The Corona crisis has suddenly hit the universities. Teachers and students suddenly find themselves in virtual learning rooms. Students who were already disadvantaged before the pandemic are particularly affected by this crisis. Students with health impairments often belong to the risk group of people who are particularly at risk from corona. They have to reorganize their everyday life, with assistance and care staff not being available to the usual extent. And finally, they should study as successfully as possible under the changed conditions.
This article was automatically translated using DeepL Translator. Please excuse any errors.
Accessibility and inclusive digitization
The ableism of the higher education sector is particularly evident in this crisis situation. Students should work with content that they cannot use because it is not barrier-free. Teachers have had to quickly switch to online teaching and often conduct their courses as synchronous virtual events. This form is borrowed from classroom teaching. It is not suitable for all courses. Furthermore, synchronous digital teaching discriminates against some students, especially students with health impairments.
With manageable effort, multi-modal solutions can be designed that ensure accessibility and can be used by all students. In several blog posts we show how this can be done, why it is important and why all students benefit from it.
There is hardly any data on students with health impairments in Germany. One of the few data sources is the Social Survey, which the DZHW regularly conducts on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Student Union (DSW). In the current social inquiry thereby 11% of the asked studying indicated that with them a health impairment is present, which has an aggravating effect on their studies. This means that of the current 2,892,000 students, around 318,000 are disabled in their studies because their health is impaired. 29% of these students report having more than one study disability. In particular, the proportion of students with mental illness has risen significantly in recent years. However, other forms of health impairment also have an adverse effect on studies, as the following chart shows:
Which impairments make studying more difficult? Figure: [http://www.sozialerhebung.de/download/21/Soz21_hauptbericht.pdf 21. Social Survey p. 37]
Information about the experienced study situation of studying with health impairments gives the study "beeinträchtigt studieren - best2". In the area of study organization as well as teaching and learning, 29% of the surveyed students state that they have difficulties in their studies due to teaching materials that are not barrier-free. And in each case 24% of the students say that non-accessible e-learning causes problems and technical aids are lacking.
The term accessibility is clearly defined by law in Germany. In § 4 BGG it says:
Barrier-free are structural and other facilities, means of transport, technical commodities, information processing systems, acoustic and visual information sources and communication facilities as well as other designed areas of life, if they can be found, accessed and used by people with disabilities in the generally usual way, without particular difficulty and basically without outside help. In this context, the use of aids necessary for the disabled is permitted.
I would like to go into a few aspects here:
This can be discussed at length and in detail - and this is exactly what e.g. affected persons and scientists* in the field of disability studies do. I would like to refer here to Article 1 of the UN Disability Rights Convention, where it says:
People with disabilities include people who have long-term physical, mental, spiritual or sensory impairments which, in interaction with various barriers, can prevent them from participating fully, effectively and equally in society.
A disability is not inherent in the individual person, but arises from the interaction between impairments and various barriers in the environment and society. This is the social model of disability:
How can accessibility be ensured? Image: [http://ddsg.org.uk/taxi/social-model.html The social model]
The social model of disability distinguishes between impairment and disability. The individual person may have a health impairment. There are many different barriers in society:
These barriers in society turn an individual impairment into a disability. However, the problem is not the individual person with his or her impairment, but it is the barriers in society that we must remove. This is why accessibility is so important. Barrier-free offers enable people with disabilities to use information sources and communication facilities independently. Thus, accessibility prevents the development of a disability.
First of all, it means that you very likely have students with health impairments who are dependent on barrier-free (digital) teaching. Therefore all contents and offers of digital teaching should be designed barrier-free. Much of this is possible with the software that is used anyway for the creation of documents and other content. How this can be done and what needs to be taken into account is shown in the following blog posts.
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