I know I talk (and write) a lot about ableism in academia, and in language learning specifically. It’s important that I do, because it’s really there and it’s a real problem. One year ago, I wrote about how “best practices” in language teaching can erect barriers to accessible learning. I stand by what I wrote then, and it’s no less true today than it was a year ago.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for language instructors. In the same way that some of what we prioritize in language learning might lend itself to inaccessibility and exclusion (see last year’s blog entry), there’s a lot that we already do in language education that is also important to accessibility.
We may not realize we have been engaging in some accessible practices all along. And, we might be able to adapt our current methods easily to achieve support for language and support for access simultaneously.
For example:
We often make good use of bimodal input (i.e., saying something more than one way). Are you considering a wide array of disabilities when you decide which modes in which to present your input? (You can’t anticipate everything, and that’s ok, but you might be able to widen your scope a little and consider challenges presented to different disabilities that you hadn’t before). Giving students more than one path to information is a core principle of Universal Design for Learning (udlguidelines.cast.org), a major approach used to make learning more accessible.
We use multimodality in other ways, also. We use text enhancement (bold, colors, etc.) like it’s going out of style. Making important elements as salient to learners as possible is an accessibility measure if ever I’ve encountered one! Use bold, rather than italics, because it’s easier to parse. You don’t have to stop using color (please don’t stop using color!), but using something else with color (like bold) will help that saliency remain accessible for students who have difficulty distinguishing colors and contrast.
In language learning, we also believe in the power of repetition. Repetition is helpful for learners with diverse functionality of working memory and processing. Is the repetition you’re probably already engaging in happening in accessible ways (e.g., is it being presented in more than one modality?) How helpful might it be to disabled learners if you could add one more repetition to your weekly routine?
Study skills and executive functioning: Are you naturally gifted at prioritizing next steps in a project or assignment? Even if you aren’t, as the instructor, you might have already thought through (or taken for granted?) how you think students should prioritize and organize themselves for a given task. If you haven’t already, make it explicit. You don’t have to micromanage and force students to proceed through the work the way that you would yourself, but if it’s quick and easy for you to articulate, you might write up a little suggested plan of action. To those of us for whom organization comes naturally, it seems an easy thing to divide a task into subtasks and rank them in order of importance. It takes students with ADHD, for example, double or triple the time to prioritize-if they can manage it at all (success in a skill like this also depends a lot on elements that don’t stem from the disability itself: maturity, practice, self-awareness, training, etc.)
We teach our language students about the usefulness of leaning on context clues and gestures, to help with meaning making. We show to best develop flash cards for new vocabulary. We explain the benefits of practicing outside of class. We give learners access to executive functioning coping mechanisms all the time.
Once we think about what we are already doing that is helpful to our students, it’s not a far leap to see how we can tweak our practices just a little bit to increase access related to disability.
Caitlin Cornell 