Education Technology Must Be Accessible For All Students

• By Martin McKay
• 06/29/21

We’ve seen the use of education technology become more prevalent this past year. We’ve also seen an additional disruption in education as COVID-19 impacted student achievement, particularly in diverse student populations with accessibility needs. Aside from the overarching challenges of learning from home, the nation’s nearly 7 million students with disabilities had additional obstacles to overcome during the pandemic. For these students, the move to Zoom wasn’t a fixall solution for remote learning.

We should applaud the schools and teachers that rapidly adopted ed tech tools to support remote teaching and learning. However, at the same time, we cannot forget that education technology and accessibility aren’t mutually exclusive. We have the opportunity — and the obligation — to make tools supportive of learning inside and outside the classroom, for everyone.

Mathematics is one subject area for which the pandemic created a spotlight need for more accessible, digital, and personalized learning. Historically, the teaching and practice of math has been a paper-based exercise. During the pandemic, math went online, and teachers more than ever realized the widespread benefits to creating digital math. These benefits included accessibility for those who struggled to use traditional instructional materials or who needed certain accommodations, such as text-to-speech or speech-to-text.

In addition, digital math tools developed on the foundations of personalized learning and Universal Design for Learning have given students choice and have allowed them to play to their strengths. Students can now choose to listen to their math lessons and respond either by typing, hand-writing, or dictating their responses. This not only helps diverse learners and those with vision impairments, but also provides multiple means of expression for visual or auditory learners. Accessibility and personalization within these tools has made math increasingly accessible for students of widespread abilities.

I believe that in years to come we will continue to see the use of education tools and technology rise across the curriculum. Even more, tools will increasingly be designed to make learning accessible across student populations, environments, and subjects, while taking into account learners of all abilities.

After working in the education space for over two decades, I believe we need to challenge education technology providers to build accessible solutions for everyone. Being inclusive — inside and outside the classroom — makes our communities and world stronger.

Each year, and this year is no different, my goal is to continue to increase the appreciation of what technology can do for learning and understanding. I have witnessed first-hand the joy of understanding what had been previously inaccessible. It’s worth the effort on everyone’s part.

Martin McKay is the founder and CEO of Texthelp, a leading technology company focused on helping all people learn, understand, and communicate through the use of digital education and accessibility tools.