(5) Building Inclusive Learning Environments: Steps everyone can take to make content more accessible.

Objective : This project aimed to identify inclusive teaching practices that will inform the development of the school’s equity, diversity, and inclusive excellence strategic plan.

Methods: Beginning in August 2022, UMSOP’s Assistant Dean for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) worked with the school’s research librarian and a P4 student to search for literature and resources related to inclusive education. Specific areas of interest were EDI-informed curriculum, inclusive writing/language, and inclusive workplaces. After review and curation of these resources, additional searches were conducted to identify examples of EDI syllabus statements. In Fall 2022, the School’s Curriculum Committee established an EDI subcommittee charged with EDI curriculum integration and identifying areas for faculty development.

Results: Varied definitions of inclusive teaching were identified with themes including 1) considering the needs and diverse backgrounds of students, 2) creating environments where all feel valued and supported, and 3) removing learning barriers. Digital accessibility was identified as an essential approach to remove material barriers, ensuring that all learners can understand, perceive, navigate, and interact with digital instructional resources regardless of their ability. Contemporary digital content creation tools make it easier to build accessible content eliminating the need to understand Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). To begin awareness, an accessibility guide was created to promote “10 Easy Things” that improve digital accessibility.

Conclusions: The ability to quantify accessibility in courses provides a quantifiable measure of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) change in academic programs. However, building accessible courses provides organizational benefits by building transferrable skills that support digital content accessibility across organizations, thereby creating more accessible content for everyone.