Digital Accessibility with Amy Lomellini

In this episode, we explore why digital accessibility can be so important to the student experience. My guest is Amy Lomellini, director of accessibility at Anthology, the company that makes the learning management system Blackboard. Amy teaches educational technology as an adjunct at Boise State University, and she facilitates courses on digital accessibility for the Online Learning Consortium. In our conversation, we talk about the importance of digital accessibility to students, moving away from the traditional disclosure-accommodation paradigm, AI as an assistive technology, and lots more. 

Episode Resources

Amy Lomellini on Linked In, https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-lomellini/

Nothing Without Us with Amy Lomellini, ThinkUDL podcast, https://thinkudl.org/episodes/nothing-without-us-with-amy-lomellini

Blackboard Ally, https://ally.ac/ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Intentional Teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I'm your host, Derek Brough. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time. You may have been hearing the term digital accessibility a lot lately, especially if you teach at a public institution. Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, often known as the ADA, was updated in 2024 to require greater levels of accessibility for web and app content provided by state and local governments. Among other things, this means that public colleges and universities have until April 2026 to ensure that the learning materials they provide to students meet these new accessibility requirements. As I record this in September 2025, federal requirements for colleges and universities are, shall we say, in flux. So in this episode, we're not going to focus on compliance with the new ADA updates. Instead, we're going to explore why digital accessibility can be so important to the student experience. My guest today is Dr. Amy Lomolini, Director of Accessibility at Anthology, the company that makes the learning management system Blackboard. Amy teaches educational technology as an Thank you so much for joining us. Now, my conversation with Amy Lomolini. Amy, thank you so much for being on Intentional Teaching. I'm excited to have you here and to get to know you and your work a little bit. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01: 2:11

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you today.

SPEAKER_00: 2:15

Yeah. I'll start with my usual opener to help us get to know you just a little bit, maybe as a person. Can you tell us about a time when you realized you wanted to be an educator?

SPEAKER_01: 2:27

Yeah. So my game plan back in the day was to be a doctor, and that did not go as planned, but I'd always been in teaching roles. ever since I was little. I always kind of found myself being that sort of a teacher and I wanted to figure out how to help people and teach people and empower them to have the experiences that I know that I'm privileged to have had in my own life. So I've been all kinds of different teachers, everything from a job coach for the deaf and teaching, you know, vocational skills all the way through to teaching instructional design to graduate students, teaching, you know, digital accessibility, of course, professionally to professional organization as well as in the higher education setting. So I think to me, education is empowerment. And I think that it's important to teach people ways that they can better themselves and with that knowledge. And so that's, I've kind of always had this drive and passion to do

SPEAKER_00: 3:20

that. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's great. That's great. So we're going to talk a lot about accessibility today and specifically digital accessibility, which is a term that I think a lot of faculty are probably hearing a lot more about now. if they hadn't already been kind of paying attention. But what is digital accessibility? And why should faculty and academic leaders be thinking a lot about that in 2025?

SPEAKER_01: 3:46

Yeah, I think a lot of people are very knowledgeable about physical accessibility. So we think about things like curb cuts or ramps. So you've probably heard a lot about that. And people know that, you know, if there's stairs, there should be a ramp, for example, right? But nobody necessarily knows that that is section whatever of whatever law, right? But they just know that humans, like for myself, for example, I use a wheelchair. If there's stairs, I need an elevator, a lift, a ramp of some sort. That's pretty familiar for people. And it's really the same thing for online. So digital, we're talking about anything online, and we're talking about that same access, that same ability to be able to go to the same places just in a digital world, right? So when we think about digital accessibility, we want to think about how anybody and everybody, like the curb cuts of the digital world. How can we all get there together? And I think 2025, you know, what's on everybody's mind is the update to Title II. So Title II is from the ADA. And there was a rule that was put in place last year that said that WCAG, which is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, it's a whole mouthful, 2.1. So it set a technical standard. And I think what's somewhat concerning for some faculty is it's very technical. Like I just said, they know that ramps are a thing, but they couldn't name why that's a thing, what the law is behind it. And I think the same thing is sort of happening digitally. I think that we have digital standards that you don't necessarily have to name. What we need to do is keep the humans in mind. So we need to think about how humans of all abilities, disabilities, of all shapes and sizes and everything can arrive at the same destination and feel like they belong. So I often give an example. There's an image from... the ADA actually, of a building. Typical college building seems like giant staircase in the front, very grand. That's the main entrance. And then there's a little tiny sign that says wheelchairs this way, right? That accessible sign and it points to a winding road down the back. Well, yes, that's accessible, but is it inclusive, right? So when I see that I'm walking up to the door with you, I cannot access it the same way that you would. I have to be like, I'll be right back. Go around the side and come in. That's not okay. And as humans, I don't think we find that to be okay. So the same thing goes for the digital world. When we're thinking about digital accessibility, we don't want to build in a backdoor. We don't want to build, we want to build from the start with accessibility in mind so that all students can participate and feel like they belong. And I think that's the important piece. It's keeping that human in

SPEAKER_00: 6:23

mind. In the digital space, can you speak a little bit more to that, that kind of belonging piece? And I've heard a Yeah. Or some other examples of kind of how this can really matter for

SPEAKER_01: 6:43

students. And I didn't know what that meant for me. I actually told my boss at the time I would be back next week. That didn't happen. But I was also starting my master's program. And so how could I be expected to call up this person who my program was on the other side of the country. It was at Boise State and I was in New York. Never met them. Wasn't going to meet them in person. And I'm expected to call them up and tell them what my whole medical history and I didn't even know it was happening. Right. Right. So how could I ask for accommodations? how could I jump through those hoops that are required for students to disclose if I don't even know what's happening to myself? And there's been other studies where up to 50% of students are getting diagnosed with disabilities in college. They don't know what's happening. They may not have had supports in elementary school or in high school for any particular reason. Now they're expected to navigate this all on their own. Parents are no longer involved or there or guardians of that nature. And so it can be really challenging for students to navigate everything that's happening with just being a college student. For me, I was an adult student, right? I was working full-time, well, until I was hospitalized, but I was working full-time, navigating all of that, all of the things of adulthood and my disability. And so to expect students to disclose that information just is not a great paradigm right now. It just doesn't make sense. Typically, we don't call up strangers and tell them about our most traumatizing experiences. I don't know why we require that of

SPEAKER_00: 8:49

students. action as a kind of an alternative to accommodation. And I'm just wondering how you think about that disclosure accommodation paradigm. What are the strengths that it has and what are some limitations?

SPEAKER_01: 9:16

Yeah, there's definitely times where accommodations are 100% necessary. And I don't think anything that we could do is going to change that. So there are situations that no matter what are going to require an accommodation. But that being said, we can reduce the amount of accommodations and reduce the need for students to disclose by designing with accessibility in mind. So by understanding that this is something that we need to consider just like we need to consider privacy security quality all of the things that we consider when it comes to courses and especially online courses if we consider accessibility from the start we're building in that flexibility that empowerment for students we're giving them choice we're giving you know we're supporting them we're scaffolding them there's less of a need to relive a traumatizing potentially traumatizing experience with a complete stranger i mean it also you know the that would be you know, the other side of accommodations is that getting to a doctor's can be challenging, right? Again, these are students potentially in a new city doing this on their own, navigating insurance. That's a whole nother podcast, right? So expecting them to do all of that and then, you know, they don't want to necessarily disclose. There's fear of discrimination. There's stigma attached with it. You don't know how somebody's going to react. You don't know if they're going to believe you. You know, there's a lot that goes into it and it's a lot of burden to put on students, whether they're returning adult learners, new students, you know, it's a big process. And the more we can reduce the need for that, it will never go away. But if we can reduce the need for that, by the way, we design our courses. And by the way, we think about education, we're going to be helping support so many more students like me, and be able I wouldn't be where I am today without my education.

SPEAKER_00: 10:56

Yeah, yeah. So is this? So is the answer universal design for learning? Is that is that a big part of how to approach this? So

SPEAKER_01: 11:04

I think that's one framework. So I don't think it's the answer or the end-all be-all, but I do think it's one framework that resonates well and it's a good starting point. Just like we use other course design frameworks throughout different situations, I think combined with other things, culturally sensitive pedagogy or trauma-informed pedagogy or all of the other ways of thinking about instructional design and course design combined with UDL can create a very supportive supportive, empowering environment.

SPEAKER_00: 11:37

Okay. So let's talk about on-site courses for a minute. We'll get back to online. But I know, you know, with the changes to Title II, those apply to all the courses we offer, whether they're online or on-site. And so I'm imagining an instructor who maybe has, you know, very little online teaching experience. They teach in a classroom face-to-face most of the time. What are some steps they can take to make that kind of course more accessible to their

SPEAKER_01: 12:08

students? can be reinforced when they're not in Thank you so much. using the tools that are built into it to help you brainstorm can really be a way to improve the on-site experience. And then just kind of working collaboratively with others to figure out different ideas that have worked and creating that sort of a plan or a strategy that's attainable. Key word there.

SPEAKER_00: 13:53

Yeah, yeah. You mentioned Blackboard Ally as a tool for kind of helping move across different media. Can you say a little bit more about kind of how instructors might be thinking about that kind of access to content piece of this bigger puzzle?

SPEAKER_01: 14:11

Yeah. So whether it's your PowerPoint slides or it's a PDF reading that you've done or some, you know, whatever it might be about a detailed document page in your LMS about what you're doing in class. So what Ally does is kind of trifold. Is that a word? Trifold. So first for instructors, what's nice is I say it's like having an accessibility specialist in your pocket. So So Ally will identify issues in accessibility and it will not only identify them, it will teach you why they're a problem and help you remediate them. And I think keeping that human in the loop, it doesn't do it for you. You have to do it, but that's the whole point, right? So same with our students. Like that's the whole point. You have to go through the process to do the learning. So Ally does a really good job of teaching faculty and it's on their schedule. So the same flexibility we want to offer our students, we offer our faculty as well. You're working at midnight or you're working on saturday when no instructional designers around that's fine allies there for you right and then for students it offers our alternative formats so perhaps there's a student who um is commuting and they were supposed to read that textbook chapter but they didn't do it yet right and they're commuting in they can listen to the audio format right um students who use assistive technology maybe they want to use uh the html format or whatever might make more sense and they don't have to disclose so going back to that point of disclosure it's not an accommodation. It's for everybody, and it really benefits everybody. And so students get to pick and choose what makes sense for them today, tomorrow, and the next day. And that could be very different without having to go back and get a different accommodation. And then the last point there is for data for the administrators. And I think that's a really important point as well. So you get reports and you get data of how this is being used, and it can really demonstrate the importance of accessibility and the importance of a tool like Ally. So you can use that data strategically. I've done things like created competitions between schools, you know, like you can use it in different ways to encourage people to continue to improve accessibility.

SPEAKER_00: 16:17

Yeah, I'm thinking about some of the lessons I heard faculty express after teaching online during our COVID years and thinking about, you know, these were faculty who had never created video versions of their lectures before. They'd always just done it in person and And then they would hear from their students who were like, yeah, I would watch your video. I would do it at half speed. I would pause. I would rewind. I turn the captions on to help me follow, right? I don't have a hearing impairment, but, you know, your accent is more Southern than I was expecting, right? Or something, right?

SPEAKER_01: 16:53

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 16:54

And the other thing I've learned from some friends of my life that, you know, some students are going to speed it up, actually. Oh,

SPEAKER_01: 17:03

yeah. I watch everything on two times.

SPEAKER_00: 17:33

these types of media for students and providing things in multiple formats, I feel like it was hard, actually. And so, like, how should faculty be thinking about their own workflow in order to make this type of kind of instructional material design more feasible?

SPEAKER_01: 17:52

Yeah, absolutely. Use the tools that are created that are, you know, embedded. So like for Blackboard, we have the AI design assistant. And so what you can do with that is you can generate ideas, you can have it set to a piece of content, you can have it set to different levels, and then it'll generate assignment ideas, for example. And you can kind of decide which one makes the most sense or just kind of brainstorm. You don't have to accept it, or you can accept it and then you can edit it, right? So I think it's like having an instructional designer in your pocket, right, where you can kind of bounce ideas off of them, off of the AI that's, again, right there whenever they need it. You can build rubrics. So again, that was a challenging thing years ago that if I'm going to create multiple assignments or multiple formats for this assignment, how do I grade that? What does that look like? Well, you can generate the rubric based off of your instructions, based off of your assignment. So I think there's a lot of different tools out there that can support faculty to make this so much easier. And that argument of it's too burdensome kind of is going away a little bit, or should be, right? But the other thing, I think the misunderstanding specifically with universal design for learning is that you have to UDL-ify everything. Every single piece of content needs multiple formats or whatever, multiple means of everything. And that's not the case. So again, that's why I say UDL really should be combined with other frameworks. And you can identify main areas that are problematic. So working as a team, whether it's with your instructional designer, peers, or AI, kind of find those problematic areas, analyze the data that's in your course using what the LMS is giving you, look at where they're struggling, and then kind of go to that module or that assignment. assignment or whatever that might be and start there. When we try to boil the ocean or UDL-ify everything, it becomes overwhelming, right? And so if we can focus in on the points of impact that are going to make the most difference, then you start to see small wins. So you start to see your students going, oh, aha, or like, I really like that assignment. And that feedback then will spark motivation to do it again in another area or another course, right? And it kind of becomes this journey, right? It kind of snowballs And I think that is powerful. And it's much more attainable that way than to try to do everything all at once, and then you just get overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_00: 20:13

Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think a lot of faculty, I mean... Some faculty are just grumpy, but most faculty care about their students and want to do right by their students. And often it's having a particular student with a particular set of needs that helps you see, oh, I could do things in a different way that would be super helpful. And that motivates me to then kind of change my practice going forward. And so I guess what you're, it sounds like what you're arguing is there's another way into this, which is to say kind of looking across all of my students, where are things not working optimally anyway? and might i use some of these lenses to think about changes to make that could potentially affect a lot of students

SPEAKER_01: 20:58

absolutely and i think they're they're both valid paths as well you get with the first one you get you know faculty that are saying well there's nobody with disabilities in my class that's because they didn't feel comfortable enough to disclose they're there and so if you're getting the argument of there's nobody in my class with a disability there's you know other ways to show and even with ally data you can show that there's you know a 100 downloads of the tagged PDF, right? And you were presenting it in a different way. Now they have the opportunity to do this, or there was, you know, 50 downloads of the audio. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean you have 50 people who have a visual impairment in your class. It means that it's good for everybody.

SPEAKER_00: 21:37

Sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:39

And so I think using that data can help justify and kind of make those points. That being said, though, it's also very important to include people with disabilities in both the design and, you how they're doing. One of the things a previous institution I was at did very well is they had a club of disabled students who went around and talked about it. And that sort of level of empathy and awareness was really successful. And it's a lot about what I do and why I'm on this podcast, right, is to talk about my experience, talk about my own disabilities and how that's made such an impact for me when education is designed a certain way. And so spreading that awareness and realizing that I'm a real human and I'm in your class. And at this point, I'm teaching your class, right? So it's not just about students. I think it's important that it's also about faculty members with disabilities, giving them the tools and the resources to build the way they need. So, you know, again, the AI design assistant really allows me to save clicks. I have tremors and I have, you know, motor issues in general, just weakness in my hands. So I don't use a mouse. I navigate everything with keyboard. And when I'm building out courses, whether it's internally for blackboard or you know whatever i'm doing um you know it has to work and i have to be able to use it so something like the ai design assistant saves me so many clicks because i have this starting point where it's you know very seamless to get it into the course and get it set up and then i just make some edits and it's still my own ideas maybe i've generated it two or three times some prompt engineering there right to get it where i want it to be or i can just edit what's already given to me and it's made my life more efficient i'm saving time and And also for my disability, it's really, you know, helping me support, you know, empower me to do what I want to do.

SPEAKER_00: 23:26

Let's talk a little bit more about AI because I posted on LinkedIn recently, it was a resource from the University of Virginia about using AI to support students with disabilities. And I post these resources a lot from from my day job. And I'm always thinking like, what's the sentence or two I want to put on LinkedIn that might catch people's attention? And I just, I landed on generative AI is lots of things. And one of those things is assistive technology. And so, so what are, what are the things that you see generative AI being in this space? What are, what are those things?

SPEAKER_01: 24:04

The opportunities are endless here. And I think it's such a pivotal time and we have to lean into it. We have to work with students and figure out what works. So working with students, whether it's, you or think about it in a different way. So the instructor gave a video and they explained the concept. I still don't get it. I could have basically an AI tutor in my pocket and I have a lot of things in my pockets, but right. So I can have an AI tutor. That's going to help me understand that you can say things like, don't give me the answer, but help me think about this in a different way. Help me come up with a metaphor, help me understand this topic and really be, that wasn't possible before. So I think there's lots of different ways, um, to do that. And something like helping faculty, Ally has alt text assistant. And so what it does is it can help assist instructors and course designers to create alternative text that's actually meaningful, right? And then the students will get that meaningful alt text and be able to understand the concepts that are presented throughout. So I think there's a lot of different ways that faculty can embrace AI to support their students and a lot of different ways that students can embrace AI to help them process and improve in both learning and work. Different context as well.

SPEAKER_00: 25:24

Okay, I want to talk about alt text. And now pretend I'm a slightly cranky faculty member. Why do I need to be thinking about alt text?

SPEAKER_01: 25:34

So in general, you want to think about why you're putting images in your class. Are you putting a whole bunch of cats and rainbows? Is there a purpose to that?

SPEAKER_02: 25:41

I've

SPEAKER_01: 25:42

seen it. Is there a purpose? So I think considering why you're putting an image there and what the intent behind it is, what is that message conveying, is a really helpful just reflective tool. And again, thinking about instructional design practices, we really want to reflect on our choices and be intentional in our choices. And so thinking about why you're putting in an image is helpful. Is it conveying what you think it's conveying? And then, you know, using something like Ally's alt text generator, you can come up with that starting point and then edit it as you see fit, right? And it's a lot easier to do. I think staring at a blank alt text box can be, yeah, it's hard,

SPEAKER_00: 26:26

right? I'm like, oh, I don't have the language, right?

SPEAKER_01: 26:28

Exactly. But you don't have to do that anymore, right?

SPEAKER_00: 26:31

Right. AI alt text generation, it's, yes, there's a lot happening in this image. I picked it for a reason, right? There's a kind of metaphor I'm trying to connect with through this image, but I need the alt text to describe enough of the image so that someone who can't see the image can also understand the metaphor that I'm trying to convey with this image, right? And so there's always, I mean, I do this a lot in my, in my talks and my writing, like there's often a kind of two channel thing going on. I've got some verbal, I've got some visual, I'm really hoping that they'll, they'll play well together and kind of reinforce each other. And so I don't, my images are not generally cats and unicorns, right? Like I'm trying to do some, some actual cognitive lifting with my, my images. And so to be able to go to, you know, a chat GPT or another tool and say, it'll, Right. Three detailed sentences. I find it's remarkably good at doing that job. AI is not good at all jobs, but it is pretty good at that one.

SPEAKER_01: 27:28

Now, Ally actually considers what you have in the WYSIWYG editor. So if you're saying that you're using a document in Blackboard and you're writing whatever about the topic, and then you put an image in, Ally will consider the context when it's generating the alt text. So instead of going outside of the LMS, if you stay inside of the LMS, Ally can help you. help with that as well. And what actual people who rely on alt text want to know and what's too much, like there's a fine balance there. I have a research paper coming out soon. Stay

SPEAKER_02: 28:02

tuned.

SPEAKER_01: 28:03

Do flamingos matter?

SPEAKER_00: 28:06

Maybe it's

SPEAKER_01: 28:07

not cats and rainbows, but flamingos.

SPEAKER_00: 28:09

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01: 28:10

So we're really exploring from, and again, this is where it's important to get real disabled people's opinions and perspectives on

SPEAKER_02: 28:17

this.

SPEAKER_01: 28:18

And this This is who it's intended for. But also to our point earlier of how it's good for everybody, what if that image doesn't load? So I have poor internet. I live in a rural area. I'm on the go. Whatever that might be, if the alt text loads in place of the image, you want to make sure that even sighted folks are going to have the right information to be able to understand why you put that image there in the first place.

SPEAKER_00: 28:38

Oh, great. You just predicted my next question, which was like, what's the curb cuts idea for alt text? But that's exactly it.

SPEAKER_01: 28:45

That is exactly it. And

SPEAKER_00: 28:46

I, you know, I generally have have good internet where I am but I don't always and sometimes I want to work on an airplane and not pay for internet right and so having different ways to get to the same material makes a lot of sense

SPEAKER_01: 29:00

absolutely

SPEAKER_00: 29:03

let's talk about online courses now what are some digital accessibility moves maybe some like common ones but then also some things that maybe faculty haven't thought of or are maybe might surprise some faculty members that would be helpful to make

SPEAKER_01: 29:18

I think it all comes down to like again learning from your students so figuring out what they're doing and how you can help support that giving students relevance and freedom to choose with scaffolding so I think again UDL often gets confused with like here's free range of everything you have ever thought of with you know just go do something and that for some people is very challenging and so I think that scaffolding the guidance and the working through it together is what makes the difference between you know an actually attainable assignment goal versus something something that maybe is just overwhelming. So I think both faculty and students can be overwhelmed by the idea of UDL when it's not done as intended, right, with that scaffolding. And I think once we can put the ideas together in a meaningful way, that's where UDL and accessibility really blossoms. And I think challenging and reflecting on our own bias and our own just perceptions of the world is probably the most surprising thing. When you get out there and talk to others, When you get out there and talk to disabled students, disabled professionals, all of the above, I think you learn something new. And, you know, that's everywhere I've worked. I've created some sort of cross-functional working group that involves people with disabilities to talk about it and to talk about our experiences and to share that. It often grows where other people are interested and they want to learn. And so kind of learning from each other, sharing our own stories results in sometimes surprising, but in a good way, things for others who want to join the movement.

SPEAKER_00: 30:53

Okay. So let's talk about the movement because I was looking at, I think I saw this mostly on your LinkedIn page, around the work you've done in anthology, kind of building structures within the organization to help more people attend to issues of accessibility. And I think that's one of the challenges that I know some of the listeners of my podcast are in. They want to make a difference, not just in their own classroom, but maybe kind of more broadly than that. And they may be in a position of leadership, they may not be. But I'm curious, what advice do you have for academic leaders who are interested in kind of organizational change in this area?

SPEAKER_01: 31:32

Yeah, I think, first, it can be led by one person who's passionate. And I think that's been me in many different cases and many different organizations that I've worked in. And by sharing my story and others, others come to me and start sharing their story. And they feel safe enough to do that. So I would say find your champions. There's other people who care. I often start trainings with, do you know anybody who's disabled? And you get the timid hands. Yeah, how does

SPEAKER_02: 32:01

that go?

SPEAKER_01: 32:02

It depends on where we are or whatever. But most people do know somebody who's disabled. And it gets them immediately in their headspace of, that's my mom. That's my son. That's my uncle's brother's mother. That's my best friend, right? You kind of get a real person attached with the idea. And that's very powerful. But then if somebody doesn't raise their hand for whatever reason, I say, well, now you know me. And I try to make it a welcoming, like, you know, we're all here to learn. I'm never punitive about anything. Like we're in this together. So I would say find your champions, elevate their voices. It's really a shared responsibility. At the end of the day, I'm one person. My team is still, you know, we've grown so much, my team, which is amazing because Anthology believes in digital accessibility. But we're still, you know, not as many employees as the entire company. We're never going to be and that's okay. So we have to have a shared responsibility model, right? So we have to empower people enough to bring it back to their space. So whether that's trainings, whether that's talking one-on-one, we do consultations, we do group trainings, we have all sorts of different outlets for people to learn more and a space to ask questions. So that's essential too. Being comfortable enough to ask the question of like, even you just said, you know, I want to do this. I'm just not sure how. Well, I would love to talk to you more about that. Let figure it out together. And let's find a small attainable goal that we can do. So I've done, you know, I have professional committees that I'm a part of an anthology, we have a working group, we have my own centralized team, we really try to set goals that are attainable. And it doesn't have to be, you know, groundbreaking, can be something small that makes a difference. Hey, have you thought about, you know, how you turn captions on in your meetings? Or have you thought about telling others how to do that at the beginning of a meeting? Have you thought about, you know, providing questions up front? Or Or setting an agenda. Have you thought about those things? And that small change can make the difference for somebody.

SPEAKER_00: 33:54

You should have the agenda. That should not be a new move. You'd be surprised. I

SPEAKER_01: 34:01

wish, but yes, I agree with you. But then I would say celebrate the small wins. So badging with a product like Milestone that we have, you know, for example, that's really popular these days is some sort of badges. So if they've taken a training or if they've participated in some sort of competition, award a badge. Let them share it on social media. Let them be proud of that accomplishment, right? It could be swag. Give them a coffee cup. Everybody loves coffee cups. Recognition to superiors, right? So I often try to say like, hey, did you know that so-and-so did this and it really helped blah, blah, blah? And say that to their manager. We also have a tool at Anthology where you can kind of give internal shout outs to people. So I try to make sure that my team is shouting out all these people that are coming to us and doing good things and learning more. It's about the journey. It's about learning more. You don't have to be perfect. Accessibility is more about habits than it is about add-ons. So a lot of people think of accessibility as this extra. It's something I have to do at the end. But if you can really bake it in, if you can make it your habit, for example, if you're using, you know, Word documents for your training or whatever it might be, right? And you just use heading styles right as you're building that document, so much easier than trying to retrofit it, right?

SPEAKER_00: 35:12

Yeah. So I think the why, you mentioned this about Ally providing this. I think the why is really important for a lot of faculty. Why would it be useful to use heading formatting tools in your Word document? What's the upside of that?

SPEAKER_01: 35:25

So twofold, because you know I'm going to give you the curb cut too. So first, for students who use screen readers, for example, they can pull a list of headings. So if you're excited, you may scan the page. Let's say it's a syllabus. You may be looking specifically for the assignment schedule. You're not going to read every last word on that page. You're going to scan those big, bold headings, which are actually headings so you're going to scan visually and jump to that by using actual heading styles in microsoft word screen reader users can do the same thing now the curb cut is also a fun and exciting one i call heading styles magic i love heading styles yeah it's just me um so there's in word you can have a navigation pane and so that navigation pane can help me without having to even look at the document much simpler kind of shrunken view of that you can look and jump to where wherever you want to go. And from a designer perspective, if I decide that all of those headings should be a little bit bigger, maybe a different font, you know, whatever change I want to make, I apply it to one of them instead of all 57 in my 300 page syllabus.

SPEAKER_00: 36:34

Okay. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay. I feel like there's a whole category of folks out there who can totally relate to that, who have made that mistake. I'm like, I'm just going to make my headings, you know, bold 14 point, and I'm going to do that manually. And then later you change your mind and So you don't have

SPEAKER_01: 36:50

to do it if you use

SPEAKER_00: 36:50

styles. Yep. Go into the style sheet. Make one fix.

SPEAKER_01: 36:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 36:58

That was Dr. Amy Lomolini, Director of Accessibility at Anthology. Thanks to Amy for coming on the show and helping us think more deeply about digital accessibility. As I mentioned at the top of the show, there's a lot of activity around digital accessibility in higher ed these days, especially at public colleges and universities. If you're interested in updating some of your teaching workflows to make your courses more accessible to more students, there's probably an accessibility office or working group on your campus that would be glad to help you do so. to intentional teaching, a podcast aimed at educators to help them develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. I'm your host, Derek Brough. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time.