 Hello everyone, good afternoon. So I'm Tirumini, I'm going to chair the session, it's 15-15 minutes presentation but we've got 45 minutes so we're going to do 15 minutes, five minutes Q&A for each and then five minutes extra if you want to ask questions. So we've got Alice who's going to present around accessibility first and then we have Owen, Matt, Matthew, I've got one here so when you have Q&A I'll come by and pass you this to for the questions because we've got people joining online so the floor is yours Alice. Thank you very much and thank you for joining us today. I know that there's quite a lot of really good sessions on at the moment as well so I'm definitely going to be asking about how we can get those recordings afterwards so that I can catch up on other people's good sessions that are happening too. So yeah my name's Alice Chapman, I am at the Odden University. You may have heard of us, you may not, we've had a few sessions taking place over the last couple of days where you can find a little bit more about us and I will talk a little bit about us too but I'm the product developer in the learning design team at Odden University which I will introduce as well and I'm here today to talk about digital learning accessibility and just to sort of tell you a little bit about what we're doing at the moment and our next steps as well. So in this presentation I'm going to introduce Odden University and Digital Learning team. I'm going to talk about the inclusive practice enhancement projects that we currently have happening at Odden University, specifically the inclusive learning review and looking at the inclusive learning training sessions that we've received in the digital learning team as well. I'm going to talk about the process in action, a very high level example of that and look at the next steps that we've got in place as well and I'm going to try and keep in in time, that's the other thing I'm going to try to do. So what I'm going to begin with is just talk a little bit about Odden University. So we are a digital first, look at my words there, we're a digital first distance and blended learning provider and we have got study centres across the UK and in Berlin. We have lots of different types of students that come to us and we as you can see on the slide it says Odden aims to help people thrive and succeed through real world relevant education that is fuelled by technology shaped by employers and built around learners' lives and I think that really sums this up quite well. I think we are really keen to make sure that we've got opportunities in place for people, whatever background they are from and we have got quite a flexible learning model that we we put together and I'll talk about that in the as I come to the digital learning team but our average student is around the age of 30 and they are often full-time workers or they are they have lots of the responsibilities that are carers, they've got lots of other things that are going on in their lives and so it's really important for us to make sure that we're making what we do flexible for them. So this is our team, you may see this this image in a few of the places as well if you have a good look around but we are the we're a multidisciplinary team with expertise in learning technology, multimedia design, learning design, project management and we work really hard to make sure that our academics have got the support in place to help them as they're putting together their modules and designing their modules. So the flexible teaching model that I mentioned so this gives our students 10 weeks of asynchronous content alongside either two days of in-person teaching sessions a week or live online sessions and they have tutorials for distance learners as well and all of this is often recorded for our students as well but this means that we're creating and maintaining learning materials continuously throughout the year in our team so we've just colleagues that are here they've just been talking about we have built and every time we sort of say this is it's pretty amazing to be honest but we've built in excess of 150 modules in the last 12 months and so the work that we're doing is continuous but what that does mean for us in our team is that it gives us the chance to build in changes so if we know that something needs changing we can make a change in that next block. So looking now at the inclusive practice enhancement projects at Arden we have been working with a company called Diversity and Ability you might have heard of them you might not if you haven't I highly recommend that you have have a look at them but they are a multi award-winning social enterprise which specializes in training and consultancy supporting employees and employers to be the best that they can be and DNA are driven by authentic lived experience so 85% of the DNA team identifies disabled or neurodiverse and we began working with them at Arden to look at four main inclusive practice enhancement projects so they've worked with us on the assistive technology enhancement body they've worked on the library provision review the physical access review and more specifically for us and our team the inclusive learning review so I'm going to talk more about that in this session. So first of all we received six training sessions as the digital learning team because we wanted to make sure that we were aware of the things that are important around disability and inclusive practices before we start doing things because you know we just didn't want to be ticking boxes to say we've done this we wanted to know how and why we were doing it so the first three sessions that we had were on changing the way we understand disability evolution of disability theory language and rights intersectionality what it is and why it's important so once we'd had those three sessions we then looked more specifically at our area and we had three sessions on inclusivity through digital accessibility inclusive design and communications and universal design for learning understanding inclusive principles so that was a really good grounding for us as a team to have a better understanding of what it was that we were going into before we got our review so the review itself took place while we were having our training and I think that worked really well because it meant that once we came off the back of that training we got the review and we understood what we were being asked to do really and why we needed to do it so as you can see the focus of the review itself it looked at examining current teaching learning and curriculum practices developing new engagement methods benchmarking and reflecting on QAA, GISC, advanced HE initiatives and really importantly voices from the disabled community practical recommendations on what disabled students expect on entering higher education and embedding universal design for learning so you can probably sit and think well you know that's all well and good and like getting a review but what are you going to do with it at that point and I think we were really keen to make sure that this review was honest and transparent and it told us everything that we needed to do we didn't want it to sort of be a fluffy fluffy piece that told us you know oh this is great and she's great we wanted to know what we needed to do to challenge it and we were really pleased to see that there were some things that were of best practice and I think if anyone's considering doing this but they're scared of this I'd say just go for it because you need to hold up that mirror to make those changes and if you don't then you don't know what you need to change so we did that and yes we did have some areas of best practice but we also had things that we needed to change and but now we know so we can and so by using the report we've been able to work through recommendations and implement into process and the idea is that by using the review we can make those changes so let's have a very high level overview of of an example so this example I'm going to talk about text alternatives and the process that we're using to make those changes so thinking about the web content accessibility guidelines alongside universal design for learning principles this was created to make sure that we are considering all stakeholders across the areas that we work within module development and design so text alternatives so let's use this as an example so the main wcag point on this if you don't know it if you're not like me and you seem to think about these in the middle of the night I don't know what that says about me but is that on this point so it's 1.1.1 non text content all non text content that is presented to the user has a text alternative that serves the equivalent purpose so you know it's keeping that in mind inclusive learning and universal design tells us we need to have alternative text and text alternatives for images as standard but also where images are diagrams we need to make sure that the main point is being conveyed and that it can be read by a screen reader or if there's a text alternative and you know I'm sure you're all very familiar with this but it's actually then putting those things in place and it can sound quite simple but it isn't always that straightforward is it so number one in our process is research so it's about researching you set to practice regulatory and legal compliance on alternative text and image description what is happening and what are we doing as well at Arden and what do we currently say which links into number two understand so understanding our current processes it's about holding up that mirror and saying do you know what we don't actually do this or we do it for this but I didn't realise we needed to do it for that and that's okay like we can't we can't make changes until we say we need to make them so things that you need to consider in this especially are the type of platform that you're using how are you adding that into into practice and who is responsible for doing that and if you are getting it right how do you get it right in other areas number three is identify so identifying areas for improvement in the processes and highlighting areas of good practice to continue doing so it could be noting that there's not currently a space to put something in and putting that space in so is it missing alternative text in a template just ask the academics to give that to you if you're not sure and also this could be a chance to speak to the inclusion to a student panel so we've got a student inclusion panel that's been newly created and in my final slide in a moment I'll talk a little bit more about them but just to get their lived experience and to find out if what you're doing is actually working for them so number four is provide providing training and resources for all stakeholders so this includes creation of resources understanding good practice for alternative text damage description and it's not only the logistics of how to add it but how do you actually write it and I think that's often the biggest I mean this is just one example of an area but this is quite a big this is something that people come to us quite a lot for so to house all these resources we created a SharePoint site on digital accessibility and that is available for all of our colleagues at Arden and they can look at things like this to help them in creating their resources so the fifth point is implement and implementing a clear process on alternative text and image description and how it can be embedded into the development process so this might be an onboarding of our subject matter experts and new people and training and documentation as well and finally present and so that's presenting findings to the wider community and that might be it might be that that goes out on our SharePoint site it might be that that's through our governance structure where we've got student representation trying to get that feedback as well so that we can make those changes in the next block and I will share these slides with you as well which I realise I should have done beforehand if I was being truly accessible but they will come to you so the next steps for us we are now in the process of implementing all of our baseline requirements for the digital learning content and we aim to have this in place for the modules that we create we use Articulate Rise in those spaces we're hoping to have all of that in place by the start of the new year and we're well on our way we've got a multimedia design and learning design handbooks that are being made by the teams that are going to be used they're made by the teams and therefore the teams and so these give the opportunity for us to create blocks that we can use as well to help with certain areas of making sure that there is text alternatives in place sorry about the microphone feedback there and just making sure that there is a sort of baseholder so that we can check that that's definitely happening as we go through the digital accessibility pages on the SharePoint are being continuously updated and we're asking to make sure that we've got those in place for people if they need them and finally the student inclusion panel so this is a paid role for current students and they are able to join the panel and we invite people from lots of different backgrounds to come and hear initiatives from the faculty of learning and teaching and this gives them a chance to have discussions around what they think needs to be done with this with certain things and but they're also given the opportunity to feedback afterwards if they don't want to have that conversation in a group and then those things go through into the governance structure if they're successful but it just means that we're building in that student consultation as we go so I realised that was quite a lot of information in 15 minutes and I hugely regret not having gone for a 30 minute slot at least to talk more about it but maybe next year either myself or somebody else from our team will be up here presenting and telling you of all the successes hopefully that we've continued to work on but I hope this has been helpful and please do contact me afterwards or catch me outside if you're here in person or on Discord if you're online and yeah that's us thank you. Thank you Alice we've actually got five minutes uh for Q&A if you have if you have questions anyone got this question of course the mic around yeah oh it's the question so I was getting out of it then I won't put that handle thank you so Alice out of that rapport and those recommendations that we got which one is the most challenging to actually implement or to act on from your perspective? That's a good question um I think that I don't think that they are I don't think that there is one in particular that I would say is especially challenging I think the challenge is around time it's around um understanding it's you may like we may understand what why we need to do it but sometimes it's about getting stakeholders on side and so it might be that you might be held up by another team there's some difficulties they've got another project going on and we can't take something forward but what I think we have been able to do is in our model we're able to put in interim solutions to make sure that we are addressing those things at least for the time being knowing that that is not a plaster we're not just going to leave that forever it's intended to be there as something to get us through the next block while we come back to it to look at the next the following block and yeah we are in a privileged position in the sense of we have got uh we've got a different cycle which means that we are able to implement those changes probably a little bit more quickly because we can put them into the next block the next block of teaching but it's about making sure that those people who aren't going to get to that block have got the support in place as well so I would say that does that answer your question? Okay thank you thank you now uh we don't have any other questions right okay we've got one more thank you hi um I have a question about your next step so you mentioned that uh one your first one is around uh implementing baseline standards and I just wondered could you tell us a little bit more about what that's going to look like and how will that differ from the existing like legislative baseline requirements? Yeah thank you yeah that's a really great point actually I think that's about the language as well that I've used in the slides so um it's in line with legislative baseline requirements um it's in line with more explicitly it's in line with the web content accessibility guidelines level AA what we are doing at the moment is we're creating content blocks within Articulate Rise to support um so the best way to do this is an example basically so if I think about there's a video someone's put a video into their content and there are captions on the video but we have to the the student has got the option to turn those on so we can create a block within Rise a text block it might be an accordion it might just be a text block that says um there are captions available for this uh this video what you need to do is if you go down to the right hand side you click on this so what we're doing is we're creating um these blocks that can be put into our content so that the people that are building those modules can say right I've got a video I know that I need to include this block to make this accessible for people and it's sometimes it's about um having a reminder to say this needs captions um and so having that there is a reminder for us to say actually that video has not got captions that's got to go back we need to get that sorted um but it's also a chance for the students to learn how to to to sort of use that that again is a very basic example um but those that's the sort of way that we are um putting together those uh those baseline criteria into the modules does that make sense yeah thank you so much Alice uh now we'll light you up