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ADCET crosses the ocean: Access & inclusion in Tertiary Education, Post-COVID-19 Part 3
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In this podcast, Karen McCall from Karlen Communications chats with David Swayn and Darlene McLennan about the pandemic and its impacts on access to education. Karen is a long standing and respected advocate in the field of accessible documents. Karen is a Microsoft MVP (Most Valued Professional) and an advisor to peak bodies, councils and government departments. During this conversation Karen shares with us her passion for the creation of a global inclusive education standard, some of the pitfalls of the pandemic with regard to accommodation not inclusion, and chats with us about procurement, law vs. attitude and more. Our conversation with Karen is the third in a series “ADCET crosses the ocean” where we bring global perspectives and ideas to our audience.
Hi everyone. Welcome to the ADSET podcast. Supporting you, supporting students. We would like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are the traditional custodians of the lands on which this recording is taking place, and pay our respects to the elders past, present, and emerging. In this podcast, Karen McCall from Carlean Communications chats with David Swain and Darlene McClennan about her passions and work in advocating for inclusive education over the last 20 years. Our conversation with Karen is a third inner series, ADSET Crosses the Ocean, where we bring global perspectives and ideas to our audience. You can find the other two parts of this series on our podcast channel. Make sure you check out our show notes for relevant links. Enjoy.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to our podcast, ADSET Supporting You, Supporting Students. This is Darlene McLennan from the Australian Disability Clearing House on Education and Training. Joining me today is my colleague David Swain from the National Disability Coordination Officers program based in North Queensland. Our guest today is Karen McCall from Carlen Communications from Canada. Karen is an author, advocate, and specialist in accessibility for Canada, and Karen has worked in the field of accessible content design for more than 20 years and is the owner of Carlen Communication. Welcome and thanks for joining us, Karen.
SPEAKER_03Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_02We've had a little bit of a pre-chat and it's been fantastic to hear some of your stories and some of your passion. But can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself?
SPEAKER_03I do have a visual disability, so my interest in accessible education is part selfish and part uh humanitarian, I guess. I came into the field of accessible document design when I was getting my master's in the late 1990s, and we were using Kermit and dial up, and online education was just becoming a thing. And I recognized immediately the barriers that those of us with disabilities would be facing if we did not look at the accessibility of online content. And at the same time, the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 were being released. So there was an interest in making websites accessible, which at that time was primarily the educational sort of source. Learning management systems were just being developed. So I kind of fell into it as we were able to in the early 2000s make PDF documents accessible. And I learned how to do that and made notes. And I had enough notes I could put a book together. So my my book on accessible PDF was published in 2005. And then people said, well, it's just too hard to make things accessible and work in the tags tree of a PDF document. Can we make a Word document accessible from the start? And that would save us a lot of time. Can we make PowerPoint accessible? That would save us a lot of time when we tag it as a PDF document. And so then I took notes and wrote uh books on how to make PowerPoint and Word accessible. Then I did training and consulting as an instructional designer and teaching people in colleges and universities here in Canada how to make accessible content. So I I have been involved in this field from its inception.
SPEAKER_00It's um quite a lengthy journey, I suppose, through all of that. And I did a little bit of pre-reading about you, if you don't mind. And I noticed that you spent a lot of your professional career advocating for accessible documents in a very broad sense and also in some uh cases advising on legislation. I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of an overview of some of the wins and the losses in the field at the moment, and if there was something that needed to change right now, what would that be?
SPEAKER_03Some of the wins are that in my talking about inclusive education and the focus internationally as of 2015 by the United Nations on inclusive education. We are now talking about people with disabilities having a more equitable role in education, um, which is the win. The problem is everybody defines inclusive education as something different. And most of the time it's it's defined as us being accommodated for rather than being included in. So we have to kind of change that that paradigm. The win is there's enough people interested in changing that paradigm, in looking at a global inclusive education standard that if we could find a way to all get together, uh I think we could make some serious progress in creating a baseline and a standard for what is inclusive rather than accommodated for education. Here in Ontario, our legislation doesn't really have any enforcement. And so it's even though the accessibility of documents, uh, which is very vague in our legislation, is being phased in, I think that the hope was that because it was phased in from 2012 to 2025, that with the change in government, we have elections every four years, that um the requirements for the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act would simply go away or attention wouldn't be paid to them. There is a lot of interest in terms of community colleges and universities having programs and certificate and degree programs in making things accessible. Two of our local community colleges, one in Toronto and one in Hamilton, now have uh graduate certificate programs in accessible media design. We do have the Ontario College of Accessible Design, so that is a plus where you can get degrees in accessible design for built environment and digital content and all aspects of the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, open spaces, information communication, customer service, all of those kinds of things. So we we are making some progress in terms of international standards. We do have the Web Accessibility Content Guidelines, which are an international standard and are technology neutral. They don't quite fit the bill for uh documents because documents are slightly different. They have page numbers and headers and head uh page headers and footers and stuff. So it's a little bit um different. Uh the PDF standards that are being developed are, I think, taking a serious step backwards. So I'm not sure how they're going to progress in the in the future. They're not published yet. So it's kind of a mixed bag. For a while, there it was very um static. Nothing seemed to be happening. And then within the last three years, there has been more of a renewed interest in just in companies and organizations wanting to make their content accessible. Um on the other hand, there have been some some big lawsuits, especially in the states, uh, for people who don't find any value in those of us with disabilities uh accessing their their products. So it's um it's kind of a mixed bag. I I see the the COVID uh pandemic as a huge opportunity. Here in Ontario, we have been talking non-stop. Those of us who are are advocates, uh, we will take any airtime we can get, and we seem to be getting uh a lot of it, and just um bring home the point that digital access is important, that we have to pay attention to it, and we can't uh let it go by the wayside anymore. That if students are all going to be online, then all of the content and all of the teachers have to create their content to be accessible. So the huge um, the huge win, I think, is the attention that the pandemic is putting on the amount of inaccessible content that is out there in the education environment.
SPEAKER_00I think that's a really um great point to make, actually, that it's it rapidly accelerated that uh issue and brought it to the spotlight in a way that hasn't happened in some um you know slow manner where it can sort of just tick along with other issues. It's it's rapidly accelerated it, and I'm glad to hear that over there there's airtime for the conversation as well.
SPEAKER_03Well, it's it's it's interesting because it's not um it it seemed to be a small crack that opened, and those of us who have any kind of uh voice or any kind of stubbornness have really widened that crack so that we are being heard um, even if even if nothing is being done now. And and what we're hearing is well, you know, everybody is already doing the distance education, all the students are in there already, it's too late to make things accessible. And my perspective is it's not too late now that you know about it. You have uh, well, now it's three to four months. When we started talking about it, it was four to five months before the pandemic comes back in the fall. So you have that time to start putting things in place, to start with your strategy on how you are going to make all of this content accessible if students are not going back to the built environment school in the fall. You have this lead time to start training teachers and start making sure that you have the strategies, the policies, and the planning in place so that come the fall when students are still learning at a distance, more content is accessible and you are building on that. So I don't see it as a it's too late. Um, and we're trying to dispel that that mindset is that you know, don't give up before you started because we're not going to accept that.
SPEAKER_02I think here in Australia we're having a you know a sim similar conversations. The challenge has been before the universities and tapes, or have they been fighting for a long time for that accessible stuff, has really come to the forefront now with COVID. We've had a recent report done by Vision Australia called Online but Off Track, which really highlights the lived experience of many students who are blind and low vision in Australia. Um the the report was quite damning of some of the experiences of those students. And one of the recommendations from that report is that our peak body of Universities Australia actually work with organisations such as Vision Australia to develop comprehensive training programs for all staff around the needs and supports of students who are blind or low vision. Can you talk a bit? And you you covered that in the last bit a little bit, but why is it important to like have all staff trained in accessibility and also that you know that begins right at the beginning of when content's being developed?
SPEAKER_03One of the problems that we've seen with everything going online is that students no longer have that connection, that direct connection with disability services. If we're talking tertiary education, uh disability services acts as the intermediary between the inaccessible content and the student. So the people who would take the books, break the bindings, scan them in, make them accessible, and give them to the student are now working at home and don't have access to the multiplex photocopiers, to their OCR, their optical character recognition or text recognition software. So they don't, they're working at home and they don't have the tools that they would normally have access to in their office. So they are trying to make uh content accessible without the tools that they need. Uh the students are needing the tools immediately. And we, to some extent, uh to a great extent, are still accepting instructors not making their content accessible, partly because they don't know how. They either have not wanted to make their material accessible or they simply choose not to, despite some training. And that, I mean, it's a wide range of reasons why they don't. So we have students who can't access information and yet they are still expected to hand assignments in on time and to access material that they can't. So if an instructor, if a faculty member, a teacher creates something to be accessible so that all students can access it, then that takes some of the pressure off of the disability services person, the person who accessed that intermediary in primary and secondary school, it's an educational assistant, to then support the student rather than spending all of their time trying to find a way at home where they have the equipment. It also, if I can point to a project back in the early 2000s at MIT, they had a first-year physics class, and they had, I think it was, if I remember correctly, 75% of the students failed the course or dropped out. And this was a prerequisite course to move on for a lot of their programs. So what they did was it was when the W3C was just starting, when the web content accessibility guidelines were just published, they decided they would make the content in the physics course accessible. And it was called the Pivot Project. And they found that they turned around the rate where and they had like 75% of the students graduate because the students, if they couldn't learn with the print, they had audio, if they couldn't learn with the audio, they had the video, they had the content in several accessible formats. And they were accessible. It wasn't just that they provided different formats, they provided different accessible formats. So accessibility of digital content helps everyone. And if a student can't learn a concept from print, or they can't learn a concept from a video, but they they could learn it from print, they have that opportunity to choose the accessible format that is going to help them learn that concept. So accessible design helps everyone. It isn't just for those who are blind, of us who are blind, visually disabled, have learning cognitive or print disabilities. It's like the curb cuts, it's like elevators, it's like escalators, it it helps everybody. And I think we need to start framing it that way, but also making sure that it's part of your job now as a teacher, as a faculty member. Um, if you if you want to keep your job, if you want to keep teaching, uh you are going to create accessible content. We will give you all the supports. And in Ontario, we are really lucky because we do have the Ontario College for Accessible Design. And one of the things that I've suggested is that we leverage that expertise to create the plan for Ontario, to create that model for Ontario or for Ontario to use that can then be replicated, and take that expertise in designing training programs and support programs for teachers and faculty in Ontario to get them up to speed in the next three to four months on accessible content design and provide ongoing training and support. And I think it would be a great way to put us on the road toward inclusive education rather than accommodated for education. Right now it's one-offs, uh, it's a per student basis and that the accommodation is being made. It's not that we are being included. Um it's being it's that you you have a problem accessing the this content, we'll fix it for you. But then if somebody else comes along with a disability, it's like, oh, well, we'll fix it for you. Whereas if it were accessible in the first place, uh, it would not only save time, but all of the other students would be able to leverage the accessibility as well.
SPEAKER_00It's very well spoken on that point, Karen. I think and there's a lot of practicality to it as well, insofar as if you're a student who needs um documents converted in a certain format, what happens if the person who does it isn't there that day? You don't have equal access to education in those instances. So having spent a long time advocating for it, have you got any thoughts on whether or not it's a lack of awareness or whether or not it's a lack of legislation?
SPEAKER_03We have the legislation. The legislation has no teeth. So we can point to the legislation, whether you're whether you're in Canada or whether you're in the United States, um, we have allowed faculty and we have allowed academic institutions to say it's not important for us, it's not one of our priorities. Uh, in terms of faculty and teachers, we have allowed people to say, I don't want, I don't want to change the way that I teach, I don't want to uh learn how to do this, it's not my job. Um, what I would hear a lot of is that no student with a disability will be in my course, which I thought was very sad. It's like your course is so boring, not even students with disabilities would want to take it, um, which is not, of course, how they meant it, but when I saw the look on their face after I said that, it was, you know, you can't tell whether you have students with disabilities in your class. A lot of us, especially when we get to tertiary education, if we our disabilities are invisible, um, or if we have adapted to the point where we just use our adaptive technology and seamlessly integrate into the class, I think it should be part of the academic institution's responsibility to do the same toward us and seamlessly include us in the in the digital content without us having to ask for it. So attitude plays a huge part, um, especially for faculty who are resistant to change and don't want to learn anything new or don't see. At the very core, it's that those of us with disabilities still don't have any value in the in the academic um ecosystem. We and it is because we are still accommodated for, we're seen as some something that has to be um accommodated rather than included. And they keep going back to that that kind of paradox, in that if we were included, it wouldn't be a question as to whether you would just seamlessly create accessible content. You would have all of your assignments constructed so that all of your students would seamlessly create accessible content, so that if you did have peer evaluations, if you did have collaborative work in the classroom, you wouldn't have to make special assignments or accommodations and exclude or isolate students with disabilities who then are not part of the community of their own classmates, but are off doing something different because either the tool, the digital tool, is not accessible or the content is not accessible. And so we'll give you something special to do. You know, you're not included with the with the rest of us, which further isolates us. And since everybody's learning at a distance now, the isolation is exacerbated because teachers are are allowed to bring in digital tools that haven't been vetted for accessibility and and they're not creating accessible content. So it all comes back to the attitude: how are those of us with disabilities seen in an academic ecosystem? Are we seen seen as things outside the norm that need to be accommodated for, or are we seen as people who have value and are included in every aspect and level of learning?
SPEAKER_00It's interesting because legislation and attitude are pretty well linked, and a lot of legislation around the world is that you're required to fix it. It's not that you're required to build it right in the first instance. We spoke a little bit uh in the pre-chat about access to technology and what's happening over there, but I'm wondering if we could go back to that and talk a little bit about what's happening in Canada at the moment in the further education space in the COVID world and in online learning, and maybe if we could chat about access to technology at its very core form.
SPEAKER_03One of the problems. That is it has emerged. And I've as I mentioned, I see I've seen it on some of the academic lists where people from disability services are now being confronted with academic institutions who are not providing the same adaptive technology for students when they were on site or in the built environment now that they are at a distance. So if you are a student, if you were part of a family who can't afford the adaptive technology, what you're being told is that you, as someone who is not a techie, has to go out on the internet and find an adaptive technology that works the same way as the one that you used at school, which you probably use seamlessly. You have probably come through school with the adaptive technology being provided for you, whether it's primary, secondary, or tertiary education, there are the licenses. And all of a sudden, not only are you having to learn how to navigate a digital learning management system and inaccessible content, but you're also told that the adaptive technology that you have been using is no longer available to you, and that you're going to have to go out and find the suitable technology. Not only that, you're going to have to install it on your computer, configure it, and learn how to use it, all while keeping up with your studies. And some of the things that you will find on the internet are not going to have the same tools. They're not going to be as robust as the tools that you have been using at school, because the ones that you've been using at school are ones where you have site licenses. So it's another area of disadvantage for students is having to figure out their own adaptive technology if they don't have access to it at home. And I can't even imagine someone I work at a tech table at my local coffee shop where I did before this. Where would they even find the learning modules to figure out how to learn how to do footnotes? Is it going to allow me to put footnotes in my academic paper? Where do I do that? What are the keyboard commands? What are the voiced commands? It gives the students with disabilities a further digital barrier in that they don't have the support of the adaptive technology that they may have been used to using again seamlessly when they have been on site at school.
SPEAKER_02It's huge, isn't it? Just the layers upon layers of the barriers that could exist for students with disability at this time. And you've I think you've given a really good insight there, Karen. Maybe moving away. Oh sorry, keep going.
SPEAKER_03I was going to say the other thing is because everybody is just moving online so quickly, the whole environment is in chaos. And so all of these needs, all of these problems get lost in the chaos of let's just get everybody online, let's get them past this year, you know, just just let's get it done so that you know we can move on to the to the next crisis, to the next, and hopefully get back to school in the fall, which I I honestly um believe that we will have another um pandemic or the the same one, a continuation based on on what happened a hundred years ago. I I just think that you know we're going to be faced with it and we're going to have this chaos if we don't sort it out.
SPEAKER_02Yes, indeed. On a bit of a global perspective now, um, do you have any thoughts about the Marrakech Treaty? Like both Australia and Canada are signatories, and how could we leverage this to get publishers to ensure they develop courses and books to be accessible? So, you know, our institutions aren't always having to modify or adapt the content for students.
SPEAKER_03Again, I come back to accommodation. There's two parts to this. The first one is we still do accommodation, not inclusion. So the making something accessible is done on a one-off basis. One student needs one book accessible, and that's how we view it. So that publisher only has to make that that one book accessible that one time for that one student, and then another student comes along and it's accommodation, it's not inclusion. So there's no real mandate for the publishers to make something inclusive from the beginning. The other problem is that we have, and we have for the last uh at least five years, we have this skirmish going on among the different file formats, especially when it comes to textbooks and uh education. We have the people who really believe that HTML is the best way for those of us with disabilities to access anything digital. We have the PDF people who believe that PDF is the best way, and we also have the EPUB people who say that their format is the best way or the only way for those of us with disabilities to access educational material. The problem with that is that we have these three groups that are telling those of us with disabilities what is best for us. When most of the textbooks are created with desktop publishing software, and they it they can be made accessible right from the putting together of that textbook. And you would simply save it as a tagged PDF or save it as an EPUB or whatever you're going to publish in. My, even though I have been in the past a strong advocate for the accessible PDF format, I have always said, I don't care what format you publish your works in, you make it accessible. So if a textbook is going to be available in EPUB format, then it is as accessible as EPUB can be. If it's going to be published in HTML, it is accessible, as accessible as HTML can be for that content. And the same with PDF, but don't tell us what is the best format for those of us with disabilities. When you go into a bookstore and you want to buy a book, the sales clerk doesn't say, oh, you know, hardcover isn't really good for you. You you really, you know, can only read a paperback, or you can only read a coil ring, or you can people who don't have disabilities aren't told what is the best format. So publishers right now are confused because they have these three factions saying, This is the best, this is the best, this is the best. Um and they are accommodating for rather than including in. So even if they have a digital textbook, it's probably an inaccessible version of whatever format, when it could very easily be an accessible version. So what those of us with disabilities, those of us who are advocates, have to start looking at again is inclusion rather than accommodation. And saying it doesn't matter what format you you create this textbook in, this course pack in, this course material in, it is going to have to be accessible. You can you can choose as a document author, as the publisher, you can choose what what you're going to do, whether it's EPUB, HTML, or PDF, but whatever format you decide, it has to be accessible, and that accessible version has to be available at the same time that a student purchases a print book if you also decide to publish the book in print.
SPEAKER_00I guess this sort of really leads us in very neatly to something that's um extremely important. I know something that you put some time into about global inclusive education standards and your advocacy for this. Could you talk to us about what that looks like and then maybe for our listeners what they could do to support this cause?
SPEAKER_03I really believe in a global inclusive education standard, primarily because when I hear people talk about inclusive education, it means anything. And it means different things to different people. Now that we have as of 2009-2010, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities from the United Nations, and I think what is it, 154 countries, I think, have uh signed and ratified it. So we have a really good base of different cultures and different countries to draw on in terms of creating a baseline for defining inclusive education. And then in 2015, the United Nations developed the Sustainable Development Goals and goal 4.5 for 2030, which we're not going to meet, is inclusive education. But again, it's not defined. Everyone talks about inclusive education, it seems to be a very hot topic, but you can talk to five people and have 10 different opinions on what inclusive education really is. So my focus is on disability and inclusive education. But for me, inclusive education also means educating girls and minorities and creating that baseline for equal education for everyone. My focus just happens to be on the disability/slash accessibility component of this, so that internationally, when we have our conferences on inclusive education, we're all talking about the same thing. And we're not talking about accommodation. There's a in some places there's confusion between accommodating foreign inclusion inclusion or integration. Mainstreaming, really, for those of us who lived through mainstreaming, leaves a really bad taste in our mouths because we lived through it and it didn't work. So allowing us as a part of the discussion, those of us with disabilities, to be at the table and have a voice on where the barriers we have found in education are and how we can start creating that baseline of accessibility so that countries who can or want to build on that baseline and advance the standard can, but at least when we talk about inclusive education, when we set up schools where those of us with disabilities are are going to access learning, then we're all on the same page and the expectations are all the same. It doesn't matter which which country you're in. And that's that's my vision for a global inclusive education standard, that we are all on the same page, that we are talking about inclusion in rather than accommodation for, that accommodation becomes uh that rare instance instead of the go-to uh or the or the norm for those of us with disabilities. In terms of how people can advance it, I think we need to talk about it. I haven't uh I think we also need someone who is a little uh higher up the food chain than I am to set up uh meetings that include those of us with disabilities, that include those of us who are are advocates and in the um in the field of education, rather than the theory of education, those of us who are actually in the trenches of education and and have that experience and and understand the difference between accommodation and inclusion, and begin talking about what that global inclusive education standard is going to look like, even if we just at this point tackle accessibility and then build the other components for girls and women and uh other minorities uh onto that, or if that work goes on simultaneously so that we can create an inclusive standard so that we know what we are talking about internationally. We have a global economy, and right now, because we are failing to graduate students who know anything about accessibility or accessible design, we are graduating people who are unemployable. In Ontario, we have legislation and companies are asking for people to prove that they know how to create accessible buildings, how to create accessible websites, how to create accessible multimedia, and we haven't taught the students. Take that to the to the next level, to the global economy, and we have countries like Australia, New Zealand, the UK, uh, the United States, where there is legislation on uh accessibility of digital content and environments, and we are graduating people who have absolutely no idea what that means. So we're just perpetuating the barriers because we're not developing an inclusive education standard. So we need to keep talking about it. I will talk to anybody who wants to listen uh about it and get ideas, but I think with that we need some buy-in from someone who can actually bring us all to together. Maybe now because we're all online, it's going to be a lot easier because we won't have to travel to meetings. But I think that we need someone with uh a bigger name than than than mine to actually say this is a really good idea. Let's seriously talk about it and put some put some framework together.
SPEAKER_00Well, having listened to the way you just put that, and I'm sure our um listeners would agree, I'm not quite sure if we need someone bigger than yourself to talk about it. It was so wonderfully put. And something that's probably going to stick in my head is about that 2030 goal and how would you do that without a set of standards? How would you uh create something that you don't have a set of standards for so that you can understand it in the global context? It's a very, very good point. Thank you so much for bringing it forward in that way. It was wonderful.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you. Thank you. I like I said, any I will take any opportunity to talk about this because I really do believe that it is it is important for for those of us with disabilities, but I think it's important for the global community as well to have this understanding about what we mean when we talk about education and disability.
SPEAKER_02So, Karen, you've talked a little bit about um the challenges and barriers that have existed at this time. I suppose, just in concluding, have you seen any what we'd call probably silver linings that are that are kind of currently happening or you see that may come out of this time?
SPEAKER_03Just the fact that people are interested and are letting us talk as advocates, they're letting us talk freely without dismissing us when we talk about uh the accessibility of education or the lack thereof. The it has given us a great um uh platform for talking about how we need to improve the accessibility of education and uh what that means for those of us with disabilities. So the the huge silver lining is our ability to talk about it without without being dismissed or marginalized, but also the fact that we do have, uh based on past history, we do have this window of opportunity where we can start putting things into practice and we can start building the framework for more uh digital accessibility. Uh we have this time to train the teachers how and faculty how to make things accessible. And if you don't want to make something accessible, you simply don't work here. Uh this is the way that we're doing it from now on, and uh this is going to be part of teacher education, it's going to be part of a teacher's uh job that when they create their curriculum, their content, it's going to be accessible, or you're simply not going to be a teacher. We can't accept the excuses anymore. And I think that one of the silver linings is that we are now able to express that. Whereas we have been told, you know, talk about unintentional barriers. It's not really their fault that they're not creating accessible content. Uh, you know, coax them along, they'll they'll come along. And I don't think we can do that anymore. I think that the silver lining is it has given us the strength and the courage as advocates to say uh enough is enough. For 20 years we have coddled people and accepted the fact that maybe someday they'll want to learn how to create accessible content. And for 20 years that hasn't worked. Now we have a pandemic and everyone is learning online, and we're seeing the folly of coddling people and trying to coax them along and coaching things in, you know, you're creating unintentional barriers. Uh no, you were creating barriers, uh, and you knew you were creating barriers, and the time has come to stop it and just start creating accessible content. So I think for me, the silver lining is I hear more advocates talking more strongly about the need for accessible document design and the and the fact that, you know, if we are coming anywhere near the goal of 2030, we have to start now. Otherwise, it's going to be 2080, and we're still going to be saying, you know, you're creating unintentional barriers. There are people with disabilities who could really use accessible content. And that's where we're going to be 100 years from now, right where we are now.
SPEAKER_00That's a very terrifying thought, isn't it? That um if something doesn't change in the way that things are advocated for, then of course uh the world continues to revolve. Just as a final conversation point, and I'm not sure if we went through this earlier, but with the Universities Australia and legislation, uh, there was a one thing that could change quite rapidly, and I don't know how this compares to uh Canada's context, but there's a procurement standard, and there's one standard which is sitting there for the use in procurement of online learning and other systems and software that needs to be legislated, and if it is, it changes the way we buy things and how they're used. You know, there's those small changes which I suppose I naively perceive as someone just needs to sign something and a whole bunch of things get fixed. And I wonder how many of those things could be identified during this process and then pulled forward.
SPEAKER_03The problem with procurement is that a lot of the procurement documents simply say it has to be accessible. And you have companies that come back. We saw it here in Ontario with uh websites for companies and organizations. They would put in their con their requests for proposals, there are procurement documents that it has to be accessible for people with disabilities. Well, of course, companies would say, I can do it. And then they would get the contract, and all of a sudden there were no accessible websites because they didn't know how to do it. So building it into procurement is is only part of it. Um, one of the companies here in Ontario a couple of years ago decided that uh it's one of our telecommunications uh companies tell us uh that for web developers, they were going to have to prove before they got to the interview that they could create an accessible website. So, with procurement, you're going to have to the people who are managing the procurement process are going to have to know what is an accessible LMS, what are the components of it? Um, how do we determine that? How are the bidders going to prove to us that they have an accessible learning management system, that they have templates for the teachers and faculty that will create accessible content, that if they try to put it inaccessible content up, that they're going to get a little flag that says, you know, excuse me, but uh what you're trying to do is going to create something that is inaccessible. Here's a better way of doing it. All of that has to be built into the procurement process. So the people who are doing the procurement can't simply say your LMS or your textbooks have to be accessible. You have to actually know what that is. And you have to have specific uh guidelines and standards that any bidder for those projects has to adhere to and prove that they can comply with. So procurement is a really nice, it's a nice way of doing it, but you have to know you have to know what you're procuring.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a good reminder. I think we've had a very similar experience in a um one of my workplaces that um just you know the vendor said, yes, yes, it's accessible. And of course, it's not. It's very frustrating. Okay, Karen, we're just reaching our end of time now. So thank you so much for for your wisdom and your and sharing your knowledge and your passion with us today. It think David and I have been furiously taking notes and um and thinking of yeah, how we can kind of improve our practice, but also um, you know, inform the the sector in a positive way, just through you know your experiences through this podcast. So thank you for your time today.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you for for talking with me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I wish you all the best in this this um this terrible time and please keep safe and um look look forward to um hopefully seeing you at one of the online conferences that are happening this year.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I have put proposals in for at least four online conferences uh all around the world. So this is another silver lining. I can attend uh you know a lot of conferences that are happening at the same time because I don't have to travel. Well, it's wonderful.
SPEAKER_02So all the best and um and thank you for spending some time with us today. Thank you very much.
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