the persistence, it’s the completion elements that we care about as higher education administrators. And sometimes those approaches might vary depending on the particular disability that we are discussing. But again, just starting that conversation and saying, let’s talk about students with disabilities. Are they being acknowledged in this conversation? Are we engaging with students who actually have disabilities, right? Are we getting their take on a particular initiative that we are trying to move forward? Does it make sense? Will this really create positive movement here?

Miranda Prynne: Universities do now appear certainly to go to big efforts to accommodate diverse students’ needs. So to ensure accessible spaces and learning environments and to champion inclusion across the various facets of campus life. So you’ve referred to structural barriers, but how far are these efforts working?

Katherine Aquino: I think the first step in this conversation is discussing the medical model of disability, viewing disability as an impairment, a limitation in one’s life, right? And I do believe that institutions are really engaging in saying, how can we push this mindset forward? This is a bit of an antiquated approach. And when they shift to viewing disability as a characteristic of one’s identity, as a component of diversity, this is where that shift begins, really. And, you know, I’m thinking about current universities, what efforts are working. I want to be really honest here. A lot of these systems still operate in a very reactive way, depending really on students disclosing, what resources they have. And access is really sometimes inconsistent from institution to institution or even within institutions. And again, just meeting guidelines is the bare minimum, right? Really engaging and improving that system will allow students to feel more comfortable to disclose, or maybe based on the resources that are available, where it’s a more accessible UDL mindset. Maybe disclosure isn’t needed because all of the supports are already in place, right? So I will say that current universities, there’s this well-intentioned approach here, but there’s always room for growth. At the end of the day, we need to ensure that equitable student success is at scale and that we are saying to ourselves, how can we continuously improve? Because as more students come in, we want to make sure that their institution is really engaging and committed to their success, right? So I will also say this too. A lot of institutions are now developing disability cultural centers, which is fantastic because again, it’s allowing disability to be within that student cultural experience. So that’s really cool. And then also too, within the United States right now, with the Title II mandates around digital accessibility, granted, that language has been there for some time and there’s now this push coming for public institutions particularly to ensure there’s Title II digital accessibility compliance. But I can say personally at my institution that there’s a lot of great conversations occurring because many administrators or faculty who might not have previously worked in this digital accessibility space or even knew about it are now asked to better engage and better explore what that means. And what I have seen recently, a lot of aha moments with faculty administrators to say, you know, this is actually going to improve learning and student support overall. It’s not just to check a box, it’s really allowing a more inclusive environment.

Miranda Prynne: Can you give some examples of what that looks like then in terms of enhancing digital accessibility in such a way that it has broad brush benefit?

Katherine Aquino: Yes. So I will give two examples here. The first one is with updating a particular syllabus, right? So as a former faculty member, I know the work that is needed to prep a course, right? And once you’ve prepped a course and really have become comfortable in what that course looks like, you know, sometimes it can just go on autopilot for a little bit. And it sometimes is a task that goes on the to-do list and really stays on the to-do list for some time, is that updating a course, particularly a syllabus, right? So it’s not a fun activity to ask faculty, okay, like maybe it’s time to update your syllabus using an accessible template, right? So I was recently, as of last week, actually having a conversation with a colleague to say, you know, how can we, one, push forward a digitally accessible template? And when I say an accessible template for a syllabus, I mean making sure that it could be in a Word format, right? We are not going to push out via email or within a course LMS a PDF, right? Because the PDF, we don’t know the quality of accessibility here. So to have a Microsoft document format and to make sure that there are appropriate headers, right? That those levels make sense. And we give clear guidelines of where to put what to ensure that when they are sharing with a student via email or again, through their LMS, a screen reader can appropriately read this, right? So we are not just dropping in very long URLs. We are appropriately hyperlinking. We are making sure that the text is in an accessible format. And I was talking to my colleague and I said, you know, how can we make this fun? How can we ensure that this is going to happen? And how can we make this fun in the process? And we were talking about, you know, we have a little bit of money to maybe schedule a lunch. What if we do a couple scheduled lunches? We feed you, we give you the template, we walk you through in real time and bring your device. Let’s do it as a team, right? And suddenly a task that might be, you know, something that a faculty member will say on a Sunday evening, oh, I’ll get to it tomorrow and it really never gets done. We have scheduled time. We’re coming together. We’re forming community, but we’re also sprinkling in the, you know, we’re doing this because it means your students will have an accessible format and then we can kind of impart some knowledge here. So that’s something that we were brainstorming recently. Another thing is with captionings and videos, right? So I have the opportunity right now to take one of our master’s programs and to move it to a fully online space. And I’m working with some amazing instructional designers and the faculty that we are engaging are so committed to just making sure that this online program is going to be fabulous. And we’re taking their formerly recorded lectures and we’re talking about captions. And then we’re talking about, okay, can you give us your slides? Let’s check the level of accessibility here so we can update that and give that as an additional resource, right? In addition to this video. So now you have captioned videos. You can download the PowerPoint slides and we’re also giving transcript. And going back to your original question, it’s not just to make sure that it’s accessible. Yes, it is, but we’re having conversations with students and we’re having these just informal chats with administrators and faculty. And we’re starting to say, you know, if you had a video to watch, what would be your preferred resource here? Is it checking the video? So maybe you’re on the train and you can listen to the audio, or maybe you want the transcript that you could print out because, you know, you have to pick up your kids and there’s a practice and you could read the transcripts. So it’s not just making sure that it works with assistive technology, but it’s allowing all students to engage with the resource that works for them. But at the same time, it’s accessible. So it’s this really great awakening, I want to say, of conversations we’re having with our team to say, like, this is meaningful, not just for digital accessibility reasons, but for student learning, right? And for student support.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense that in doing this work, you’re creating clearer, more user-friendly forms of learning material. But as you say, also creating options. As we all know, everyone likes to learn in different ways and possibly likes to take in information in different modes. And I can see there is a hugely broad benefit there. But also, just taking a critical lens to these materials, I’m sure, results in all sorts of knock-on improvements that aren’t even necessarily directly related to accessibility because you’re actually sort of looking at it with a critical eye in ways that you might not if you weren’t needing to go through it in this way. Coming back to the discussion of why a lot of the existing efforts to improve accessibility, improve inclusion, don’t necessarily work quite as well as the institutions hope. It’s clear that the fact a lot of it is rather piecemeal, I think you used the word reactive, is part of it. But I also get the impression from your descriptions of some of the things that do work, like the disability cultural centers, that quite a lot of the change needs to sit in a cultural, almost a mindset area that’s a little less tangible maybe. Do you think universities are going wrong in meeting the legal compliance with, you know, the Americans with Disabilities Act, but not quite moving from that sort of promoting of access, basic access, to actually really promoting success? Is there a sort of cultural shift that needs to happen alongside obviously these sort of practical moves that can help?

Katherine Aquino: Absolutely. That’s just a great question. Higher education is an interesting system. And the administrators and the faculty are often tasked with more and more and more. And, you know, there are only so many hours in the day. So you are now adding in an additional component, an important one, right? An important one, in my opinion, but a lot of the community members are saying, okay, but when am I going to do this in addition to all of the various tasks? Okay, I’m an administrator. We’re working on this strategic plan, you know, or we’re in a recruitment period. When is this work going to get done? Or for a faculty member, I’m on the tenure track and I have to publish so much or I have a couple experiments that I have to do this. I have to submit a grant. When can this get done? So this is the burden. This is the experience oftentimes felt within higher education institutions. And because of that, you know, what happens when it doesn’t feel particularly enticing? It becomes this add-on feeling, right? Like, oh, it’s compliance. We’ll get there. It’s just not framed in a positive way. And it’s also looked at as we’ll get to it eventually, or we can do the bare minimum. And that’s unfortunate here. And what I would like to say to institutions who are struggling with this, when you look at it as a massive undertaking, and in reality it is, but when you create a plan where it is this slow integration of where change can exist, it suddenly doesn’t feel, at least in my opinion, as intimidating. I recently gave a talk to a college in Pennsylvania, and I was talking about this new accessibility mindset that is in a recent book of mine. And I gave them three tasks. And these were faculty members. And they were thinking about the year ahead, what to do in the summer. And we’re talking about accessibility. And my early part of the conversation is to really gauge where they’re at with accessibility. What does it mean? How do they engage currently within their department, within their particular school? What initiatives are currently happening? And what did I find? It’s low-level work, right? They oftentimes have this champion and then the champion is tasked, and everyone else is like, this person can do it all. But what’s happening here? It gets very focused in one particular area, one particular person, one particular team. And then everyone else says, you know, I really don’t have to deal with accessibility here. And that is really the sad moment because great conversation, great work then doesn’t happen. So I posed to them, I said, one action, one conversation, one question. If you come to your next department meeting and identify one action that we can take, and that is going back to that syllabus idea, throwing in your particular syllabus into an accessibility tracker, right? And just seeing the score. Do nothing else, but just at least know your score, your accessibility score for your syllabus. One conversation, having an informal conversation with colleague, like, have you ever captioned a video or have you thought about contrasting? Or, you know, have any students asked in their course evaluation feedback to update this particular resource? And one question, asking maybe their chair, or maybe just asking a friend, or asking themselves, you know, what else in this month can I do? And suddenly, when you just have this one action, one question, one conversation, it doesn’t feel as massive of an undertaking because those little movements still move you forward. And I hope, and I hope that that could be something that could be realistic to, again, people. And I’m acknowledging how busy they are, sometimes how under-resourced they are, but those little efforts really can make massive waves for the future.

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, of course. And it makes it achievable. What does the evidence back as being the most important adaptation to the way university is conducted in this space that really does boost accessibility?

Katherine Aquino: So I focus the majority of my examples here in that digital accessibility space. So I do not want to dismiss the physical accessibility that needs to occur, right? So just I want to make note of that. And I think that if I feel that I’m answering your question, and hopefully, I am, it’s that being at the table for these conversations, right? So, in strategic planning, in upper leadership, it’s having that disability voice threaded through. And I would also say, and my colleague Adam Lalor and I often talk about the importance, and I know many of my colleagues do as well: is always ensuring that an individual with a disability, their voice is actively shared and acknowledged in planning conversations. Because without that, then those little conversations, those professional development opportunities will never occur.

Miranda Prynne: I’m also interested from a teaching perspective. You referenced UDL earlier. What role should Universal Design for Learning play in all this?

Katherine Aquino: Right. It’s an incredible framework. And at the end of the day, it’s just proactively designing inclusive educational experiences. So while there have been, as I engage as a former faculty member, but still teach, you know, there have been times early in my career when there was maybe just one opportunity, one type of engagement, right? And what UDL is allowing is to offer multiple means of engagement for students to express themselves, whether it is in a submission of a paper or maybe engaging in a discussion board, or maybe it’s recording a video, or there are different ways to get to that end, right? To note that critical thought has occurred and there is a deliverable produced. So, one, I think that’s wonderful because it allows the student to lean into the space that they are most comfortable in and will thrive in, but it also allows the instructor to understand that students can be productive, can show participation in unique ways. So, that’s really key. I really want to note, though, that UDL does not require faculty to do everything at once. You know, when I think of UDL, I view it within this continuous improvement model, right? So, within my time in higher education, in addition to my research, in addition to teaching, I really enjoyed this accreditation assessment space. And I often at times had chairs and deans that would lean into that and let me engage in that. So, a key part of assessment and accreditation is always to say where we’re at is not where we hope to be in the future. We are moving forward, we are trying to improve. It’s continuous improvement to say, you know, there’s always room for opportunity and growth. And I think UDL deserves to be in that continuous improvement space, meaning small intentional changes will have meaningful impact and conversations with students to say, you know, what works here? What doesn’t work? How would this have improved if I tweaked this or changed this, right? Having those conversations will allow your UDL practice to improve. To just say, you know, what I thought made sense when I implemented in this particular semester, maybe it didn’t work, maybe it did. But to engage with the students, that’s the first starting point. And then from there to say, you know, what else can I do? How else can I grow in this UDL improvement model that I’m committed to? I think also too, when people say UDL, they go, oh my gosh, this is going to take so much time. But I will push back on that to say, in the long term, it will reduce time because instead of this reactive, okay, I have a particular student, they came in with an accommodation plan, I have to make all of these changes. If we’re thinking about UDL and really engaging in this proactive, inclusive development space in time, maybe less requests will occur because all of those tools are there for the students to engage regardless of their need.

Miranda Prynne: That’s a very good point because it definitely is one of the barriers, or one of the supposed barriers that’s held up against UDL is just how workable it is for lecturers with limited time, big workloads, big student cohorts. But the point you’ve just made maybe goes some way towards answering that. In your experience among teaching faculty, how good an understanding is there of the needs of disabled and neurodiverse students?

Katherine Aquino: It ranges, right? You know, faculty are experts in their particular content area, and they should be. I was an interesting faculty member because my content area was student success and disability and accessibility. So I had the privilege to engage with my colleagues to talk about pedagogical improvement through this lens because this is what I studied. So you never want to look poorly at the faculty member who maybe is in the basic sciences or in the humanities who may not have an understanding of the disabled or this neurodiverse student experience, because again, they did not have that training. But I will say though, if maybe faculty members are coming into academia without that understanding, exploring how to improve pedagogy, thinking about student success models, once you are in academia, you have the opportunity to engage, to note interest, and to show really some level of commitment. Because at that point, you are teaching, right? There are faculty who might never be in the classroom who are primarily research faculty, but for those who are teaching, and I’ll even push to say, you know, even research faculty, there has to be at least some level of interest or commitment here. So, faculty understanding varies widely, but I would just hope that institutions do engage at some level for some professional development so that they can improve and explore how to expand on their current teaching reality. But also, too, there are such wonderful organizations that can support in this work, right? So, the Association on Higher Education and Disability are always doing fabulous webinars and opportunities for practitioners. But I would also say faculty can also benefit. So, to sum up my response, there is a range, but at the end of the day, if a faculty member is in a place where when you distill it, is for students to succeed, to learn, to grow, to get to the next space, how can we not be at some level committed to their success?

Miranda Prynne: Yeah, there is a responsibility, a burden of responsibility there. You recently co-edited a book with Adam Lalor of Landmark College called The New Accessibility in Higher Education: Disrupting the System for an Inclusive Future, which was published last year. And that brings together insights and advice from, I think, is it 27 experts as well as the two of you on improving the disabled student experience across US higher ed. Clearly, you can’t tell me about every facet of the book, but perhaps you can draw out some key points of what you learned when bringing this book together.

Katherine Aquino: So, when thinking about the book, this was during the pandemic when you know sometimes you had a little more time on your hands than you would like. And Adam and I were just engaging of, you know, what are the stories that need to be told? What are the topics that need to be explored? And we really saw a clear need to discuss this move beyond compliance towards a more really transformative, really a system-based approach here with the book. And, you know, one key insight was that accessibility, it’s just not about removing barriers. It’s what active conversations can we have related to improving clarity, engagement. That’s what we wanted to talk about in this book. And that’s what, while there’s so much literature, I feel of how we packaged it was a unique conversation to the field, right? So we recognize the importance of aligning when we’re thinking of policy and pedagogy and culture, because it’s that meaningful conversation that really allows for change, right? So the book was a fantastic experience. And it was really cool that at the end of the day, we were able to share with the field that accessibility is the driver of institutional quality. It’s not just an obligation. It’s really something that can create this energy to something that will benefit the current students, but also the environment for the future.

Miranda Prynne: I just wonder on the disclosure front, because it is really well documented that disclosure of disabilities is lower than it is suspected the actual figures should be. Why is it that students aren’t disclosing, given that it presumably would help them if they did, because there’d be support systems that could be put in place? What’s detracting from it?

Katherine Aquino: You know, sometimes it’s access to information and sometimes stigma within a particular institution or perceived stigma. So let’s talk about access to information. If a student is coming in to a particular institution, and this is assuming that that particular student is coming from the K-12 world and going directly or somewhat directly into a higher education space, and the majority of this student’s life has had the opportunity, and I’m thinking particularly in the U.S., here is the example that I have in my head, where they had a team of individuals to help with an IEP or a 504 and working with teachers, social workers, and student advocates so that they were succeeding and there was a plan established for their success and completion. Now, in higher education, a student must formally disclose. So, it’s where is the office? Who is the contact person? Is there a website that is going to give me clear guidance on what to do? And do I need any documentation? What does that documentation look like? Right? So, suddenly, it becomes this very potentially overwhelming experience, especially if they do not know who to engage with. That’s the first thing. Adam and I are actually working on a study right now where we’re reviewing disability resource office websites to see not only the content, but kind of the framing of the language. And it’s sometimes quite surprising what is there or not there, or even if the link is working. So, again, if you’re going to an institution you just enrolled and you put in the search disability resource office and you’re getting a 404 error, what do you do then? Who do you talk with? Perhaps you say, you know what, maybe I’ll get to it later on. That’s the first piece. But then, also, too, it’s going into stigma. How is disability seen on a campus? How is disability embedded within their culture? If they feel that maybe it’s something that would look poorly for them to engage in or to acknowledge, that is something that would be a huge way to deter a student to go and engage with their disability resource office, right? So, stigma, which has been ever present in the literature surrounding disability in higher education, is something that should not be dismissed. And oftentimes, it needs to be a conversation at institutions to say, are we creating a space that is accepting of disability? And for those who wish to formally disclose, will that process be not only easy, but something that could be positive in one’s life? So, I think that access to information and the stigma are the two top elements that are important to note.

Miranda Prynne: As with all things relating to equity, diversity and inclusion efforts, there is a diversity of opinion. And some people express concerns that by designing courses and teaching with accessibility and inclusion at their core, the educators risk catering to the minority and overlooking the way the majority of students may want to learn. What do you say to that?

Katherine Aquino: I’ll start by saying that disability is not only the largest minority group in the United States, but the largest minority group in the world, right? So, like, what’s the majority here? And designing for accessibility does not disadvantage the minority. It’s improving the experience to everyone. So, the example that I shared previously with a particular video having the captioning and having the slide deck and also having the transcript, one person might not ever identify as having a disability or experience a disability in their life, but still benefit from having those additional resources. So, many of the strategies are associated with inclusive design. They’re just widely accepted and effective teaching practices. So, when we frame it as overlooking the majority, I push back to say, you know, if we’re giving so many tools, all will benefit. I remember in high school, I had an English teacher, and it was for a particular exam. And she provided the study materials in different ways, right? So she had the content in a paragraph format, in bulleted format. I think that there was like an audio, it was very ahead of its time. And what was really cool in that example and what I only kind of connected years later, all the students chose different formats. And it was just framed of this is preference here. This is the students preference. But what happened? The students had different ways to obtain the same material in a preferred method and everyone was able to succeed a bit more because they had the tools that worked for them.

Miranda Prynne: So that’s a great example because it highlights actually how simple it can be. I mean, in the written form, we all prefer different formats. As you say, as an editor, I really noticed that when I received a written piece and it might be in a font or a font size or just the way it’s the spacing of the paragraphs are done, my brain kind of looks at it and it’s a fuzz. It’s just a really good working demonstration. To continue playing devil’s advocate, another thing that’s often talked about among the concerns raised is simply that learning should be challenging and it should be hard and it should definitely at times be uncomfortable. And I think we all probably know those soul-destroying moments when you feel somewhat lost because you just can’t seem to get something. But you know, when you then do, my goodness, is that a powerful moment of learning? Is there a danger of over-personalization of learning in trying to accommodate all individual needs?

Katherine Aquino: You know, I try to live in spaces where it’s like not too fanatical in one way or the other. So I hope my response is safe to say, you know, there’s danger in everything. But when we take a few steps back and say, what is the core in this message? If we truly create with UDL approaches, I feel that it’s not over-personalization. It’s just creating a robust learning space. So learning should always involve challenge, but it’s the conversation about those unnecessary barriers, right? It’s there should be level of quality, level of rigor, but if there are additional challenges, additional barriers that are experienced by a particular individual or group, in addition to knowing the content, highlighting the understanding of the content, that’s a different situation here, right? So accessibility, you know, the aim of it is to remove the obstacles that are unrelated to the learning objectives. When you remove the obstacles unrelated to the learning objectives, then the students are allowed to really engage fully in rigorous, rigorous, I should note, content. It’s not about lowering standards. It’s really ensuring that students have equitable opportunities to meet those standards and thoughtful design, design that is really committed to UDL, it’s going to maintain the rigor, but it’s still going to support that student success, that diverse learning that is occurring in all classrooms right now.

Miranda Prynne: I think your phrase, removing the obstacles unrelated to learning objectives, is a really powerful one to take away from that. That’s the key message, really, isn’t it? It’s actually enabling the students to take on the challenges. In conclusion, if there was to be one big change across US higher ed that you could enact right now relating to support for disabled students, what would you want it to be?

Katherine Aquino: I don’t want to say one big change. I want to say a lot of little changes, right? Because a lot of little changes will make the one big change, but it will create less of the stressor that might be felt by many higher education administrators and faculty right now. It’s going back to that one action, one conversation, one question, right? Engage in the institution, understand the culture that exists now. And those little improvements can shift that culture less from a reactive, but again, more to a proactive system-level approach to accessibility. So it’s thinking about how UDL can be used. It’s doing these accessibility audits. Where can we grow here? Where are these like hot spots of change that need to occur? Accessibility, at the end of the day, though, it needs to be understood as a core dimension of educational quality and innovation. And when we put accessibility into those spaces, quality, innovation, it’s now going to feel exciting. It’s going to be something that people want to commit to and see the importance of and really understand that that space is something that can be committed to and engaged with for years to come.

Miranda Prynne: That’s so interesting that the grand systemic change ultimately will come from countless micro alterations throughout an institution rather than some big kind of policy enactment.

Katherine Aquino: Absolutely. Because it makes everyone a part of it.

Miranda Prynne: Well, look, Katherine, it’s been a delight to speak to you. Thank you so much for talking me through a very dense topic in such a short space of time.

Katherine Aquino: Thank you. I had so much fun today.

Miranda Prynne: There is so much to unpack from that conversation. I like that Katherine is realistic to the limits and pressures under which academics and educators are working and she offers achievable approaches by which everyone can engage and contribute to improving student success for those with disabilities. And really the key takeaway for me is that point that small individual adaptations can, if they build momentum, ultimately have a much more powerful effect than big top-down policy announcements and ambitions. And hopefully that should serve to motivate everyone to do their bit, however small it may seem.

Miranda Prynne: That’s it for this week. If you enjoyed the conversation please do like and subscribe and we will be back with you in a couple of weeks. Thank you. Bye-bye.

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