Improving accessibility of mathematical material
Christian Lawson-Perfect
Newcastle University
DigAcc24
Chirun
A tool to produce accessible course material from LaTeX or Markdown source.
Context
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Maths, Stats and Physics has ~900 undergraduate students and ~100 taught modules.
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The Digital Learning Unit consists of 6 part-time people; I'm a learning software developer.
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Maths is different: typesetting mathematical notation is hard, and accessible formats are even harder.
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Lecturers typically prepare material in LaTeX.
The beginning
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We introduced Chirun in 2017 to support an incoming student with long list of accessibility requirements.
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Paid students to type up handwritten notes in LaTeX
Aim: improve accessibility for all teaching, not just this student.
The carrot 🥕
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I presented at all-staff meetings.
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We offered support to anyone who wanted it: we'd take their material and make it accessible.
(some) Lecturers take accessibility very seriously
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A handful of lecturers understood the brief and produced accessible material on their own. Thanks!
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Some used their own tools, such as Bookdown.
(some) Lecturers don't take accessibility seriously
After two years, take-up was very low: less than 25% of modules were acceptable.
Common complaints:
Why should I go to all that effort for one student?
Is this student even any good?
I'm overworked and don't have time to do this.
I don't know what to do.
The stick 🧹
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Using my Canvas admin role, I audited every module twice a semester.
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I passed findings on to the director of education and directors of discipline.
This mainly worked!
Now, two thirds of modules have all material available in accessible formats.
Physicists use PowerPoint and I can only offer them advice. 🤷🏻
Future work
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Sort out the remaining modules.
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Tackle the other aspects of accessibility: in-person delivery; communication; lecture recordings, …
Thanks!
- Website
- chirun.org.uk
- msp.digital.learning@ncl.ac.uk
- Source code
- github.com/chirun-ncl
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