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Each episode brings you inspiring conversations with educators, students, families, and inclusive education leaders who share practical tips, proven strategies, and real-world examples of how to break down barriers and create equitable learning experiences for everyone. You’ll also gain insight into the power of partnerships and collaboration in building systems with UDL that deliver accessible educational materials, innovative technologies, and inclusive teaching practices.
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The Learning Experience, powered by CAST
S.05, Ep.09: From Awareness to Action: Advancing Accessibility for Everyone
Kelli Suding: Welcome to The Learning Experience powered by CAST. I'm one of your hosts, Kelli Suding.
Luis Perez: And I'm Luis Perez.
Bryan Dean: And I'm Bryan Dean.
Kelli Suding: We are three educators here ready to break down barriers until learning has no limits. Let's do this. Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode of the Learning Experience where we believe access is not just an add-on, it's where great learning begins. And today is one of our favorite episodes of the year because we are celebrating Global Accessibility Awareness Day or GAAD. And it's the day that we pause to really notice the design decisions that either open the doors or quietly closes them. So it's really a time to be very intentional about those design options. And of course, I'm here with my co-hosts. Hey guys, always happy to share the same space with you.
Bryan Dean: Hello, hello.
Luis Perez: Yo, yo, yo. You can tell it's been Bryan and I are letting it go a little bit because he's got a little bit more graying his beard and my beard is longer than it usually is.
Bryan Dean: I know.
Luis Perez: We're just chilling, enjoying the spring.
Bryan Dean: Right. I have had a lot of work time with Kelli lately, so I'm kind of attributing that to the gray and the beard.
Kelli Suding: Oh, the gray hair.
Bryan Dean: I mean it as I have to become a little more distinguished. Yeah. Not that I'm stressed.
Luis Perez: You definitely do look more distinguished, Bryan.
Bryan Dean: Thank you.
Luis Perez: It looks like you're about to break out into a lecture at a university, probably at like an older university. You're all set.
Bryan Dean: Well, you're just buttering me up today. I mean, I'm loving it. Do I owe you money? If I do, I'll send it your way.
Kelli Suding: He's just trying to impress our wonderful guests that-
Bryan Dean: That's right.
Kelli Suding: ... we're going to be introducing soon. And I don't blame him. And friends, you always hear they have hair envy. That's all it is.
Bryan Dean: I do.
Luis Perez: That's what it is. Absolutely.
Kelli Suding: It is.
Bryan Dean: I do. I do. I absolutely do. How is everybody though? How's everybody feeling? Good?
Kelli Suding: Yeah. Feeling good.
Bryan Dean: Yeah? You guys have been out and about as always. So I'm always interested in hearing about your adventures coming back in. And I'm over here just trying to hang on like a hubcap in the fast lane. You know what I mean? I'm just trying to make it work.
Luis Perez: Well, Kelli's been logging the miles. She's been all over-
Kelli Suding: Have been.
Luis Perez: ... what, Utah.
Kelli Suding: Yeah. Utah.
Bryan Dean: New York.
Kelli Suding: New York. Then Canada soon. Yeah. And let's just say that traveling is not for the weak, let me tell you.
Bryan Dean: No, it is not.
Kelli Suding: Yeah, it is exhausting. But see how we can just get off-topic?
Luis Perez: That's right.
Kelli Suding: It's not really topic, but it's all going to work out because we're getting ready to introduce our guest today.
Bryan Dean: Ooh, I'm excited.
Kelli Suding: Gentlemen, I want to try something with you both before we start. All right?
Bryan Dean: Yes, ma'am.
Luis Perez: Let's do it.
Kelli Suding: I want you both to think about the last time you said the words, "Oh, that's helpful." Or maybe you noticed something that made an impact or maybe became a barrier and it doesn't necessarily have to be accessibility related. So just something in your day where you thought, "Wow, that's actually made things easier."
Bryan Dean: Go ahead.
Luis Perez: You want to go, Bryan?
Bryan Dean: Well, I have one, but I always want to defer to you.
Luis Perez: Well, since this is an accessibility focus episode, it happened to me this morning-
Kelli Suding: Okay.
Luis Perez: ... because I just got a new camera and I really believe that everything that you use, all of the tools that you use should be accessible. And my new camera has a screen reader.
Kelli Suding: Oh, yeah.
Bryan Dean: Well, that's cool.
Luis Perez: And so I turned it on and I was like, "Wow, this is not only going to be helpful for me, but there's a lot of older people that get into photography," right?
Kelli Suding: Oh, yeah.
Bryan Dean: Yeah, for sure.
Luis Perez: But not only that, often you're photographing out of the environment, right? And you might have some really harsh sunlight that might keep you from being able to see things on the screen.
And now I can set up a button where I can turn on a screen reader and have those menus read out loud. So that really is our philosophy. Essential for some. For me, it's essential. I won't be able to do my photography much longer if I don't have that accessibility feature, but it's helpful for a lot, right?
Kelli Suding: Yeah.
Luis Perez: It's helpful for those people that are older or those that are using a camera in an environment where they can't look at the screen. So I'm excited. I think it's going to be a game changer.
Bryan Dean: Yeah, that's very cool.
Luis Perez: Let's also speak for themselves.
Kelli Suding: Yeah, I love that. Luis, was it hard to get used to right away?
Luis Perez: No. No, it's really intuitive. Part of it is because I've been a screen reader user for many, many years. So it's just coming to a new device, right, a new technology or tool that I use. And so I would love to see that screen readers everywhere, basically. TVs, cable devices, whatever you use should have a screen reader in it.
Bryan Dean: Yeah, for sure.
Kelli Suding: Love it.
Bryan Dean: I agree. Mine is not as cool as that or as topical, I guess, but I will tell you, one of my favorite things that has ever been designed is the new ketchup bottle. Now it's been out for a long time, but it is one of my favorite things. It is one of those things that is incredibly useful, right? Because if you remember back in the day when you had glass ketchup bottle, it was really hard to get the ketchup out. So then they said, "Let's turn it into a squeeze bottle," and they did, but it was still kind of problematic. And then by one little change, by putting the cap on the bottom and making it be able to stand up that way, you no longer have to shake it. You can still squeeze it. It is just one little change in design that is so intentional that it makes it incredibly useful. I don't eat a lot of ketchup, but I think it's like a really cool design.
Luis Perez: So I got a follow-up for you, Bryan, and you may alienate some people in the Philadelphia area, but on cheesesteaks, ketchup, yay or nay?
Bryan Dean: No.
Kelli Suding: Oh boy.
Bryan Dean: No ketchup on cheesesteak. What are you talking about? And I'm not a believer in ketchup on hotdogs either. What are you talking about? That's mustard. You put mustard on a hotdog and you don't put ketchup on a cheesesteak.
Luis Perez: All right, Philly fans, you can just send hate mail to Bryan.
Kelli Suding: There you go.
Luis Perez: You can get out of my mailbox.
Kelli Suding: You just have [inaudible 00:05:58].
Bryan Dean: No, I'm just kidding.
Kelli Suding: Oh my gosh. It's so nostalgic when you said that because I remember just pounding that glass ketchup bottle on the palm of your hand trying to get that out.
Bryan Dean: Right?
Kelli Suding: So now you just gave me my own sort of like, "You know what? That does make things easier."
Bryan Dean: Yeah, it makes it a huge difference, right?
Kelli Suding: Yeah, it does.
Luis Perez: That's right.
Bryan Dean: There you go.
Kelli Suding: I would say I just bought a new clicker for presenting and then it has a magnifier on it. And I was at a recent conference and on the stage and the screen was really high. And so I had certain parts that I couldn't point at, which I maybe typically wouldn't describe. And so that magnifier just kind of magnified the spot where I wanted it to. And I was like, "Gosh, this makes it a lot easier for me." So I was just thinking about that. And I know Luis bought one also. We always have-
Bryan Dean: I have one as well.
Luis Perez: Well, I was just going to say, she told me and the next thing I know I'm putting it on my Amazon cart, but this is something we do. We make each other empty our wallets every once in a while and buy things.
Kelli Suding: Yup.
Bryan Dean: I got the same one and I've got it in rose gold because I like to be fancy.
Kelli Suding: Nice.
Bryan Dean: I like to look fancy up there.
Kelli Suding: Luis and I go back years and I've spent a lot of money because of him and vice versa. So I really like the ketchup bottle I love. The screen reader, I kind of would really like to see you do that, Luis. I'm really intrigued by that.
Luis Perez: I'll take a video of it.
Kelli Suding: Yeah, because I know you've been talking about the need for that for a long time. But so those helpful moments turn out to be connected to accessibility in some way, even if it's a ketchup bottle, right? That's a part of accessibility because that's really what Global Accessibility Awareness Day or GAAD is about. It's about noticing how people experience information differently, noticing how design choices can make participation easier and not harder. And today we're talking with someone who has dedicated her career, like I'm not even kidding, so much that it's hot off the press that she is here now with her PhD, Dr. Wendy, to improving accessibility and expanding opportunities for others. I have used Wendy's work for years and she vets a lot of materials. She has this great website. I can just go to it. I'm like, "Hey, did Wendy vet for this and let me look at it. Am I going to use it or not?" So it's a great resource. And so Dr. Wendy's in the house again.
Bryan Dean: Yay.
Kelli Suding: Welcome. Welcome.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Hi everyone. So I'm Dr. Wendy Torres, but it's an ED, not a PhD but still a doctorate.
Kelli Suding: That's right. Okay.
Luis Perez: Still doctor.
Kelli Suding: Either way. That's right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Still a doctor.
Kelli Suding: ED.
Dr. Wendy Torres: ED.
Kelli Suding: Yeah, I'm going to call myself out. So Wendy's last name has the rolled R's. And so my Midwestern accent has been fumbling me up a little bit. So I'm going to go with Dr. Wendy, but she's going to... And the guys are going to make fun of me and that's okay. But Wendy, Dr. Wendy, we are so excited to talk about your journey today into this work and what your research is teaching us and others and how awareness can turn into meaningful action. And so GAAD is about building understanding and action around digital access. So we really would like to dive into more about you and what first drew you into the field of accessibility and what keeps you so passionate about the work today.
Bryan Dean: And we would love to hear your last name, Dr. Wendy.
Kelli Suding: That's right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: So my official last name is Velez-Torres, so it's two Spanish names. So my official name technically is Wendolyn Velez-Torres, but I go by Wendy. So nice lovely Puerto Rican name there. But what's interesting with my journey with digital accessibility actually started over 20 years ago and I didn't even realize I was on that journey. So I was a special educator, kind of brand new to the field, maybe one or two years in, so still fairly new. And I remember I had found this tool online that I just thought, "Oh, this is going to be cool. I can use this with my students. They're going to love it." And the next day I shared it with my students and all my students loved it but one. One of my students had muscular dystrophy. So he could not navigate a mouse traditionally the way we would traditionally navigate one.
He had to use a joystick to navigate and that particular tool that I have found used only click and drag. And so I had no idea about that. And I remember he was upset. I remember how upset he was because he was one of those students who was like, "I want to do everything everybody else does." And so he had to rely on his aide to actually engage with the tool. So he couldn't engage with the tool as everybody else. And so I remember how it impacted me because I remember the look on his face. And I remember I was like, "I'm not sure what to do with this. " And I had kind of like no idea that this was even a thing. Again, I was like brand new to the field.
But then if you fast-forward several years later, I'm working at Coppin State University. I have a young son that I just gave birth to and he's diagnosed as autistic. And my boss says, "We want to start looking at digital accessibility." And I started looking at what that meant and looking at tools and I started to encounter kind of the same things that Antonio had encountered. But my reaction is vastly different at this point. At this point, I'm like, "It's been 20 years. What do you mean this hasn't been phased?"
I was mad. I was angry that it wasn't fixed because now it's impacting my son and it impacted Antonio and I should have had that reference then, but it's different when it's your own child because then I started looking at, "Well, now you're excluding my son. You're saying he's not welcome in this space. Why is this not accessible?" And I started to really start diving in and looking at web tools and I found out that how many of them were not accessible. I kind of took for granted, "Oh, it's on the web. It must be accessible." And you know what they say when you assume, but that's really what happened. I assumed it was, and it wasn't until I saw that it wasn't.
And then I became mad because when I started looking at it, I'm like, "This isn't really that difficult to do." And the fact that there was so much resistance when I would reach out to vendors, I would actually show vendors and say, "I found this issue with your tool. Can you address it?" Some were very open and some were like, "Oh, we don't have disabled people who used it." I remember feeling very angry by that response because it was so dismissive. And then I would throw my son. I'm like, "You mean my son's not welcome in the space?" And it was, "Oh, we don't mean him." It was always somebody else they were talking about. And I was like, "Yeah, but you are saying that. If he can't navigate this, if he can't use it, you're saying he's not welcome in this space, that he doesn't have the same equal rights as everyone else." And so I took it very personal.
So it became this big passion for me because as a teacher, because I teach at the university now, but I'm working with new teachers as well, for me, we're reaching our students. And so when it's not accessible, we are not reaching our students. We're not reaching that barrier. And so when I was doing this with Antonio, I was the barrier. I had created the barrier. His disability wasn't the barrier. He was perfectly capable of doing what I was asking him to do. It was what I had introduced didn't allow him to fully participate. And so I was like, "Okay." So I remembered that and so that's always what drives me now.
Luis Perez: That's awesome. And it's often the case, right, that there's a personal experience that really kind of opens our eyes to what the world could be, what it isn't and what could be. And I think something that stood out from your response, the idea of equal rights, because that's really what it's about, right? It's the equal rights to participation, to contribute, and so on. And like you said, it's been 36 years since the ADA was enacted, right? So it's about time. And we've had some exciting progress with the Title II updated rule, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which deals with state and local government. And we see a lot of awareness around accessibility that we hadn't seen in the past, but often we have to go back to the basics. So accessibility and access, right, access more generally, people throw around these words, right, and they may mean different things when they say access, right?
So can you get us started here with just a quick definition? What does accessibility, how would you define it, and what does it really mean for everyday learning, for work, for digital environment especially? Because we rely on digital environments for so much, right, from services to learning to work. So tell us a little bit more about that.
Dr. Wendy Torres: So yeah, access and accessibility do get used interchangeably a lot of times, but as I often tell people, they're not the same thing. So having access just means okay, I can get to it, but having accessibility means I can use it and navigate it and understand it. So if you're thinking of a physical space, okay, having access means maybe there's a ramp that lets me into the actual location, but then when I get to the location, am I able to actually actively participate? So maybe I can get into the concert, but if I can't see the venue or I can't engage with anybody because I'm in an isolated location, am I really fully participating? So when you think of digital accessibility in terms of like the digital space, that means anybody can go on a digital product and engage with it, navigate, and understand it at the exact same time as everybody else.
So you don't have to wait for that. So if, for example, I just finished my doctorate. So if I'm doing my homework at 2:00 in the morning, everyone should be able to get on and do their homework at 2:00 in the morning. It shouldn't be an issue if I am a screen reader user and I have to wait on my instructor to make it accessible so I can read it so I can have access to the same information. So that's what accessibility really is. I mean, that's what it means to me. It's that basically everyone can engage and participate, use these products, enjoy them and fully participate without having to go the extra mile doing something extra. Because when you have to do something extra, it's not fully inclusion and it actually can become very exhausting.
Luis Perez: Wow, that's a great answer. And you gave me some flashbacks to being a doctoral student because we do a lot of our work at 2:00 in the morning.
Dr. Wendy Torres: With Pepsi and making sure-
Luis Perez: There's nobody to call at 2:00 in the morning. You just got to have that access at that time, right? So that's a great example.
Bryan Dean: I really love it because I think that it frames it in this idea of empowerment and agency for me to be able to... It's not me waiting on somebody. It's not me waiting at the table for somebody to tell me what I can eat, it's me choosing what I want to eat when I want to eat it. And I think that that's a huge part, like that's a huge part of just who we are as humans, right? And so I do have this question as we're kind of moving on. So we know that Global Accessibility Awareness Day, it's coming up, and I'm not as hip as y'all, but let me make sure I got this right. It's usually the third Thursday in May, right? So this year, May 21st, right?
Dr. Wendy Torres: My graduation day. Woo-hoo.
Bryan Dean: There you go. See, there's a reason why they schedule it that way.
Luis Perez: What a way to celebrate.
Bryan Dean: Right?
Kelli Suding: No kidding.
Bryan Dean: But GAAD usually, it highlights technical fixes is what I have found. I'm not as in the accessibility world as both Luis and Kelli, but from my outside observation, often what I see is that it's a lot of technical fixes like alt text, captioning, contrast, those sorts of things, which are hugely important. But when looking at your research and your focus, your focus really... And even just what you've said in the podcast so far, your focus is on the human side of the audit, right, how faculty development actually changes the digital landscape. And so as we look forward to GAAD 2026, how do we prevent accessibility from being just seen as a policing action or a compliance action and more really in that reframing as a fundamental act of social justice that kind of honors the digital rights of every learner?
Dr. Wendy Torres: Yeah. So that's actually what my research really actually focused on. That's literally what I did with my faculty. We looked at their actual course and we have a tool that we use to kind of gives a score for the content that they're sharing in their digital spaces. And so initially the participants who were part of it were kind of thinking, "Oh, I want to be compliant. I want to make sure I go for that Title II." And that's where their mindset was at the beginning of the research. However, at the end, we had a mind shift that happened. And basically what happened was I started to show them, "Okay, here's what the tool is saying. This is why this needs to be accessible." And I explained to them, "Okay, well, this is why this matters to specific individuals, why this is a barrier for certain people."
And I started having them do it themselves. So what made it interesting was at first they kind of saw it as, "Oh, this is something extra. It's something not connected to good teaching. It's just something extra I have to do. It doesn't connect to my actual students." But when they started to see how easy it was to do and then how it actually made their content look better and clearer for their students, they started kind of buy-in. And then when I started kind of telling, "Okay, this is why this is a barrier for this specific person." And I deliberately started to pick disabilities that we tend to think of as invisible, those ones that we can't physically see because everybody always seems to focus on, "I can physically see if you're blind or I can physically see if you're in a wheelchair." I wanted to focus on things like, well, if I'm neurodiverse and I have ADHD or I have dyslexia, you don't know that. And [inaudible 00:19:07] aren't going to disclose that for whatever reason.
And you can't assume that they're not in your classroom. So when you make it easier for them to engage with your content, you can focus more on the important part, which is the actual teaching, like what do they master instead of them wasting time writing you, "I can't get to this," and waiting for you to respond, you can actually focus on, what did you master in the materials? And so I found when my faculty started seeing that connection, when they started to see, "Oh, this makes my content look easier. This makes it easier and better and this isn't that hard. Oh, I can reach different people this way," I started to have more buy-in. I actually had one of my participants, we were working on a PowerPoint that he had. It was a very detailed PowerPoint. He taught like biochemistry, so lots of atoms and scientific [inaudible 00:19:51].
Bryan Dean: Sure. Technical pieces.
Dr. Wendy Torres: And so I was showing him how to do detailed alt texts using AI tools. And I was telling him, I was like, "Well, you know what? The alt text only has a certain amount of characters." But since this is such a detailed image, this might be helpful if we just kind of copy that information and put in a Word document and just say slide one has descriptions for all of them and just place it underneath, the kind of that UDL principle.
Bryan Dean: Sure.
Dr. Wendy Torres: And so he did that because originally he was targeting, "Okay, I need this for my students who are blind." But then he wrote me and said, "Hey, we took a test this week and I made that available and all my students actually did better on the test." And they actually wrote him and said, "Can you do that image description again for all the PowerPoints?"
Bryan Dean: Nice. Nice.
Dr. Wendy Torres: And so he made that connection like, "Oh, wait a minute. I wasn't even targeting these students and yet they're saying that it helped them." And so I did that with my faculty. A lot of times I used myself as an example. So I was showing different tools they use like immersive reader or something because we have within our learning management system, we have a tool that gives a lot of alternative formats automatically to our students. And so I was telling them, "Well, this was designed for someone who's dyslexic, but I use it all the time." I use myself as a doctoral student saying, "I'm exhausted. I don't want to read that article anymore."
Bryan Dean: Right. Right, right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: So many times I started to transpose things I thought I wrote in there. So use the reader to actually read it to you. And then I used my son, I said, "But my son, on the other hand, actually needs that to focus because he is autistic, but he also has ADHD. So that helps focus so he knows where his [inaudible 00:21:31] is." So he absolutely needs it. I don't at the moment, but it was helping me. And so I kind of used that example to kind of make it more real like this, you might be helping people that you don't even realize you're helping and-
Bryan Dean: That's right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: ... students who may not be disabled but just prefer that way of learning. And there was another one who was a student who was not a student identified as being deaf, however, wanted captions. And I asked the professor and said, "I don't have accommodations, but can you enable the captions?" And I shared with the professor, "Here's why they're asking for that." I was like, "Captions help a lot of people, so people just prefer them." It could be an English as a second language student who just maybe that's how they're learning the language, maybe it's a situation, maybe I'm studying the middle of the night and don't want to wake somebody up and I'm listening to that.
Bryan Dean: Or I'm on the bus or whatever it may be.
Dr. Wendy Torres: [inaudible 00:22:24]. And then I get in and use myself. I say, for myself, I am as an English as a second language student, so that does help me. And sometimes some of my students, since we're talking about accents, Kelli, so for me, I needed the captions and a lot of my professors didn't use captions. I had to use my own tool to kind of just follow along with the captions because unfortunately my professors I guess were thinking, "Oh, you don't have an accommodation." So for my students, for my faculty and my research, it was really kind of showing them, don't wait till the students ask for an accommodation because if you just do it for everyone, you're going to reach people who may not even have an accommodation or need that request, but it's going to benefit them. I make the joke, "I've never heard anybody say it's too accessible."
Bryan Dean: Right. Yeah.
Dr. Wendy Torres: [inaudible 00:23:10] too accessible.
Bryan Dean: Exactly. Exactly.
Dr. Wendy Torres: There's too much things to reach people that's never been
Bryan Dean: Too many ways in. Sure.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Yeah, too many ways in, too many ways for me to access this information and actually show you what I know. How dare you?
Bryan Dean: Feel like I'm a part of it. There's too many ways for me to feel like I'm a part of this.
Dr. Wendy Torres: But that's where the change happened, but it happened organically with my participants because it wasn't me just telling them like I have them actually correct their documents and I explained this is who's being affected. I literally said this is who's being affected. But when I started it, I did like a little activity where I said, "Okay, let me know if you've ever had this situation." I use situations like, "Have you ever not been able to read your phone because of the light?" And they're like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Have you ever gone to an app and it didn't work or the links were too close together?" Right? And they were like, "Yeah." And so then I said, "Well, you know what? You experienced what we call a situational barrier." Because at that time, there was a barrier that was there that was preventing you from doing that. And they were like, "Oh, I never thought of it that way." Just kind of making them understand that there's a real connection when you make things accessible for one person, other people benefit, but that shouldn't be the reason we do it.
Shouldn't be like the argument because I think some people will be like, "Oh, we'll make it accessible so every benefits." Yeah, everyone benefits, but yes, but when you're making something accessible, you are targeting that person who may be excluded, but you're also getting the benefit of getting people who may not say something and it also helps them.
Bryan Dean: Right. It's like the residual.
Luis Perez: Yeah. And to your example about the images, we know that processing space can be challenging for a lot of people. And so when you put that information in another format, it helps everybody, especially those people that they don't have an identified disability but maybe their spatial processing is not as good as it could be. It needs to be supported, right, so that they can do just as well as everybody else. So I love that, but I'm going to put you on the spot because this is a question that comes up a lot. And you mentioned that we can score accessibility, right? There's tools that will scan a document or a website and give us a score. Can something be 100% accessible, Dr. Torres?
Dr. Wendy Torres: No.
Luis Perez: And why not?
Dr. Wendy Torres: Because there's really no such thing as 100% accessibility because technology is always changing. People's needs are always changing. So what works now may not work 10 years from now, and hopefully the technology evolves so that it's not the same. And so you mentioned your camera that has a screen reader. That was not something that was part of cameras. And now that is because that's an inclusive design. You get more customers because more people are going to buy your products when you're able to use it and navigate it and it's easier. But at the same time, that technology is going to change and someone else's needs might also change.
So when people talk about WCAG, which are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines where they say you have to be at this level, that's really the bare minimum that you can do. It's literally the floor, not the ceiling because there's always so much more that we could do to help somebody. There's always more that we could do to reach everyone in the room, but the reason those are important is we need to at least get to the minimum because so many websites aren't even there.
They have a very minimum of accessibility. And again, if we're thinking physical locations, that's literally I just have a ramp or something into a building. But there's so much more to accessibility than I just have a ramp. Does it have an elevator? Does it have braille where I can actually read where the offices are? Does it have a universal design space? There's so much more we can do. And the problem is like when we start focusing on those scores, then we see it as a grade, like, "Oh, I've got the score, I'm good to go. It's a one-time thing." It's not. It's always evolving. And especially with teaching, hopefully you're not teaching the same thing for 20 years the exact same way. Maybe if it's the same content, but hopefully something's changed in 20 years that you've got to change it up.
Luis Perez: Right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Students have changed. Since COVID, we've had a lot more long COVID that's kind of been present and a lot more disabilities that became more apparent like anxiety and depression and things like that because of what that isolation did. And so the nature of the audience has changed. Now people expect trainings to be virtual. When we do trainings, they'll ask, "Is it virtual?" None of my faculty ever asked for that prior to COVID.
Luis Perez: Right.
Bryan Dean: Right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: We always had face to face trainings. Now it's, "Can that be a virtual training?" Because now that's that space.
Bryan Dean: Yeah. We change our setting, we change our scenario and like you have to sit in-
Dr. Wendy Torres: [inaudible 00:27:42] possible, now we're like, "Well, why do we have to go backwards?"
Bryan Dean: Yeah. I love that. And I love this kind of like, it's this idea that you have to marinate in it, right? And actually, by you saying that nothing is 100% accessible, I have to be honest with you, that is a relief to me.
Dr. Wendy Torres: It should be.
Bryan Dean: As a person who doesn't always exist in the accessibility world but is trying to, that is a relief because I don't have to strive for the 100%. I know that I'm making progress towards, and then I know that there's this residual benefit that happens and then I start to tie that all into my story and then all of a sudden I understand now that not only am I an ally of accessibility, but I'm actually in this thing making it happen. I'm more than just a standby or a passenger on the ride. I'm actually helping drive it. And so I can live with that. I can do that.
Dr. Wendy Torres: [inaudible 00:28:34] my participants as well for my research, because when they started, again, they were compliance, really thinking compliance. So they're thinking, "Oh, I got to get a high score. I got to get a high score." And then I kept telling them, "Well, we're not chasing 100%." And I even told them, "The law doesn't even ask you to be at 100% because I just want you to see they you are doing progress over perfection, that you're not staying stagnant, that you are trying to make an effort, a good [inaudible 00:28:59] effort." Because you could do everything, right, and still have a student who says, "I need something else," because that's specific to that person's individual needs or it might be specific to the disabilities that they actually have, but you eliminate a lot of it when you kind of just assume everyone has variability in your course.
You're going to have people who have different needs and different varying ways that they like to engage with content. So you kind of eliminated this need of, "I'll wait for the accommodation." Because that's really what drove the change was too many people were being told you need to wait for this accommodation or you need to wait until it's accessible. Well, if I need it now, I can't afford to wait.
Bryan Dean: That's right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: If I'm a student and that's a textbook I need, I can't afford to wait for that. If this is a service that I need, maybe it's something I'm trying to purchase or something from my family, I can't afford to wait to meet because obviously I'm purchasing it for a reason. And so when we wait for somebody to say, "Oh, I need this or I have a complaint," you've already lost them by that point. They've already experienced frustration by this point. They're kind of already fed up. And it's really kind of too late at that point because they've already feel like they've had to do more just to get the same thing as everyone else. It really is a civil rights issue.
Luis Perez: And their engagement goes down, right, because we know that we try to practice universal design for learning. And we know that then when there are accessibility barriers and people have to work harder just to get to the same level of access as other people, then their engagement is not going to be as high. They're going to spend a lot more of their energy. But to your point about the scores, right, the metaphor that I use is you could have a stand-up comedy routine and you caption and say 96% of it is caption, and you're like, "Yay," but the 4% left out was the punchline. Right? So now you're missing out on the important information. So I love the focus on improvement and continuous growth over perfection because it is a standard, right, that we aim for, but it's really there to motivate us, right, to really push us to do more and more and get better and better.
Kelli Suding: That's right. And I think, as we say, accessibility is a journey. And so with Bryan's like, "I'm nervous. I'm trying. I'm not 100%." And I think when do you leaned in right out of the gate of the conversation when you were intentional by saying, "The barrier was not my learner, it was me." And so I feel like that's been driving you this whole time and in your research, right? And I think as we all are on our accessibility journey, as long as we keep that in the forefront thinking, "Okay, the barrier's not my learner. What changes do I need to make?" Right? We do the next right thing as we're trying to do making sure experiences are accessible. And so, and I see that in your research and I really liked how you approached your faculty within your research. And so I'm just thinking about, so you've done all this and you've had the faculty intentionally discover things that they didn't realize, right?
"Oh my gosh, this is supporting these learners and I had no idea." So I'm curious, where do you hope the impact is going to help your learners and the users in the real world? So even outside of the classroom. And I know you shared some examples about some learners you've worked with in your faculty, but can you share some very specific examples of how just designing for accessibility actually improves the experiences for our learners and users?
Dr. Wendy Torres: So yeah. So when you design for accessibility, it does improve for everyone. It just makes it better. So for example, one of the favorite quotes I had from... I think his name was Lawrence Anger, I'm going to butcher his name, but he basically said, "When you're designing content, who are you okay with excluding?" That's how he worded it. That's really powerful.
Kelli Suding: Powerful.
Bryan Dean: Yeah.
Dr. Wendy Torres: I was like, "Wow, that's one." But it made a point because when we are designing, when we're creating content or we're sharing information, there's a reason we're trying to reach an audience. And if it's not accessible, you're not reaching that audience. And so if you're thinking from a business point of view, what customers am I not reaching? What capital is not being given to me because they can't use this product, right? If you're thinking from a teaching point of view, what students are missing that material because it's not accessible, right? And so like real world examples.
Like I said, I use myself as an example with the tools that I use, just as somebody going back to school who had been in school for a while, it's different being an adult learner with grown children and other responsibilities and trying to navigate full-time experience with being a parent with schooling. I had to remind myself like, "Oh, I need to now things that used to be easy for me, I needed a little bit more help." And not because I couldn't do it, but it was because I honestly just didn't have the bandwidth like, "Okay, what can I do?" So I was using these tools for myself just to make things easier for me to navigate. So for example, one, my faculty ended up, because it's a doctoral program, they share a lot of articles, a lot of research articles. And all research articles are in PDFs and columns. I am too doggone old to reading columns anymore. And so I will literally... I found myself rereading the same thing over because my eyes just kept going that way.
And so I had to use a tool where it just converted it straight up to HTML just so I can read it up and down. So it was the same materials, but I was just changing it so I can get the information easier so that I could not concentrate so much on what is trying to remember what that message is. I can actually look at the information and do it instead of trying to fix the format because you waste time. That's the main thing.
When you're wasting time, you're exhausting energy that could be used for something else. So for example, when we talk about alt text, it's absolutely critical for somebody who's visually impaired or has blindness because they need to know if that information is important. So for example, if you send out an event and it's just a picture and there's nothing else, you're missing that, right? But what if it's something like, "Oh, class is canceled today," and you send out like a little flyer or something. Well, if I'm that blind student and I don't know that class was canceled, think about it, I have to take more time to get to campus, physically to get to campus. So that takes more time and effort just to find out it's been canceled. But then what if you ask somebody who maybe they're not disabled and they didn't check their email? They still spent time coming on campus and didn't get the message because it was an image and they thought it wasn't important. So those are two very real world examples that something small really can have a big effect.
Bryan Dean: Well, and I think that we see that all the time, right? It is you are able to focus on the more germane cognitive load, right? Like the thing that is looking for the mental [inaudible 00:35:53] to process information, to build schemas of learning, those sorts of things, right? That's the cognitive load that we're looking to put most of our effort into. But when I can't access it, whether it be because I'm having a hard time reading columns or I just am not seeing the picture, those extraneous cognitive loads or intrinsic cognitive loads that while those extraneous cognitive loads slow us down, right, and divert so much for our attention and then they become intrinsic cognitive loads that it's like, "What is wrong with me? What am I not doing right? How do I have to find my way around this?" And those external barriers then start to lead towards internal barriers when that was never the focus anyways, right? So I love how you frame that. I love how you frame that.
Kelli Suding: Yeah. Cognitive accessibility. Yes, I love that.
Dr. Wendy Torres: You're [inaudible 00:36:42] you're trying to reach people. If they're spending more time trying to access your website, they're going to go to another service because they don't have the time. They're telling them, "Oh, you don't value the power of my purse. I'm going to take my purse elsewhere." [inaudible 00:36:58]-
Luis Perez: And caregivers too, right?
Dr. Wendy Torres: ... it really is a driver.
Luis Perez: Yeah. And we often think of we're going to talk about a few misconceptions, right? But you already mentioned one, which is that, "Oh, I don't have those students in my class," right? Because you're focused on only the apparent disabilities or the apparent tools that you look for as indicators, right, that somebody has a disability as opposed to like those non-apparent disabilities, right? So that might be one that we've mentioned already. We also talked about like the fact that you can't have 100% accessibility as another one, but what are some other misconceptions? If you had to pick one or two that you still kind of hear a lot in your work with faculty and even with students, right, what are some misconceptions that you still hear?
Dr. Wendy Torres: I think the two main ones I honestly I hear that people, I think, they think the disabled population is small. It's not. It's over a billion strong. And then it's also this idea that making something accessible is hard. It's so time-consuming. It's going to be hard. Yes, there is some extra effort required, but when you make something accessible, like I tell my faculty, when you're make that content accessible, you're copying it over the next semester most likely. Most likely you're not remaking a whole course every semester. You might if you get a new brand new course, but that's not typically what happens. Typically, you're tweaking and changing some of the stuff-
Bryan Dean: Good point.
Dr. Wendy Torres: ... with the subject matter being the same, right? And so I tell them, "You've already made it accessible once." And so once it's made accessible, you're not recreating it, you're just going with the flow and updating as it goes along. Like I said, not 100% accessibility, right? I'm updating it, I'm making it new and fresher and different ways to reach my students.
So I think those are two of the main ones. And I think another one that I hear a lot, I think people, for some reason, think that disability is linear like, "Oh, you only have one." It's like, no, you have multiple disabilities and they're all different. It could be like, for example, my mother, she's got multiple disabilities. She's got seizure disorder, she's got glaucoma, she's got arthritis, she has a mobility aid, and those are all different disabilities. They can all co-insist together. And then this idea that disability isn't part of an identity, like I often hear people say, "Oh, you overcame the disability."
Bryan Dean: Right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: And I'll use my son. I'll be like, "No, he's still autistic." He doesn't magically just, poof, "I'm no longer autistic. It's part of who he is. It is part of his identity, but it's not everything about him. Yes, he's autistic, but he's also male, he's also Black, Hispanic, all parts of who he is who are that's important. And I think people need to understand that intersectionality exists and can coexist.
Bryan Dean: Yeah. And it leads to that medical model, right? That medical model of we're going to fix the disability, like we're going to diagnose this thing, we're going to fix this as opposed to there's this cultural and social model that exists that my identity is part of this and it's important to have that part of my identity because there are good things about it. I know it's hard to tell folk, and I've told folks on the podcast before, I've got a bit of a neurosparkle to me, you know what I mean? And I'll be honest with you, I don't think of it as a superpower, oftentimes it's problematic, but there are times where I really lean into that as part of my identity. In a crisis, yo, I've got a million things that I can help with, right? And so it becomes part of my... Whether good or bad, it stays within my identity and it's not something to diagnose and medicate away. It's something that is me.
Dr. Wendy Torres: And we can become disabled at any point in our lifetime. We could be [inaudible 00:40:41] disabled. We acquire disabilities later in life. We may have an injury, whatever happens, it's a way of being like it's not this terrible thing. I know for exactly with my son when he first got diagnosed, everybody treated it like it was this incredible tragedy and I'm like, "He's a child. It's not a tragedy." And if you ask him, he'll say, "I don't want to change who I am. This is part of who I am. This makes me unique." And I'm like, "You're absolutely right." When he was younger, he was asking like, "Why do people make such a big deal about me being autistic?" I said, "Oh, that's because sometimes people don't understand and they want you to act a certain way that they understand it." And he was maybe seven or eight and he goes, "Well, people are stupid. They need to change how they think." And I was like, "You know what? That's blunt but it's honest." [inaudible 00:41:24]-
Bryan Dean: I mean, yeah, true.
Dr. Wendy Torres: ... why. "Why are you wasting so much energy trying to change who I am when it's not bothering me and it is part of who I am?" So people need to understand that it's not linear, you can become disabled at the point in your lifetime. It happens and you don't stop living because you're disabled. I think people tend to be like, "Oh, if you have a disability, you're such an inspiration." But some of the things that they say were inspirational are things everybody does, like going to the grocery store.
Luis Perez: Yeah, you shouldn't be allotted for that. That should just be basics.
Dr. Wendy Torres: People do that like, "Oh-"
Luis Perez: I know.
Dr. Wendy Torres: "... you do this and you're so special." "Why? Because I'm buying food?" Everybody has those needs. Being disabled doesn't make you exception.
Luis Perez: Well, and if you put in accessibility, if you made it accessible, it wouldn't be a big deal.
Bryan Dean: Sure.
Luis Perez: It wouldn't even stand out.
Dr. Wendy Torres: If I know where my food is, I can get in, get out and not have to waste time trying to find it. And I think that's one of the biggest myths that they think that it's this separate thing or it is such a radical thing for somebody to be disabled and living. It's like, no. I mean, you don't stop living because you're disabled. Learn [inaudible 00:42:41] best you can with what you have and you move on, but the technology is the great equalizer that provides those tools to remove those barriers. But again, the barrier isn't the disability.
Luis Perez: That's the issue. And to your point, there's a saying in the disability community, you've met one autistic person, you've met one autistic person.
Dr. Wendy Torres: [inaudible 00:42:59]. Exactly.
Luis Perez: So remembering that each of us has a very unique identity that's shaped by experiences, by our bodies, by technology, by all of these things, right? And also the other saying from the disability community that I love is that we're all temporarily abled.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Exactly.
Luis Perez: At some point in our lives, we'll need these devices, we'll need these supports either because of age or injury or we may just prefer them, right? So I think that's important to keep in mind as we go forward.
Kelli Suding: Yeah. And at the same time, we have so many students, right? I work with a lot of students who maybe they've been maybe dyslexic, right? And so they will try to blend into the current culture because they feel like it's a problem and people are going to make fun of them. So the whole time, because their content's not been accessible to them, they have maybe behaviors, right? They're trying to fake it till they make it, and then it becomes this whole thing because they don't feel like that can be a part of their identity. And I think a big part of GAAD, just the awareness of it that we can't have those conversations. And I hope if you're listening, you're having conversations with your students or your faculty or anything like that, it really does come to accessibility. And just having those conversations that, again, it's not a superpower, it's just a part of who you are.
And so many students, I mean, the stats of student, the dropout rates, because learners with disabilities have been bullied, made fun of, they don't think they're smart, but we know lack of intelligence, I mean, yeah, lack of knowledge does not mean lack of intelligence, right? And so for students have not been able to gain this, they're all feeling that way. And it's the results of that just makes me weep.
Bryan Dean: And I think that's it. You can't wear a mask forever, right? You cannot wear a mask forever.
Kelli Suding: Nor should you have to.
Bryan Dean: Right. And if you are a competent individual but you exist in a world of consistency and that's the only thing you exist in and that's where your issue is, guess what, you'll never feel confident. And so you'll always have to try and wear that mask or whatever it may be, right? I'm particularly thinking about those hidden kind of disabilities or those hidden issues that we don't see, right? And then you'll feel like-
Dr. Wendy Torres: [inaudible 00:45:10].
Bryan Dean: ... you never [inaudible 00:45:11].
Dr. Wendy Torres: Think about it. If you look at the statistics, about 60 to 80% of students will never disclose that they have a disability because it's very private and personal and because we make this thing like, "Oh, you're disabled, that's a bad thing." No, it's not. It's okay. And so they won't disclose it. But think about it, Kelli, would you go up to a perfect stranger and just give them your entire medical history?
Kelli Suding: Right, correct.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Right? But that's what we're asking our students, particularly when they go into higher ed, before they can get accommodations, they have to present this whole proof, are you really disabled so that people can actually believe you that you're disabled? Why do they have to go through so many barriers just to get an accommodation and an accommodation so they can get the same information as everyone else? And again, that goes back to that medical thinking, "Oh, this is something we have to fix. There's something wrong."
Bryan Dean: It's diagnosable.
Dr. Wendy Torres: The students try to mask it and pretend and don't ask for help because they don't want to be made fun of. They don't want people to know that they may learn differently, but that doesn't mean it's a bad thing. And so I think that's one of the things that makes me sad as well, but that's why we fight to make it and let people know because there's always somebody else until you're that person. That somebody else's kid or somebody else's issue until it becomes your issue or it affects somebody you love and then you change your perspective. And I understand that because again, I'm very transparent with my story, but it shouldn't take that. I should have been thinking about Antonio before that.
Bryan Dean: But that does bring us back to this idea though, Wendy, of brass tacks, right? I understand accessibility, UDL, like access, those things are journeys and you have to marinate in them, and I absolutely 100% stand behind that, but I've also been a teacher, right, that walks in and I'm facing 30 students or I'm facing 115 students a day. Right. And so that can sometimes be like, "Yeah, that's cool, but it's a little abstract for me." So just based on your research and based on your extensive knowledge, I'm just going to ask, what are the low floor, high ceilings changes a teacher can make that is like big impact that they can design for tomorrow that can give them at least some immediate data on their learner variability, if not just change some of their practices for learners' variability?
Dr. Wendy Torres: So we're going to go real low tech here, assuming-
Bryan Dean: Right on.
Dr. Wendy Torres: ... they don't have any technology or technology resources available within that education space, typically teachers tend to do something where they're asking their students how they learn. They're trying to gauge your understanding. So just even if it's like an exit ticket, instead of one general exit ticket, everybody has the same prompt, you ask them, "Okay, how are you going to show me what you learned or understood?" And then give them different options. Okay. You can write it if you want it. You can have a video if you prefer that, you can draw it because that's really low level. You're not asking them, "Is it a right or wrong answer?" You're literally asking them, "What did you understand? What didn't you understand?" But you're given the freedom to pick how to express it and you're going to learn a lot about your students just looking at that because-
Bryan Dean: I love that.
Dr. Wendy Torres: ... [inaudible 00:48:24] student who can't write physically, right, maybe the physical act of writing is hard, but you give them speech to text, "Oh, I can type this all day." Or you may have that student who is extremely artistic, but when you ask them to express it, they can't really express it verbally, but you give them something to draw, they can explain it that way. Again, simply like with my son, if you asked him when he was younger to physically write, you would get one sentence. And it wasn't because he didn't understand it. He also has a dysgraphia, so his handwriting looks like a young person learning how to write. When I gave a piece of text, my God, he was giving me novels because it wasn't he didn't know it, it was because he was exhausted from having the energy of having to [inaudible 00:49:02]-
Bryan Dean: Yeah, it didn't have to stand his way.
Dr. Wendy Torres: ... and everything else. Whereas I gave him that freedom. I said, "Okay, just tell me what you learned. Don't worry about spelling. Don't worry about punctuation. We'll take care of that later. Just what are you thinking?" Oh, he was telling me everything because you changed the way, so you changed not the child, you changed the environment. Okay, well that didn't work and that's a real easy thing you can do right now like [inaudible 00:49:24].
Bryan Dean: I have to say there's something more complex going on in there that I really admire, right? Like your original phrasing, Wendy, was, how are you going to show me what you know? There is a permission set, an unspoken permission set that students already have, right? They just don't realize they have it, right, that is granted within that, right? It is the question of how are you going to take ownership of this and show me what you know. For that teacher that worries about culpability and that teacher that worries about responsibility, there is an inherent responsibility in that, but there is just this huge amount of freedom to say, "Wait a minute, you're going to leave it to me. You're going to give me the autonomy of task or technique to show that I know this. That's a huge acceptance piece and that's a huge empowerment piece and it's just a slight phrasing. I love that. I think that is just masterful actually in its questioning.
Dr. Wendy Torres: That's the super low tech way you can do it because maybe it's a skit. maybe that student, maybe they're very good at reading and writing, but you give them a skit, they can act it out and they can show you because at the end of the day, when you're teaching, you want them to understand the concept. And so how did you get to this point, right?
Bryan Dean: And I'm going to let you show, I'm going to let you instead of telling you.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Show you got there but not necessarily my steps. [inaudible 00:50:44].
Bryan Dean: And then there's scaffolding within that, right? There's pieces of scaffolding.
Dr. Wendy Torres: [inaudible 00:50:47] true. And it was an interesting drawing. He had arrows going everywhere, but it made sense to him.
Bryan Dean: Sure.
Dr. Wendy Torres: But for him, he was like, "Oh, this is how I got here." And it made perfect sense when he explained the drawing. But if I asked him to type what he wrote or use the specific steps, everybody has to do the same steps, I would lose him.
Bryan Dean: Yeah, that's exactly me. I see everything in schematics and I see everything in drawings and I'm sure my co-hosts know that, which makes it hard to communicate, but if I can explain it, like I can show you a model, and that's how I see the world. And so it's really beautiful to be able to be given that permission to be able to draw you the diagram or the model I see and then explain it out.
Kelli Suding: Yeah. I hear you, Wendy-
Bryan Dean: I love that.
Kelli Suding: ... saying what's the goal and how are we going to get there.
Bryan Dean: Absolutely.
Kelli Suding: We're going to get there differently.
Bryan Dean: Absolutely.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Pretty much. I mean, that's what we're doing for teaching, right? We're teaching them something for a reason. And when we give assignments, the whole point is to see what they've mastered. But if you only have one way of showing them, "Oh, everybody has to do an essay," you're only going to get those students who are really good writers to show you what they know. What about the students who struggle with writing? If you give them a different way, they're blowing you away with what they can do.
Kelli Suding: Got that right. This has been such a great conversation as we wrap up here. I don't want to stop.
Bryan Dean: It's another one. It's another one that's on fire. It's another barn burner, baby.
Kelli Suding: I know. So we want to be able to continue the conversation, have people know how to follow your work, Dr. Wendy. So how can people follow you? And we'll put all of your resources and all the things in the show notes.
Dr. Wendy Torres: So I'm active on LinkedIn. I share a lot of my resources. I have my websites on there. I'm also on Bluesky. You guys can also share out my email if you want and I'm happy to share as Kelli would say, I'm not stingy with sharing the resources. I feel like when we're educators, it's the best compliments. I'm going to steal that or I'm going to borrow that and just not give them back. That's what we do as teachers. We borrow, we just don't give back. But I feel like this isn't meant to be in a bubble. So I do look at the different accessibility tools and I look at different websites and I look at it from the perspective of a teacher and a student. And so I give resources for teachers and faculty and all that.
Bryan Dean: That's right.
Dr. Wendy Torres: I'm happy to come to places. I do virtual ones as well because sharing is knowledge and accessibility is a journey and we're all on it. So why are we being stingy with it?
Kelli Suding: Love it.
Bryan Dean: They used to have that saying, like Simon Sinek had that saying, "steal like an artist," right? I think that we need to start giving it away like a teacher. Give it away like an educator.
Kelli Suding: That's right. We're better together. Dr. Wendy Torres. Did I do it right?
Luis Perez: Good job.
Bryan Dean: Come on now, Kelli. Come on now.
Kelli Suding: All right. We're going to leave on that. So thank you so much. You have been a joy and thanks for all the work you're doing.
Dr. Wendy Torres: Thank you. Have a great one. Take care.
Bryan Dean: As always, peace, love and belly rubs y'all.
Luis Perez: Take care everybody.
Kelli Suding: Thanks for joining us for another episode of The Learning Experience Podcast. We are so glad you're part of this conversation.
Bryan Dean: And if you're like me and today's episode sparked some ideas or got your brain flowing, just remember there's so much more to explore out there.
Luis Perez: And remember that CAST is leading the way when it comes to accessibility, workforce innovation, professional development, and research.
Kelli Suding: So visit cast.org to dive deeper, that's C-A-S-T dot O-R-G and keep learning with us.
S.05, Ep.09: From Awareness to Action: Advancing Accessibility for Everyone