Don’t spin your wheels in place: Use AI to accelerate accessibility tasks

Handouts Media

Scheduled at 9:00 am in Penrose 1 on Thursday, November 14.

Speaker(s)

• Laura Jervis, Instructional Designer, University of Florida
• Stephanie Richardson, Instructional Designer, University of Florida

Session Details

• Length of Session: 1-hr
• Format: Lecture
• Expertise Level: All Levels
• Type of session: General Conference

Summary

Accessible course design is like Mario Kart: you’re speeding through it, trying to hit a moving target, and worried about falling behind. As every player knows, haphazardly flinging green shells may not work, but carefully targeting your red shells helps you make progress. A true expert can systematically utilize their blue shells to reach the top of the leader board. Join us to learn how instructional designers and instructors can accelerate accessible course design with a three-shell approach.

Abstract

Instructional designers play a key role in promoting effective use of Artificial Intelligence in creating accessible courses. Since AI can improve efficiency, it is imperative to educate instructors and use it to foster buy-in instead of to cut corners. We use the popular video game Mario Kart to provide an analogy on different strategies instructional designers can promote to their instructors. These strategies must also account for stakeholder familiarity and comfort with both AI and accessibility. In Mario Kart, players can throw green shells that must be specifically aimed at another player to give themselves an advantage, red shells that automatically target the next player, and blue shells that automatically target the player in first place and the players surrounding them. We have mapped these shells to differentiate methods of strategizing the use of AI in accessibility within course design. A green shell approach makes small changes sporadically, such as using AI to remediate a single document that one student could not access. A red shell approach is more targeted, but it is on a limited scope or is reactionary in nature, such as using an AI-enabled alternative text generator to quickly improve the accessibility of this week’s lecture slides. A blue shell strategy requires identifying opportunities for systematic high-impact influences. These strategies are big picture, well-structured, and may encompass some of the same practices of the other strategies but in a more intentional implementation. Regardless of which tactic fits your situation, instructional designers should always coach instructors to critically analyze output generated by AI. We hope you will join us on our journey to improving accessibility one shell at a time.

Keypoints

1. Instructional designer can help set the tone for how instructors approach AI and accessibility.
2. AI can make accessibility tasks more efficient which can help instructor buy-in.
3. Content creators must evaluate AI generated output carefully before adopting created materials.

Disability Areas

All Areas

Topic Areas

Accessible Course Design, Artificial Intelligence, Faculty Development & Support, Uncategorized

Speaker Bio(s)

Laura Jervis

Laura Jervis has a bachelor’s of science in journalism and a master’s in bilingual/bicultural education from the University of Florida. Before finding instructional design, she taught academic English to post-secondary language learners. Now she applies her teaching experience and her passion for equity and inclusion to the work she does to support UF faculty.

Stephanie Richardson

Stephanie Richardson has a bachelor's of science in sports management and a master's in ESOL/bilingual education. She has worked within Information Technology at the University of Florida since 2014 in education technology and is currently an instructional designer with the UFIT Center for Instructional Technology and Training. She loves to teach and help faculty and staff within the higher education community how accessibility impacts everyone at all stages of life.

Handout(s)

• Don\'t spin your wheels in place