Accessibility represents the design of products, devices, services, or environments so to be optimally usable by all people. Students with motor, visual, auditory, cognitive, or cultural challenges face significant obstacles in the accessibility of their education experiences. By failing to include accessibility into educational curriculum, cycles of ignorance, exclusion, and marginalization are perpetuated. Crucial to improving accessibility of education is the curricula and learning environment. In HE, this is the domain of the unit/course coordinator, and it remains ignored. This is occurring as new challenges for accessible education emerge, including new technologies, blended /virtual learning, and smothering unit coordinator workloads and fatigue. Relevant scholarship has just begun to examine accessibility for higher education (HE) learning, including encouraging diversity, fostering key graduate attributes, and the misaligned incentives that prevent it. However, little is known about the role unit/course coordinators play in accessible learning. Evidently, 20 comprehensive interviews with unit/course coordinators are undertaken, examining motivation and the enablers and inhibitors that impact improving the accessibility of learning. Insights are localized to the key stakeholders within the institution that impact accessible learning, including staff, students, schools, faculties, and the broader institution. Results from unit/course coordinators indicate the importance of peers and one’s values, influential stakeholders, confusion around roles and responsibilities, technology anxiety, and inadequate expertise. Significant implications are offered for educators and leadership seeking to motivate staff to improve accessible / universal design for learning, whilst providing concrete directions of actions / cultures of HE practices that maximize leverage points in HE systems.

Authors:
Luke Butcher, Curtin University, Australia

About the Presenter(s)
Dr. Luke Butcher is a senior lecturer of Marketing and Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia.

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Luke-Butcher-3

See this presentation on the full schedule – Tuesday Schedule

Bookmark

---

A Note to Presenters

To enhance academic profiles and showcase research, we encourage all presenters and co-presenters to include links to their public LinkedIn, ResearchGate profile, and research websites. Presenters may update their bio for their presentation by completing the form linked below by October 22, 2024.
- Presenter Information Update Form
Submitted changes will be reflected on November 01, 2024

Additionally, presenters should also update their IAFOR account details if there have been any changes to affiliations or biographies.
- https://submit.iafor.org/my-account/edit-account