323 | Digital Learning for Students with Disabilities

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed a number of obstacles that students with disabilities face when accessing material online and participating in virtual courses. The shift to an almost to fully virtual format has made it challenging for students who relied on accessibility services on campus, and their ability to converse with fellow students and professors in person to overcome certain issues regarding navigating courses. Occupational Science PhD student Elizabeth Mohler is working on a way to get the word out and bring these issues to light. She has been reached out by Accessible Media Inc. (a not for profit media company the empowers and entertains Canadians who are blind or partially sighted) to help create a documentary discussing what accessibility education during the COVID-19 pandemic has looked like since early 2020. Elizabeth talks about what institutions have implemented in its education system to help ensure students with disabilities are not put at a disadvantage during the pandemic, and to ensure we retain protocols and structures that have helped students in the education system and not revert back to a pre-pandemic system. In this episode, hosts Liam Clifford and Gavin Tolometti find out how an able-body student can provide support for students disabilities in virtual and in-person classes, and how we need to be more aware that education should be accessible for everyone.

The documentary will be live on May 28th at 8 pm EDT on channel 888 for Rogers and 48 for Bell. Alternatively, you can watch the documentary on the Accessible Media Inc website.

To learn more about Elizabeth's work you can find her on Twitter @mohlerc.

Full video available on YouTube

Recorded on April 20, 2021

Produced by Gavin Tolometti

Theme song provided by https://freebeats.io/ Produced by White Hot