This article was written and Published by Brandi Vesco— October 15th, 2024
Elizabeth Barker, an accessibility manager at Khan Academy, shares her insights on how ed-tech developers can make their tools user-friendly for everyone, including the need for field testing, observation and feedback.
It was 2007, and Elizabeth Barker was working for an academic assessment company when a teacher with muscular dystrophy reported a problem: He was unable to use his voice command system to access the company’s assessment program. Barker, a former special education teacher, said working to help solve that problem “was what took me down the digital accessibility route.”
With a master’s in special education and a doctorate in educational methodology, Barker served for more than 15 years as an accessibility research scientist at the nonprofit Northwest Evaluation Association, which develops widely used computerized tests called Measures of Academic Progress (MAP). Barker — now an accessibility manager at Khan Academy — said the job gave her a detailed view of the barriers people with disabilities face when using educational technology.
For example, when Barker was told in 2008 that blind students in Arizona were using the computerized MAP assessment rather than a paper version with Braille, she decided to fly down to the school to observe. It would be her first time seeing refreshable Braille displays in action.
“We went down for a two-day learning excursion with the Arizona School for the Blind, watching them take our assessment,” Barker said. “That really set me off on, ‘OK, there are so many things we need to do,’ and it went from there.”
Barker witnessed the importance of a smooth connection between a disabled person’s assistive technology — the teacher’s voice command system, the blind students’ Braille displays — and the educational technology. Such firsthand insights are crucial, she said, when it comes to creating ed-tech tools that are truly accessible.
Using blind students as an example, Barker pointed out that they may be using Nemeth Braille or Unified English Braille, the VoiceOver screen reader on a Mac or the JAWS screen reader on a PC, and different kinds of refreshable Braille displays. In order to be accessible to blind students, an ed-tech tool would have to be designed to work with all of the above.
On top of these variations, Barker said developers must also consider that younger students may be learning how to use their assistive devices at the same time they’re learning Braille. Such inexperience will affect the way they interact with any ed-tech tool.
“You need insight from the students who are learning along as they go,” Barker said. “I think that piece is missing in terms of development for ed tech, especially in the K-12 arena.”
Field testing an ed-tech tool with its target audience, which in this case would be students with disabilities and the teachers who instruct them, is what some experts have referred to as the critical “last mile” that is often missing from the cycle of product development. Barker said a proactive approach is necessary for ed-tech vendors to deliver consistently accessible ed-tech tools, requiring them to find classroom venues for observation, feedback and field testing among disabled students and their teachers.
“It’s just a matter of prioritization from the organization or the company to allow that to happen and figure out a system,” she said. “Developers are usually underneath a layer within the ed-tech organizations, so it’s typically their supervisors and bosses realizing that it’d be beneficial for them to see this firsthand.”
