(upbeat music)
- Welcome to the Accessible Learning Experience,
where we help you turn learning barriers
into learning opportunities.
We're so excited to welcome Mark Nichols to the podcast.
Mark is the Senior Director
of Universal Design and Accessible Technologies
at Virginia Tech,
and a longtime friend of the AEM Center and CAST.
Our conversation starts with Mark
sharing the personal experience with accessibility
that drives everything he does
as an accessibility professional
to create more inclusive learning environments
for all learners.
We then discuss the exciting
Choose Accessible Learning Materials, or CALM initiative,
and how Mark is working
to franchise accessibility on his campus
and across Virginia's higher education system.
Mark also touches on how the AEM Quality Indicators
inform the work that he does at Virginia Tech.
And stay tuned until the end for information
on how you can get access to the design files
so that you too can implement
the CALM initiative on your campus.
Here then is our conversation with Mark Nichols.
Welcome to the podcast, Mark.
It's so great to have you with us here
on the Accessible Learning Experience,
and we've really enjoyed working with you over the years,
so I'm really excited to share what you've been working on
with our audience.
So let's go ahead and get started by sharing
what inspires your work as an accessibility professional?
And I know you've been in the field for a while,
so I'm interested in knowing
what is your accessibility story?
What drives your work in this field?
- Yes, a great question,
and thanks again for the opportunity to be here.
So I think probably my biggest inspiration
was my sister Alison.
She was born in 1981,
and she was born with severe and profound
physical, visual, and intellectual disabilities
due to a lack of oxygen at birth.
And she was truly a medical marvel.
Doctors had said she wouldn't live past a couple of years,
and, you know, she proved all of them wrong.
She lived into her early twenties.
She was extremely tiny.
Even as like a middle school student,
she weighed I think 19 pounds,
and her highest weight was around 30 pounds.
And she required, you know, 100% care
with all self-help and life tasks.
And she could not make any verbalization,
she did not have speech,
so she made a variety of different types of vocalizations
to indicate happiness and disapproval
or pain and things like that.
And so at a very young age, my family, you know,
was a very tight unit.
You know, growing up in the early eighties,
there was a lot of different unsolicited thoughts
about life with an individual with severe disabilities,
and unsolicited suggestions around institutionalization
and things like that.
And, you know, that was never considered by my family.
Alison was a part of our family.
She attended my sporting events,
she attended my Scout ceremonies.
You know, she was an active part of our family,
and we never viewed it otherwise.
And so from a very young age,
I was very intrigued by having tools and resources
that Alison could utilize specifically for a long time
just to learn cause and effect relationships.
And so, you know, it really opened up my eyes,
I would probably say, when I was five or six, even,
in helping my parents in creating assistive technologies
to help Alison engage at home
and be active in the community and in school.
You know, everything from homemade switches from Radio Shack
where we'd get a spatula and an ice bucket
and a switch module purchased from Radio Shack
and hot glue and voila, you know.
Don't forget the eighth inch mono plug and the stereo wire,
but we would create battery adapted toys,
we'd create switches,
and it really kind of opened up my eye to the maker world,
even really before it was a thing in the eighties.
And my first exposure to communication devices
was with a device called the Whisper Wolf.
I never forget that day
when that device came home with my sister on her wheelchair.
And I was like, "Whoa, this is like a giant Speak & Spell,"
and overlays and that voice from that device
will always remain with me
because I was just completely fascinated by that.
And so, you know, Alison really inspired me
to continue to find ways
of supporting individuals with disabilities
that led to my career going into special education
and then a postgraduate career in assistive technology.
And really, you know, just my continued motivation
that, you know, as a society,
we still have a lot of work to do
around improving digital accessibility
and access for individuals with disabilities.
And so her needs combined with my passion,
continued passion for this,
have really, you know, led me to the career
that I'm currently in in higher ed,
but really got me to the K-12 world
where I had an opportunity
to help with assistive technology needs in the K-12 space
and work with a fantastic group of colleagues.
And then now at the higher ed space
on the later half of that transition side
and working with access to course materials
and creating accessible environments.
She was definitely my motivation
from a very, very early age.
- What a motivation she was.
I could just hear the passion coming through your voice
as I'm listening to you.
And really what you're describing is full inclusion.
And you started that in your family,
where she was part of all of the activities
that you did as a family.
And I love how that has inspired you
to continue to work for that full inclusion,
whether you've been working in K-12 or in higher education,
because it doesn't stop when our students leave K-12, right?
We need to continue to include them in higher ed
as they make the transition to the workforce,
so I'm so glad that Alison
was such a great inspiration for you
and that she continues to drive your work today.
So tell us a little bit about what you do at Virginia Tech,
bringing it to the current day,
starting with your inspiration,
and then what continues to drive your work
today at Virginia Tech?
- Well, I have the pleasure to work at Virginia Tech
with the Accessible Technologies team.
So I oversee the team,
and it's a small team,
but we are a team who is very passionate
and very vested in expanding digital accessibility
across the multiple campuses of the university.
I arrived at Virginia Tech in 2017,
and during some of my early conversations with my boss,
one of the things that really stood out to me
in one of those conversations
was that he used the words franchising accessibility,
and that really stuck with me, like,
"Okay, yes, I understand and I agree
that accessibility needs to be a shared commitment.
And how do we go about building a culture
where that is the norm?"
And so that really led my team and I,
we were in 2018, I remember very vividly,
we were sitting in our office space
with a giant whiteboard in front of us,
and we had the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
pulled up, and we were talking about, you know,
what were some of the topic areas
that faculty were reaching out to us most frequently
to get support on, and how can we tie that into WCAG,
but on a level that's relatable to faculty?
And so that's really where
one of our most successful initiatives came about,
was from that brainstorm, and that's where
the Choose Accessible Learning Materials
or the CALM campaigns were developed.
So these were ways of mapping some of the work
specifically to WCAG
to the needs of our faculty and staff
that had been reaching out for consultative support
or asking questions.
And these campaigns were a way,
they were the bite sized ways,
that faculty could join,
faculty and staff could join and learn about why and how
are those specific topics important and crucial,
and understanding that shared responsibility.
And our first two campaigns
were Keep CALM and Caption On
and Keep CALM and Check Contrast.
So captioning and contrast were two areas
we frequently were providing professional development on,
or outreach on, or consultative support on.
Or we were seeing some really bad examples
across the university in these areas, so we said,
"You know what?
These campaigns are a way for us to deliver this message
in a way that doesn't seem overwhelming,
that helps to kind of build that capacity
underlying that franchising accessibility, right,
to build awareness, understanding."
But these campaigns had to provide
the professional development,
they had to provide the tools and the resources necessary
for scaled improvement in these respective topic areas.
And so, you know, it really was the foundation
of helping to establish community
and inspire others here at all levels of the university.
And that was key,
that we were looking at it from a bottom-up
and a top-down approach.
And so this campaign model has been, I would say,
tremendously successful here at Virginia Tech.
And we have poster files that have been developed,
and we have sticker files that we made,
and honestly, I mean,
we never really utilized stickers in the K-12 space,
so this was a new concept to me,
but oh my gosh, like, the power of a sticker.
I mean, the Keep CALM stickers,
we had stickers that we passed out
to students and faculty and staff,
and, you know, I will never forget our CIO
coming to me and going,
"Yeah, I put one of those stickers on my laptop
and I was in a high level meeting,
I don't even remember what meeting it was,
but people were asking me,
'Hey, what's this Keep CALM that's on your laptop?'"
And so what a perfect promotional marketing opportunity to,
you know, like I said, at all levels of the university,
to be able to build capacity in these areas.
And so, you know, those campaigns, you know,
really kind of set the stage for us as a unit
to be able to, on a yearly basis,
add new campaigns on specific topics
that align with the needs of the university,
whether or not they're strategic needs based on, you know,
our IT strategic plan or university strategic plan,
or if they're just needs that we recognize
as we're working with faculty and staff
that these are areas of needed support.
And so I think we're now on our sixth campaign.
This year's campaign was Keep CALM and Simplify Slides,
'cause we were seeing an increase right after COVID
of slide decks that were slide-uments
that had a ton of text on them,
or that had text that was really small,
or that had, you know, color contrast was off.
A variety of different things.
So we worked with our accessibility network
here at Virginia Tech,
and we got their feedback and opinions,
and we decided this year that simplifying slides
and using the master template
and updating the master template,
slide template for the university to be more accessible
was the way that we could provide the tools and resources
for folks to continue to scale
in their respective circles of influence.
And so it's been a really fun way of, like I said,
keeping the work around digital accessibility manageable.
Because if we approach faculty and we say,
"Okay, here's the 25 things you need to do,"
that approach would not go well.
That would've not worked here at Virginia Tech.
So keeping it as a, "Here's one way.
Do this, here's the resources,
here's the information, build success.
And now when you're done with that,
hop into this other campaign.
We're here to help you on this journey."
You know, it's not the destination,
it's small incremental improvements
in digital accessibility.
Yes, legally we have to meet all of these conditions,
but we're building in small increments the capacity
so that we as a university
have that franchised approach to digital accessibility.
- Wow, I heard so much that I just love.
I love that idea of franchising accessibility, right?
That too often, it is centralized
and there's one person who's responsible for it,
and then that person leaves, that champion leaves,
and we haven't created the infrastructure behind it.
So you've really thought strategically
about building it from the ground up
and then from the top down,
so I love that idea of franchising.
I love the branding.
Accessibility sometimes
doesn't have the best brand on campus.
It's all about the legal mandates and so on.
So you found a way to really brand it
as something that is fun and, you know, that has stickers.
Hopefully you'll get t-shirts as well at some point.
- Yes, we got t-shirts as well too, yep, uh-uh.
- So just thinking about how we brand it,
and I also love the incremental approach.
Let's take one year at a time
and it's really about being strategic,
being careful in how you roll things out
so that you don't overwhelm people.
So there's so much great tips in what you just said, Mark.
Anything else you recommend
when it comes to rolling this out with faculty
or with department heads in terms of, you know,
if there's some resistance there, what would you recommend?
- Good question.
You know, I think it's,
going back to the focus of starting small,
where are the pain points in the course?
You know, we are in inside of a teaching and learning unit
that provides instructional design assistance,
that provides, you know, technical support with the LMS,
with integrations into the LMS,
with full campus-wide faculty professional development.
And so this unit that we are in,
I would say the way to connect with faculty
who may have some resistance,
and understandably, I mean,
faculty have so many demands placed on them.
I don't care if it's K-12 or higher ed,
there are so many different demands on teachers and faculty.
And so when we do consultations with faculty,
and I had the fortunate opportunity
to hire a Director of Universal Design for Learning
this last year,
and so she has really been helping us
to have some of these strategic conversations with faculty
to identify where are the pain points in the courses,
where are the barriers
that students generally have common issues with?
And then how can we look at supporting those,
reducing, I should say, those barriers.
Are there ways that the UDL framework
or accessible technologies and accessible materials
can help with that?
And so back to your question, it's starting small.
I think too often people perceive accessibility,
digital accessibility as this monstrous,
like it's the Mount Everest of the mountain ranges, right?
And it doesn't have to be.
It can be a rolling hill.
You can build success in incremental stages
and celebrate those successes and share those successes.
And I think that's a really important part.
And I think that's an area here even at Virginia Tech
that we're constantly trying to improve upon,
that we need to recognize these efforts,
however small or large that they are.
And that, you know, based on the many demands for time,
that a faculty member taking the time and effort
to improve, let's say, a caption track
for recorded content of a Zoom recording of a class video,
you know, that should be recognized
whether or not it's in their yearly annual assessment,
or whether or not it's part of a bigger story
that talks about scaled improvement
of inclusive media across the campus.
And I think, you know, my team and my parent organization
has that responsibility to be able to understand
and bring awareness to the work that's happening
and all across the university.
And that's what's so exciting
is that we've got work happening
not just in the instructional space,
but in all of the units that are responsible
for the operations of the university,
from HR to university libraries,
to comms and marketing teams.
I mean, it's really neat to see that.
And folks are adopting best practices
in digital accessibility,
and hopping on board in incremental stages.
And I think that's the approach.
And I think, you know, I'm not reinventing anything here.
I think Thomas Tobin and Kirsten Behling have, you know,
the Plus-One strategy identified in their book,
and I love that approach.
Like, that was like a 'Amen!'
When I saw that, I'm like, "Yes, I 100% agree to that."
You know, that strategy has really been a way
that our faculty and staff have really connected with.
And so taking that approach,
even with faculty that are hesitant, managing a lot,
start small.
And we have that conversation in our consultations, like,
"Okay, well maybe it's just adding alt text to your images
for this course semester.
You're gonna do that. That's your first thing.
And we're gonna provide you with the training
and resources and tools that you need to do that.
And then from there you reassess
and you look at where those barriers are
and you look at the student feedback
and you figure out where you're gonna prioritize
some accessibility efforts next."
- I love it.
And shout out to all of those professionals you mentioned,
like Thomas Tobin.
I've definitely been inspired by that approach as well,
the Plus-One thinking.
And I love that you're giving faculty time to, you know,
this is not, "You need to master it in a week.
We have a whole year, right?
So you get to learn about it,
you get to go out and implement it
over the course of a whole semester or a whole year,
and then you get to reflect on it".
So I really think you're modeling not just accessibility,
but you're modeling universal design for learning, right?
Because UDL, it's an iterative process
and you just continue to reflect and improve over time.
So I love how you are going about rolling this out
and really bringing more people
into the conversation, as you said,
addressing those pain points and celebrating their victories
and building on those victories,
and then we bring them into the conversation.
So speaking of sort of coordinating things, right,
because you mentioned the number of departments
that are involved,
I know that you've looked
to the AEM Center's Quality Indicators
for some guidance in the work that you're doing.
Can you tell our audience
how you've incorporated the Quality Indicators
for the provision of AEM in accessible technologies
at Virginia Tech?
- Yeah, absolutely.
The Indicators have been, I would say,
a foundation element
into a lot of our work that we've done here
with accessible technologies.
I think we first looked at the Indicators back in 2018.
It was kind of around the same time
that CALM was conceptualized.
So my team, recently,
my team and my parent organization
were relocated underneath of the provost office,
but we had at the time been under the division of IT.
And so our focus with my team
is more on universal access and universal accessibility.
We have two other teams on campus
that we work very closely with.
One is the Services for Students with Disabilities team,
which provides accommodation level support to students.
And then we have an ADA team
that provides accommodation level assistance
to faculty and staff.
So we connected with
the Services for Students with Disabilities team.
We sat down collectively together,
and we actually reviewed the indicators
and we looked to identify areas of opportunity for us
that we could both, as a combined effort,
look at helping to improve digital accessibility.
And those discussions really led us to identifying
where we had some gaps
as far as being able to provide timely access
to accessible educational materials,
or robust professional development,
more robust professional development structures.
And many of our current projects/initiatives
have all sort of stemmed from that initial review
of the Indicators and looking at areas of improvement.
And I would probably say one of our biggest areas
that we've significantly enhanced since 2018 would be,
we're looking at Indicator 4
in providing comprehensive learning opportunities.
And so not only the CALM campaign helps support that,
but we also developed a grant program,
an accessibility professional certification grant program,
again, all under the premise of franchising accessibility,
to build capacity across the university,
both instructional and non-instructional faculty and staff,
and we leveraged
the International Association of Accessibility
certification programs,
both the CPACC,
the Certified Professional Accessibility Core Competency,
which is a mouthful,
and the WAS, the Web Accessibility Specialist,
and we used these certifications as the foundation
to develop a cohort that folks from Virginia Tech,
and we've actually extended this cohort
to other universities
and colleges across the Commonwealth of Virginia,
that would participate in a 11 to 15 week,
depending on the cohort,
cohort that meets on a weekly basis.
And it's not only providing support to participate,
the end result, participating in the certification exam,
but we integrate all of the best practices
and resources and tools
that are available here at Virginia Tech
as these individuals go through the cohort.
So they're getting kind of a snapshot
of what does digital accessibility look like
here at Virginia Tech?
What are the tools, the best practices?
Who are the people that are doing this well,
that I can connect with if I've got questions?
Not just the digital accessibility, you know,
the Accessible Technologies team here at Tech,
but who are people in all the respective units
that are doing this type of work?
And then the icing on the cake, if folks want,
then they can take the certification exam
and have that international certification
for both CPACC or WAS.
But that's really helped us scale some awareness around UDL,
around models of disability,
around, you know, aria-labeling
for the more intensive developers
and designers here on campus.
And it's really been a fantastic journey
with these programs.
I think we've had over 125 folks
participate in our CPACC program,
and the WAS program is, I think, north of,
I wanna say around 25 folks that have participated in that.
But it's been a really great way of, again,
working to build that community,
that shared understanding and responsibility.
And now, you know, we've got folks
that reach out to these individuals across the university.
They're not just coming to us, which is great.
They come to us when they get the really difficult ones,
and we of course provide assistance with those, but again,
digital accessibility is becoming common
in the daily work of many individuals across campus.
- I love what I'm hearing
and how you've used the Quality Indicators, right?
So there's seven Quality Indicators,
and I'm sure you've reviewed them all and then focused on,
this is the one that's gonna have the biggest impact
at our university or our university system.
And I love how you're using that fourth Quality Indicator
to really build capacity and scale,
because that's the name of the game
is it can't stay in your department, right?
You have to bring additional people into the fold.
And I love that those exams that you mentioned,
I've taken them,
and I know that even if you don't take the exam,
just preparing for it
it gonna make you a better professional.
You're gonna learn things that you may not see
on an everyday basis,
but in preparing for that, you'll be better able to answer,
you know, all kinds of questions that come your way.
So now people can look not just to you or your department,
but they have other people in the system
that are able to provide support.
And that's a great story because that's the goal.
I think you're reaching your goal
of franchising accessibility
with the help of the Quality Indicators,
and specifically Quality Indicator 4.
So I encourage everybody
to check out those Quality Indicators.
They're on the AEM Center website under the Coordinate tab,
and there are also critical components
that take the Quality Indicators and translate them
into the specific language of higher education.
So definitely encourage everyone,
and we'll post a link to the Quality Indicators
and the critical components in our show notes.
So speaking of all this great work
that you're doing at Virginia Tech,
which I love to hear about,
I'm sure there's some resources
that you're really proud about.
Are there any that you'd be able to share with our audience
that we could post to the show notes
that would help them as well learn more about accessibility
and how to implement it on their campuses?
- Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, that's, you know, as an educator, lifelong educator,
that's one of the things I love
about the assistive technology
or accessibility fields of colleagues is that, you know,
we're very open and open to sharing,
and I 100% model that philosophy with our work here.
I'd probably say that specific files,
like we have design files for our CALM campaigns
that we've developed for the sticker files
and the Photoshop poster files and things like that.
Those are files that we've offered
to other universities and institutions
that are looking to establish a similar campaign,
maybe with a different color scheme.
I know here in Virginia,
my colleagues at James Madison University,
they reached out and they were like,
"Hey, Mark, hey, we really wanna use your campaign,
but we wanna use Keep CALM,"
or the campaign was gonna be Keep CALM,
and it was either Use or Do UDL.
I can't remember exactly what their campaign was.
But they took our files
and they rebranded with their color scheme
and were passing out stickers and posters,
and that's fantastic, right?
We wanna help improve the environment for all students,
so that's probably one tangible resource
that I'd be happy to share with folks looking to,
you know, have something that can spark conversations
with those design files.
We have all of the content for these campaigns
on our website,
and I'd be happy to share that website with you, Luis,
so that everybody can access
the content that we have with those campaigns.
You're welcome to reuse that content, the language,
you know, however it can help in your circles of influence,
you know, we wanna make sure to share those
for the betterment of the greater educational community.
And then I'd say anything regarding like,
the grant program has been one
that we have spent a tremendous amount of time and effort,
and we're continuously refining these programs.
So I don't have a document per se to share,
but if anybody is looking at
establishing professional development structures
or wanting to pursue like a grant program,
a cohort like we've developed here,
I'm more than willing to chat with anybody
on what worked for us,
where we had some bumps along the way,
how we've, you know, been able to improve our program
based on some of those barriers that we encountered,
and it's a continuous work in process,
but I'd be happy to converse and offer any advice to folks
looking to establish some sort
of professional development or grant program.
- I definitely agree with you, Mark.
That's the beauty of our community
is that it's so generous and so welcoming.
You can be someone who doesn't know,
you know, just knows the words accessibility,
and you come into a conversation
and people will welcome you with open arms.
You know, we all wanna do good in the world.
So I really appreciate you being so generous
and sharing those resources,
and we'll make sure that we'll post them in the show notes,
or post some links.
So to wrap up our conversation,
you mentioned that you are open to people
reaching out to you,
and, you know, sharing your knowledge
about all the wonderful work
that you're doing at Virginia Tech,
so what's the best way to connect with you?
- I'm gonna show my age here, but I love email.
Maybe love is not the right word,
but I am very responsive in email.
Sometimes I organize my activities via email
and using my calendar.
So email is definitely one way to reach out.
I'm very responsive through email.
I know we'll post my email address here at the end.
I'm also on Twitter.
I'm not a tremendously active participant on Twitter,
but if you do contact me through Twitter,
I will certainly respond through Twitter
and we'll list my handle on Twitter here in the show notes.
And then our main website for Accessible Technologies,
it does offer a variety of information
around some of the other projects and initiatives
that we have currently here at Virginia Tech.
So, you know, you could contact me
through the contact section
of our Accessible Technologies website,
and we can connect there.
- Awesome, well, you heard it here.
You're able to connect with Mark
and kind of follow their work at Virginia Tech,
learn from it,
take some of their generously shared resources,
and then create similar initiatives
that have that ripple effect.
And I think that's what you've been talking about
with us on this episode,
is you started small
and then you started having these ripple effects
across campus and then across the system.
And we started this conversation with the passion
that brought you into this work, right?
The personal connection.
And that passion has really driven systemic change
at Virginia Tech through your work and through,
we're just happy to be able to support it
through the use of the quality indicator.
So we appreciate the opportunity
to work with you in that sense.
So thank you so much, Mark.
I really appreciated having you here,
and I know I'm inspired by the work that you're doing,
and I'm sure our audience is as well
once they learn more about it.
- Well, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here.
It was absolutely my pleasure,
and I look forward to connecting with your audience
if they have questions or comments.
Or if you do take these ideas,
I love to hear about ways that other people
are improving digital accessibility.
So, you know, let's connect
in one of the ways that we've shared for connecting with me,
'cause I'd love to learn more
about the work that you're doing in your areas of influence.
- Thanks for tuning in to this episode
of the Accessible Learning Experience,
brought to you by the National Center
on Accessible Educational Materials at CAST.
You can find us on the web at aem.cast.org.
There you'll find show notes with links
to all of the resources mentioned on each episode.
Thanks again for listening,
and remember, accessibility is everyone's responsibility.
(upbeat music)
The contents of this podcast were developed
under a cooperative agreement
with the U.S. Department of Education.
However, those contents do not necessarily represent
the policy of the U.S. Department of Education,
and you should not assume endorsement
by the federal government.