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

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Derek Bruff (00:05):
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 Bruff. I hope this podcast helps you be more intentional in how you teach and in how you develop as a teacher over time.

(00:21):
You may have been hearing the term digital accessibility a lot lately, especially if you teach at a public institution. Title Two of the Americans with Disabilities Act, often known as the A DA, 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.

(01:00):
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 Lomellini, director of accessibility at Anthology, a 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 OLC. In our conversation, Amy and I 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.

(01:43):
Before we go to the interview, I want to remind listeners to subscribe to the Intentional Teaching Newsletter, which goes out most weeks on Thursday or Friday. The newsletter is a great way to keep up with the podcast and with all the other teaching related work I'm up to these days, including a new book coming next year. Now, my conversation with Amy Lomellini.

(02:04):
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.

Amy Lomellini (02:12):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Derek Bruff (02:15):
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?

Amy Lomellini (02:27):
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 vocational skills all the way through to teaching instructional design to graduate students, teaching digital accessibility, of course professionally to professional organizations 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 I've kind of always had this drive and passion to do that.

Derek Bruff (03:21):
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 paying attention. But what is digital accessibility and why should faculty and academic leaders be thinking a lot about that in 2025?

Amy Lomellini (03:46):
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 if there's stairs, there should be a ramp, for example. But nobody necessarily knows that that is section whatever of whatever law,

(04:08):
But they just know that humans, 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. 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, what's on everybody's mind is the update to title two.

(04:45):
So Title two is from the A DA, 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. 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, so the same thing 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 ADS 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, that accessible sign, and it points to a winding road down the back.

(05:48):
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 is keeping that human in mind

Derek Bruff (06:25):
In the digital space. Can you speak a little bit more to that kind of belonging piece? And I've heard a little bit about your story. Maybe you want to share a bit of that or some other examples of how this can really matter for students.

Amy Lomellini (06:40):
Yeah. So part of my story is that when I started my master's degree, I was right out of ICU. So I was in ICU, I was diagnosed with a neuromuscular disease and I was basically paralyzed from the waist down. I didn't know what was happening to me. Now, I'd been medically complex and pretty much disabled my whole life for different reasons and different things. But this one left me paralyzed in a whole new way, 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.

(07:32):
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. 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 students.

Derek Bruff (08:37):
Right. Which it gets at something I wanted to ask you about. You were on Lillian Nave's podcast ThinkUDL last year, I think. And one of the things you said is I'd like to move past the point of requiring students with disabilities to disclose their disabilities. And I had a guest, Holly Tilbrook on my podcast last year as well, who kind of poked at the idea of accommodation. She used a phrase, authentic action as kind of an alternative to accommodation. And I'm just wondering how you think about that disclosure or accommodation paradigm. What are the strengths that it has and what are some limitations?

Amy Lomellini (09:16):
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 supporting them, we're scaffolding them. There's less of a need to relive a trauma, potentially traumatizing experience with a complete stranger. I mean, it also, that would be the other side of accommodations, is that getting to a doctor can be challenging.

(10:09):
Again, these are students potentially in a new city doing this on their own. Navigating insurance, that's a whole nother podcast. So expecting them to do all of that, and then 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. 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. 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.

Derek Bruff (10:57):
Yeah. So is the answer universal design for learning? Is that a big part of how to approach this?

Amy Lomellini (11:04):
So I think that's one framework. So I don't think it's a panacea, 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, culturally sensitive pedagogy or trauma-informed pedagogy, all of the other ways of thinking about instructional design and course design combined with UDL, can create a very supportive, empowering environment.

Derek Bruff (11:36):
Okay. So let's talk about onsite courses for a minute. We'll get back to online, but I know with the changes to Title two, those apply to all the courses we offer, whether they're online or onsite. And so I'm imagining an instructor who maybe has 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 Students?

Amy Lomellini (12:09):
Yeah, I mean, I think nowadays students are expecting that digital component anyway, embracing the LMS, whether it's an online course or an in-person site, embracing whether it's Blackboard or embracing the learning management system and using it can provide ways for students to get notes to get texts if they have something like Anthology Ally. Students can get alternative formats. So the work that you're doing in person can be reinforced when they're not in person, and you can still design with accessibility in mind. So even for something like an assignment, maybe you're planning some sort of activity in class, kind of want some ideas, not so sure. You can use something like Blackboard's design assistant, the AI design assistant, and be able to come up with ideas. So use the tools that you have and the people. So I also think it's important to use the people if there's instructional designers or maybe peer instructors, others that can help support and brainstorm when you think about different people and how they interact. Some people, for example, may not be so quick to raise their hand. Could be cultural, could be disability, could be language. There's any number of reasons why it may affect somebody. So give them other alternatives. Raising your hand and being the first to answer a question in class should not be what the grade is based on.

(13:25):
It should not be what the learning is based on. Give students time to process. And I think even if you're utilizing the learning management system, less, using the tools that are built into it to help you brainstorm can really be a way to improve the onsite experience. And then just 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.

Derek Bruff (13:52):
Yeah. You mentioned Blackboard Ally as a tool for helping move across different media. Can you say a little bit more about how instructors might be thinking about that kind of access to content piece of this bigger puzzle?

Amy Lomellini (14:10):
Yeah. So whether it's your PowerPoint slides or it's A PDF reading that you've done, or 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? Yeah. So first for instructors, what's nice is I say it's like having an accessibility specialist in your pocket. 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. So same with our students. 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. Ally's there for you.

(15:08):
And then for students, it offers our alternative formats. So perhaps there's a student who is commuting and they were supposed to read that textbook chapter, but they didn't do it yet, and they're commuting in. They can listen to the audio format. Students who use assistive technology, maybe they want to use 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 can use it in different ways to encourage people to continue to improve accessibility.

Derek Bruff (16:16):
Yeah, I'm thinking about some of the lessons I heard faculty express after teaching online during our COVID years and thinking about these were faculty who had never created video versions of their lectures before. They'd all always just done it in person, 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 your accent is more southern than I was expecting or something. Right,

Amy Lomellini (16:53):
Exactly.

Derek Bruff (16:55):
And the other thing I've learned from some friends of my life that some students are going to speed it up, actually.

Amy Lomellini (17:03):
Oh, yeah. I watch everything on two times

Derek Bruff (17:06):
And not so much to get it out of the way faster or to avoid it, but it's the only way I can really process. If it's slow, I get distracted if it's fast. Okay, yeah. Yeah,

Amy Lomellini (17:17):
That's a hundred percent me. Yeah. So if it's fast, I tune into it and I stay focused and I read the captions and all of that to help me process the information.

Derek Bruff (17:26):
Now, it sounds like this Ally tool has some options, but I feel like 10 or 15 years ago, creating these types of media for students and providing things in multiple formats, I feel like it was hard, actually.

Amy Lomellini (17:40):
Absolutely.

Derek Bruff (17:41):
And so how should faculty be thinking about their own workflow in order to make this type of instructional material design more feasible?

Amy Lomellini (17:52):
Yeah, absolutely. Use, the tools are created that are embedded. So 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 certain piece of content. You can have it set to different levels, and then it'll generate assignment ideas, for example. And you can decide which one makes the most sense, or just brainstorm. You don't have to accept it or you can accept it and then you can edit it. I think it's like having an instructional designer in your pocket where you can 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.

(19:03):
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.

(19:18):
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 or whatever that might be, and start there. When we try to boil the ocean or UDL-ify everything, it becomes overwhelming. 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 I really like that assignment. And that feedback then will spark motivation to do it again in another area or another course, and it kind of becomes this journey. It kind of snowballs after. 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.

Derek Bruff (20:14):
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 change my practice going forward. And so I guess it sounds like what you're arguing is there's another way into this, which is to say, 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?

Amy Lomellini (20:57):
Absolutely. And I think they're both valid paths as well. You get with the first one, you get 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 other ways to show. And even with Ally data, you can show that there's a hundred downloads of the tagged PDF, and you were presenting it in a different way. Now they have the opportunity to do this, or there was 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.

Derek Bruff (21:36):
Sure, Yeah.

Amy Lomellini (21:38):
And so I think using that data can help justify and make those points. That being said, though, it's also very important to include people with disabilities in both the design and feedback. Ask your students 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 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. So it's not just about students.

(22:25):
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 again, the AI design assistant really allows me to save clicks. I have tremors and I have 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 whatever I'm doing, 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 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 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 also for my disability, it's really helping me support empower me to do what I want to do.

Derek Bruff (23:26):
Let's talk a little bit more about AI, because

Amy Lomellini (23:29):
I knew that'd be a good segue. Yeah.

Derek Bruff (23:31):
I've 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 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 landed on generative AI is lots of things, and one of those things is assistive technology. So what are the things that you see generative AI being in this space? What are those things?

Amy Lomellini (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 helping them summarize content 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, 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 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 texts that's actually meaningful. 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.

Derek Bruff (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?

Amy Lomellini (25:34):
So in general, you wanna 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? I've seen it. I have too. Yeah. Is there a purpose? So I think considering why you're putting an image there and what the intent behind it is, what does 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 are putting in an image is helpful, is it conveying what you think it's conveying? And then using something like allies, alt text generator, you can come up with that starting point and then edit it as you see fit, and it's a lot easier to do. I think staring at a blank alt text box

Derek Bruff (26:24):
Can be, oh gosh, it's the work. It's hard. I'm like, oh, I don't have the language. Right,

Amy Lomellini (26:28):
Exactly. But you don't have to do that anymore, right?

Derek Bruff (26:31):
Ai, alt text generation. Yes. There's a lot happening in this image. I picked it for a reason. 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,

Amy Lomellini (26:49):
exactly.

Derek Bruff (26:50):
There's always, I mean, I do this a lot in my talks, in my writing, 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 play well together and kind of reinforce each other. And so my images are not generally cats and unicorns. I'm trying to do some actual cognitive lifting with my images. And so to be able to go to a chat GPT or another tool and say it'll write three detailed sentences, I find it's remarkably good at doing that job. Now, AI is not good at all jobs, but it is pretty good at that one.

Amy Lomellini (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 with that as well. And what actual people who rely on alt text want to know and what's too much. There's a fine balance there. I have a research paper coming out soon. Stay tuned.

Derek Bruff (28:01):
Oh, do you? Okay.

Amy Lomellini (28:02):
Yeah, it's called Do Flamingos Matter.

Derek Bruff (28:06):
That's a great title.

Amy Lomellini (28:06):
Maybe it's not cats and rainbows, but flamingos.

Derek Bruff (28:09):
Right, right.

Amy Lomellini (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 this.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
Oh, sure.

Amy Lomellini (28:18):
And 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 cited folks are going to have the right information to be able to understand why you put that image there in the first place.

Derek Bruff (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.

Amy Lomellini (28:44):
That is exactly it.

Derek Bruff (28:47):
And I generally have good internet where I am, but I don't always, and sometimes I want to work out on an airplane and not pay for internet. And so having different ways to get to the same material makes a lot of sense.

Amy Lomellini (29:00):
Absolutely.

Derek Bruff (29:03):
Let's talk about online courses now. What are some digital accessibility moves? Maybe some common ones, but then also some things that maybe faculty haven't thought of or maybe might surprise some faculty members that would be helpful to make?

Amy Lomellini (29:18):
I think it all comes down to, 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, here's free range of everything you have ever thought of with just go do something. And that for some people is very challenging. And

(29:39):
So I think that scaffolding the guidance and the working through it together is what makes the difference between an actually attainable assignment goal versus something that maybe is just overwhelming. I think both faculty and students can be overwhelmed by the idea of UDL when it's not done as intended. With that scaffolding, 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 other people. When you get out there and talk to disabled students, disabled professionals, all of the above, I think you learn something new, and 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 is results in sometimes surprising, but in a good way, things for others who want to join the movement.

Derek Bruff (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 at 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 challenge 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 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 organizational change in this area?

Amy Lomellini (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 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? Or

Derek Bruff (32:00):
Yeah, how does That go?

Amy Lomellini (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. 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. We're all here to learn. I'm never punitive about anything. 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. My team is still, we've grown so much my team, which is amazing because anthology believes in digital accessibility, but we're still not as many employees as the entire company. We're never going to be, and that's okay.

(32:52):
So we have to have a shared responsibility model. 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 even you just said, I want to do this. I'm just not sure how. Well, I would love to talk to you more about that. Let's figure it out together, and let's find a small attainable goal that we can do. So I have professional committees that I'm a part of at 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 groundbreaking. It can be something small that makes a difference. Hey, have you thought about 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 providing questions upfront or setting an agenda? Have you thought about those things? And that small change can make the difference for somebody.

Derek Bruff (33:54):
You should have the agenda. That should not be a new move for your meeting.

Amy Lomellini (33:58):
You'd be surprised

Derek Bruff (33:59):
Who's going to put that out there.

Amy Lomellini (34:00):
I wish. But yes,

(34:02):
I agree with you. But then I would say celebrate the small wins. So badging with a product like Milestone that we have, 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. 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 give internal shoutouts to people. So I try to make sure that my team is shouting out all of 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 Word documents for your, or whatever it might be, and you just use Heading Styles, right? As you're building that document, so much easier than trying to retrofit it, right?

Derek Bruff (35:12):
So I think 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?

Amy Lomellini (35:25):
So twofold, because I'm going to give you the curb cut too.

(35:29):
So first, for students who use screen readers, for example, they can pull a list of headings. So if you're cited, 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 hopefully actual 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. It's just me. 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 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, whatever change I want to make, I apply it to one of them instead of all 57 in my 300 page Syllabus.

Derek Bruff (36:33):
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 just going to make my headings bold 14 point, and I'm going to do that manually, And Then later you change your mind. And now,

Amy Lomellini (36:49):
so you Don't have to do it if you use Styles.

Derek Bruff (36:51):
Yep. Go into the style sheet. Beautiful. Make one fix. Yeah,

Amy Lomellini (36:54):
Absolutely.

Derek Bruff (36:58):
That was Dr. Amy Lomellini, 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. Intentional Teaching is sponsored by UPCEA, the online and professional education association. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to the UPCEA website, where you can find out about their research, networking opportunities, and professional development offerings.This episode of Intentional Teaching was produced and edited by me, Derek Bruff. See the show notes for links to my website and socials, and to the Intentional Teaching newsletter, which goes out most weeks on Thursday or Friday. You’ll also find a link to become a podcast subscriber. For just a few bucks a month, you can help support the show and get access to subscriber-only bonus episodes.If you’ve found this or any episode of Intentional Teaching useful, would you consider sharing it with a colleague? That would mean a lot.As always, thanks for listening.