February 10, 2025, by Ben Atkinson
Broader Benefits of Teaching Accessibility to Students
In this guest post from the School of Psychology, Prof. Alexa Spence and Dr. Olivia Jewell discuss the benefits of teaching students about digital accessibility good practice. At the end of the post they share some of the work completed by the students.
Accessibility is a real-world need for communicating research effectively. Current Issues in Psychology: Debates and Applications is a new third-year Psychology module that is part of a recent focus in Psychology of taking a more applied focus to teaching social psychology. The hope is that this helps to prepare students for a real-world work environment, where they need to be able to use what they have learnt at university. As part of this module, students are required to translate their independent research to a non-academic audience using a poster and this has culminated in the teaching staff – accidentally – venturing into the realms of teaching accessibility.
This is a relatively novel assessment type which takes student feedback into account by being part of a diverse range of assessment types where students can illustrate their knowledge and critical thinking. It has also proved quite difficult for students however as most of them have not created a poster before.
When the module first ran in the Autumn semester of 2023, a lecture was given on poster creation and language use to help give the students some ideas for how to put the poster together, including some guidance on accessibility. However, students still seemed to struggle with formatting the poster, including only the information required (many seemed like essays cut and pasted into a poster format), and presenting the content to a lay audience.
For the Autumn 2024 iteration of the module, the convenor reached out to the psychology department’s Digital Accessibility Officer for advice on accessibility guidelines to give to students when they put the posters together. A one-page tip sheet was developed giving students guidance on what to do and what to avoid when making the posters. The accessibility principles focused on in the tip sheet included information about colour contrast, simple layouts, readable font sizes, concise writing, and using formatting intuitively to guide the reader through the poster. Accessibility was also incorporated explicitly into the marking rubric for the poster assessment.
The result was that the posters submitted in Autumn 2024 had improved from those submitted in 2023. The faculty who marked the posters commented that this year’s submissions were of higher quality in comparison with the previous year. There were fewer posters with poor colour-contrast, blocks of text, or unclear formatting. Additionally, there were fewer student questions about the posters as they completed the assignment (popular with the teaching team). It appears that making the posters more accessible also made them better quality overall.
This illustrates the dual purpose of teaching and emphasizing digital accessibility. Digital accessibility is not just about considering the needs of those who are differently abled (though this is important), the results of applying these principles can make life easier for all. This example also shows the importance of developing, and keeping up to date with, digital skills for our students to prepare them for a world in which technology is rapidly changing. Knowing how to adapt to these changes is essential for entering the workforce in a variety of fields and our assessment styles should reflect this.
Many students are unfamiliar with the term “Digital Accessibility” and other than those who use tools to help them navigate the world online, many may not know what the term means or how to apply it. By incorporating accessibility into curriculum, especially as the psychology department focuses more on application of knowledge and communication of ideas to different audiences, it is possible to expand student skills for when they enter the job market.
Below are examples of two top-scoring posters from last year:
Current Issues Poster – L Kimber
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