On November 30, 2021, Dr. Lynn Rose, CGDS Director of Disability Studies, attended a webinar on university accessibility, hosted by the American University in Cairo. “Methods for Inclusivity: Accessibility and Appeals” was led by Kate Sonka, Executive Director of Teach Access, a non-profit focused on infusing accessibility into the higher education curriculum. In exploring how accessibility exists in professional and academic spaces, Ms. Sonka helped establish the Teach Access Study Away Silicon Valley program, implement the Teach Access Faculty Curriculum Development Grant program, and she founded the Accessible Learning Conference at Michigan State University. In this webinar, she stressed the importance of the need for multi-modal appeals to faculty, students, and practitioners to implement accessible teaching practices. This talk explored an interdisciplinary approach to coalition building centered on six methods for encouraging adoption of accessible practices: student success, social justice, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), community impact, legal, and business.
Image: This is a screenshot. The main screen shows four rows of three stick figures in each row, with the labels Touch, See, Hear, and Speak to the left. The words Permanent, Temporary, and Situational are on the top of the diagram. The inset photo shows a woman with dark hair speaking, with the words Kate Sonka, she/her displayed in the bottom left corner.