 Hello everyone, I'm Carla Dele Magueris and I'm a senior teaching fellow and PhD candidate at the University of Southampton and today I'll be discussing the unexpected transition to online teaching for a vision-impaired lecturer we have worked with. I'm doing this recording as we had some technical issues earlier so hopefully this one will work and you can have access to all the recordings here. The last year's fast-paced move to online teaching and learning has created many challenges for disabled people and in this specific case we'll discuss the experience of a professor with visual impairment. Our talk considered the challenges that were faced by this professor teaching online, the support that was put in place for her, the issue and feedback and we'll briefly look at future implications and suggestions. To frame our talk we'll first like to contextualize our individual case study. Data published by the government this year shows that we have approximately 14 million disabled people in the UK and from these 2 million people have some form of sight loss. In 2019-2020 there were over 10,000 academic staff who declared they had some form of disability and of those 245 identified as blind or having a serious visual impairment. Although in recent years there has been a marked improvement in considering accessibility and inclusivity in higher education Research into inclusive practices in education has focused predominantly on student access to education with very little published concerning teacher disability. A similar focus on only students' disabilities and student support has been seen on the news, in government reports and higher education publications. Ongoing work on accessibility online due to new government and UK institution guidelines have seen an improvement and people have been learning to consider accessibility and inclusivity. However, a lack of focus on disabled teachers has continued. Staff may benefit from higher level improvements to accessibility such as building improvements, generic accessibility tools on main platforms or less negative attitudes towards disabilities. But there is still a gap when it comes to teaching and learning needs. Universities have been working on adapting and enhancing the online content for students, but with very little so far outwardly discussing staff needs. Although learning content is developed with students with visual impairment in mind, consideration is not taken in advance for staff with visual impairment who must produce accessible content for their students and who also had to suddenly move online and they had to manage online lectures and online seminars. And the latter is the focus of this talk. In this video, the lecture we worked with talks about the difference between staff and student support. To begin with, I'll be honest and say I don't know much about the law. It's rather gone over my head, but it's probably rather gone over my head because it is so focused on students. But there's nothing new in that. Throughout my career, I have always noticed that anything to do with disability is focused and geared towards students. So a disabled student arrives on the campus and suddenly things happen to facilitate things for that student. Whereas as a member of staff who's worked for years and years and years in the institution, the most I've ever managed to get was some white lines painted on some steps. So there's a real focus on students, not on staff. Maybe we just need to shout louder. Our talk focused on the unexpected transition to online teaching for this vision impaired professor who is registered as blind or has worked in the same institution for about 40 years. She has com dystrophy, which is a rare disorder that affects the cone cells of the retina. Cone dystrophy or CD can cause a variety of symptoms including decreased visual clarity, decreased color perception and increased sensitivity to light. On top of CD, she has also been diagnosed with nystagmus, which is a vision condition in which the eyes make repetitive and uncontrolled movements. Here's a short video describing one of her conditions. I've had nystagmus since birth. Nystagmus is when I wobble my eyes. The first thing people ask me does your whole world move and it's quite important just to tell them I know. What do you see? What can you actually see? Everything blurs. It's like driving in the fog, road signs sort of emerge out of this fog and trees emerge out of this fog and everyone panics because it's so terrifying driving in the fog. That's my world all the time. And when it's here, I see what you see. But as soon as it's here, that's blurred. That's blurred. Those two cars have gone into each other. So on the street, I can't recognize people. People beat me from cars. I think I can't. Are you beefing me because I got in your way? Are you beefing me because I know you? So I've upset a huge number of people over the years through just not being able to see them. In the year 2020-2021, this lecture had to teach four academic modules online. In two of them, she was the sole lecturer and in the other two, she shared the teacher with other colleagues. She had to teach a total of 100 students across these modules and all modules included weekly lectures and seminars. Module assessments included group presentations, critical reviews, essays and weekly participation in seminars. Student expectations here were the same as all others across the university. So students were paying full fees at a Russell Group university. They had signed up for what would likely be a mix of blended learning and online learning year and expected good practices in digital delivery and assessment. Most, if not all of us, faced all kinds of challenges when we had to certainly move our teaching online. People with disabilities, however, have probably been the ones who have suffered the most. There were many barriers academic staff faced during this period. But here we only considered those related to delivering life online classes when having a visual impairment. The lecture we worked with did not have access to specialist equipment to move online delivery. She couldn't lean towards the screen to see better because of the camera, otherwise students would only see the top of her head throughout the synchronous sessions. She couldn't enlarge the screen when using live teaching software, otherwise she would not be able to see her PowerPoint slides well. She couldn't move between PowerPoint and other integrated apps and tools, such as moving from a YouTube video to the chat. She couldn't use text speak when teaching because students would not be able to hear it. She couldn't see the icons and functions from video conferencing software, such as breakout rooms, sharing a slide, sharing the screen, polls, etc. She couldn't see text in the chat whilst delivering a live session and she couldn't see students virtually raising their hands. As you can see, not being able to see or access these and other functionalities can have a huge impact on one's ability and confidence when teaching. We now listened to the lecture talking about some of these challenges that she faced and what was put in place for her. Managing to put everything online when I'd never done it before, which everyone had, but having to do it without the usual help of somebody face-to-face helping me. Not really always knowing what I had as options because I wasn't good at seeing what was there as options. And then when I have been told by people, you can do this, you can do that and try to do them. I realised there were lots of things I couldn't see to do and I had to think, how am I going to solve this? One of the problems about these things that are meant to help you, you've got to be able to see where to turn them on and where to turn them off at. And when I'm in a panic and the thing comes on, I can't turn it off. Basically, I was given a person. My very supportive line managers agreed to pay for a postgraduate student to support me during the times when I was teaching and a certain amount of setting things up before and afterwards so that whenever I came across things that I knew I needed to do, I knew I wanted to do, but I found very difficult to see to do, I could ask her and she could do them for me. That included things like checking on the participants because seeing the participants list was very difficult. And basically anything that required me looking and reading at the same time as I was teaching was impossible. So seeing the participation list and then making that list and to break out groups was the first important thing she did for me. Then actually making the breakout groups when it came to the time and then particularly helpfully she moved me between the breakout groups, at least she did when we were using Collaborate. And that was extremely useful too. She read the chat, if the students use chat, which I tried to persuade them not to, but if they did use them, she either answered them herself or read them out to me so I could answer them. So I'll now discuss some of the procedures in practice implemented to allow this lecture to teach online more comfortably. Before we discuss this, it's worth mentioning that this lecture used to be normally supported by her family and close friends, but due to the pandemic it got much harder for her to have this physical help at home. So during the pandemic she needed virtual support and that's where I came in. We put a plan in place where I could do or help her do the things that she couldn't see well during the life classes as she mentioned in the video. This included checking messages in the chat and checking the handwriting from students, sharing content such as videos and slides, setting up and managing breakout rooms including moving her to a breakout room and out of a breakout room, recording, editing the live sessions, etc. With the chat messages, for example, we agreed on which questions I would deal with and which ones I would raise in this session for her to address. If she was on her own, it would have been impossible for her to engage with the chat and she would have to press herself against the screen to be able to see or she would need to have text speak going, which would have affected the flow of the life lesson. Needless to say, there has been a huge amount of planning to make sure that the sessions would run smoothly. Before each session, she had to give me a plan for each session so these plans included, for example, when to record a number of breakout rooms and groupings which slides, videos to share and when to run engaging activities such as polls and how to report this, for example, whether to be reported right there and then alive to the students or after class. This meant that the lecture had to plan the lessons in advance in detail and she had to share them with me, would meet beforehand on a weekly basis and agree on the details. In this video, the lecture talks about how these students reacted to her online sessions. I very much doubt that they noticed much. I didn't really tell them. I simply said that I have someone helping me with the technical side of things. I didn't actually say why because I think that complicates things for first year students and actually all sorts of students, international students they don't really need the complication of knowing why something was different just as long as they knew there was somebody helping with technical things and it seemed to work very smoothly and they did use her when they had technical questions and when they had technical problems. So I don't think it interfered at all with the kind of smooth running of things. Oh, definitely 110%. I couldn't have done it without. I absolutely couldn't. I thought I'd be able to do it. But one of the problems with these systems is how do you rehearse? How do you actually manage in advance of your first online class to try things out? That's very difficult and it was the day I sat down to do that that I suddenly realized I actually couldn't do it. I couldn't look at the breakout groups at the participants lists at the chat at the same time as concentrating on giving my lecture or organizing the seminar. It just wasn't possible. So these are some of the lessons that we have learned from this experience. If you have a colleague who has a disability or not, as not all disabilities can be easily detectable, ask what kind of help they need and how they can be best supported. This support can be offered by a colleague, a PhD student, enabling department if you have one in your institution, the digital team, etc. It is really helpful if flyer managers are aware of what needs their staff have. If they are aware, things can work more smoothly and support can be put in place in advance and they can be added to the yearly budget. It's also important that people with disabilities are given options and the flexibility to choose what works best for them and this can differ for each individual. It can be very stressful to deal with what's going on on screen if you're visually impaired. It adds to the stress of having to teach your lesson online which can affect one's work, confidence and well-being. If you're the one providing the support, it's really important to develop a personal relationship with the individual so that you learn how you can best support them and if you're comfortable with you and they can trust you. Use channels that work better for each individual. For example, in my case with this lecture, if there was a problem that we had to communicate throughout the live session, we agreed to use our mobile phones to send each other a text message as she had this set-top in a way that she could best communicate and then use during the session. You know, communication flexibility are vital and support needs to be in place for members of staff. In this video, the lecture talks about what kind of helps you think is needed. Everyone has different needs including people who wouldn't even describe themselves as disabled. Everyone needs to be able to understand what's best for them and the systems need to be flexible. But even within disabilities, everyone's different. Different disabilities have different requirements and different people with what is supposedly the same disability have different requirements. I'm often told this is the best font for people with visual handicap or this is the best colour for people with visual handicap and very often it isn't for me and maybe for other people. I don't know. I don't know if the research has been done but I can assure you it isn't for me. So one size fits all definitely doesn't work and there's got to be flexibility a response that's got to be a constant monitoring to see how things are working all of which implies resources of course. So our talk is a case study which fits nicely to the ongoing debate centered around how to improve accessibility and inclusivity in universities. Whether it should be one size fits all guidelines or more an individual basis. In this case, we'd like to refer to the advanced higher education device which states people with different impairments and people who disclose similar impairments may experience different disabling barriers. We'd like to end this session with one last video where the lecture looks at the future of online teaching and what she believes needs to be in place for people with visual impairments and I think she summarised this very well. I think when people are making digital learning more accessible and I really would like to stress once I had this help and once I worked out how to use this help I actually found the experience good. I quite enjoyed teaching online but I think what people who set up these systems need always to remember is that an awful lot of it is visual an awful lot of it is about writing on the screens an awful lot of it is about different visual images and it shouldn't be that difficult to make the instructions and things either bigger if you need them bigger or to contrast colours if you need contrasting colours and of course as you said earlier on in one of your questions you should be able to have speaking what did you call it screen something or other that should be possible too as long as you know how and where to do it so the needs also to be tutorials preferably with a human being but tutorials to show you how you can help yourself I think that's the problem I'm very willing to learn but somebody needs to start me off they need to realise that I learn off by heart where things are on the screen so when a particular platform which I won't give the name of it's just about every three or four weeks to change where it puts things that is an absolute nightmare for me I think I know where the microphone is I think I know where the camera is I think I know where the chat or the hands up or whatever is and suddenly they've changed again so those kind of things consistency thinking in advance of the kind of support being flexible with things to do with writing and visuals and colours and so on all of those things would be very helpful if they're thought about despite all the problems in fact because of the support to help me solve all the problems I've actually found the online teaching really quite a positive experience and on the one hand of course it's not the same as face-to-face teaching we all know that you haven't got that human contact on the other hand I've got a lot more control in a way over what I do because students know when you're managing something online you have to be a lot more prescriptive and a lot more I suppose controlling about what you do and this quite often allows me to avoid the problems I sometimes have when I'm teaching face-to-face so when I'm teaching face-to-face I can't see the faces of somebody in the back row I can't often see the faces of somebody in the front row I don't always know what's going on and sometimes I'm giving them things to read on the screen which I can't see myself all those things are actually much easier for me online I've got faces much closer to me and I can share PowerPoints or rather I get the person supporting me to share a PowerPoint and I can see it much more easily so there are advantages for somebody with visual impairment of working online you've got a little bit more control over doing things your way once you've solved how to do that I have now reached the end of this presentation thank you very much for joining me in this talk today and I look forward to answering any questions that you might have feel free to email me or Vanessa and we'll be happy to answer any questions you might have thank you