Accessible teaching and assessment practices

In many cases making teaching more accessible could simply be a case of following good practice. For example:

• Facing an audience when giving a lecture and not speaking if you turn away to write on a blackboard
• Ensuring PowerPoint presentations are in an appropriate font size (minimum 24pt), slides are not cluttered and there is good contrast between the text colour and background (for example black or navy text on white or cream)
• Verbally explaining any charts or graphs
• Ensuring handouts are written in an appropriate font and font size (e.g. Arial 12pt) and available in several formats, e.g. paper and electronic
• Make sure everyone in a lecture, practical group, tutorial group etc can hear you and understands any instructions you give
• If playing a DVD, make sure the subtitles are turned on
• Repeating questions in a lecture or seminar to ensure everyone can hear them and benefit from the answer

More specific adjustments may also have to be made, such as ensuring a lecture theatre is accessible to a student with mobility problems, providing a sign language interpreter or scribe, making sure a candidate has extra time or scheduled breaks during assessment or could undertake more suitable forms of assessment. Most importantly, speak to the student if you can, and find out what works best for them.

Offering variety to students in the way they learn and can be assessed will be helpful to all and focus more effectively on the preferred learning strategies of disabled students.

Where could I find out more?

Publications:

• Inclusive Practice e-bulletins from the Psychology Subject Centre aim to give guidance on developing a more inclusive curriculum, covering areas such as assessment, teaching practice and technology
• The Disability Rights Commission, in partnership with a number of other organisations including Skill and Universities UK, produced a series of on-line guides explaining how the DDA could affect teaching and assessment and how they can be made more accessible. They are available online to download from the Skill website.

Practice Guides:

• A Briefing on assessing disabled students from the LTSN Generic Centre considers accessible assessment.
• Supporting students with Asperger's syndrome from the Physical Sciences Centre brings together information and guidance for teaching practitioners and support staff.

Organisations and Projects:

• The Teachability project at Strathclyde University has a series of guides covering various aspects of making curricula accessible for students with disabilities, for example, making lectures and seminars accessible. The guides also provide an opportunity to evaluate provision for disabled students within each area they cover.
• The SWANDS project (South West Academic Network for Disability Support) has a series of guides, available on-line, covering various aspects of teaching, such as "Course development", "Preparing learning materials", "Lectures" and "Assessment".
• You may also find some of the transferable information from the SCIPS (Strategies for the Creation of Inclusive Programmes of Study) project useful. This project looked at subject benchmark statements and aimed to support academic staff to improve access to the curriculum for disabled students.

Online Resources:

• The Open University's Inclusive Teaching pages contain resources, information and links to relevant organisations to help make teaching accessible to all. Accessible Learning and Teaching Materials: A practical guidance note for teachers and materials developers, considers accessibility in relation to printed, audio and visual material.
• Excellence Gateway brings together hints and tips to support students who, for example, have difficulties handling and manipulating or difficulties hearing and seeing. Although mainly aimed at FE practitioners, there is still much of interest for HE. The resource isn't prescriptive, but aims to get course and module designers thinking about how they could make adjustments or improve accessibility.
• DART (Disabilities: Academic Resource Tool) from the University of Loughborough contains resources, case studies and guidance on making various aspects of teaching accessible including lectures, assessment, group work and lab work. Although intended for Engineering based subjects the resources and case studies are useful and applicable to bioscience disciplines.
• Science Signs from the University of Wolverhampton provides a glossary of BSL(British Sign Language)/Science terms which would be of use to a deaf student who needs to learn new terminology when starting a bioscience higher education course.
• The Action on Access Disability Resource Directory contains a variety of resources. Some are general, but you can also try searching for "teaching" or "assessment" for example.