Back from lunch, & ready for the first 20-min session of the afternoon: "From 0 to 6 in One Month: An #Accessibility n00b Relearns Web Development," led by William Bork.
I'll try and share takeaways from this but might be notetaking instead for my own sake! #MSUa11y#FAFMSU
Bork is sharing his journey of moving from
(knowing) Nothing
to
(knowing) Something
to
(knowing) More.
It's a catchy thought-pattern.
Things Bork has learned in his task of completing accessibility audits:
Bork is showing side-by-side examples of webpages he built -- one image will show an inaccessible website, and the other will show what changes he made to make it accessible. This is really helpful and eye-opening to small changes with big impact. #MSUa11y#FAFMSU
Thanks, @williambork, for this awesome presentation!
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If you require your students to share formal uni paperwork to receive disability accommodations in your class, lemme just tell you this right now: that is a ridiculous, ableist, unfair stance and I am writing a short thread here to tell you why. (1/7)
Accommodations almost always require a formal diagnosis. Barriers to GETTING a formal diagnosis are enormous, expensive, & VERY slow.
It took me 7 MONTHS from beginning the process to getting a copy of paperwork. And that's without trying to give that paperwork to anyone. (2/7)
It takes weeks to get a referral to schedule testing (if your insurance even covers it).
It takes months (usually) for the testing to finally happen.
It takes another FULL MONTH to wait for follow-up & diagnosis.
Then, the shuffle with insurance & meds begins. Awful. (3/7)
Still feel like the phrase "love is love" (intended to validate queer couples) erases all the differences & miracles & places of wonderment that make queer love so different from not-queer love. OFC I love my wife, but our relationship dynamic isn't the same as a cis-het couple.
I KNOW we grocery shop, bicker, and snore in our sleep like cis-het couples do. But I am nonbinary; our dynamics, cultural information, Burkean rhetorics, & ways of engagement are different than cis-het couples because we live in/are of a very different world than those couples.
My family has and deserves value, as all families do. I'm not saying love ISN'T love, in that way. I'm saying that in erasing the ways queered companionship, queered commitment, and queered sense of love and belonging, you are limiting what the world can know of a love like mine.
A little parable on self-care that has some twists and turns (thread).
I used to run. Like, a lot. Like, two dozen health marathons in two years. And then, hard things happened in my life & I stopped. Started feeling really anxious any time I even thought of running. (1/10)
For several years, I would attempt comebacks. It never really stuck. It was hard to make a routine when I was battling my mental health. I also didn’t want to invest in the process (new shoes etc) because I knew I was unreliable about follow-through. (2/10)
Then, this winter, I really started hitting my stride again. I was running regularly, but I was also getting some serious hip and back pain. First, I assumed it was my body tryna get back in shape. I pushed on, not wanting to lose my gains. (3/10)
Get your ego out of your classroom! Take your job seriously, but don't be self-important. Remember that this semester is just a moment in time, that your students are in precarity & are also Real People, & that they have needs & self-care boundaries too.
To clarify: When students are absent, seem tired / disengaged, or can't get it all together to meet your arbitrary (& they are, let's be real, arbitrary and randomly curated or selected based on imagined timeframes) deadlines, it is VERY LIKLEY NOT *clap* ABOUT *clap* YOU! *clap*
I'll go one step further. IDK about you, but, I'm pretty smart and have a lot to share with my students (or, I'd like to think so). And I STILL don't think ANYTHING I will share in a 1-hour class is worth my students compromising their mental/emotional/physical health to hear.
Always analyze which of your classroom practices are ableist, or only serve students who fit your prefab ideation of who a "student" might be.
Examples to follow in a short thread.
Read, RT, pass it on, etc.
1. Do you only present your classes/lectures orally?
If so, students with hearing disabilities as well as students with certain mental/invisible disabilities will struggle to fully access course information. Consider providing written notes, captioned audio, or multimodal format.
2. Do you have a strict attendance policy?
If so, students w/ chronic health issues, including mental health issues, will be penalized through ableism. Reconsider what it is you're grading when you grade attendance. Is it course content mastery? If not, why're you grading it?