Last week we launched the UCEM Accessibility Awareness Course. Read more about the UCEM Accessibility Awareness Course.
Today I am introducing the first section of the course: How we view disability. There are two activities in this section. The first one, “Everyone is different” introduces visible and invisible disabilities and uses the brilliant video Experiences of Students with Disabilities. I have used this video in many of my presentations and I think WebAIM has done a great job to capture and share web and accessibility experiences of students with disabilities. I am so grateful that they allowed me to use this video (with attribution of course). This is the introduction to this section where participants are required to think about the various challenges our students may face engaging with a fully online course.
The second activity is “Disability using different lenses”. Here we look at some conceptual models of disability: the medical model of disability and the social model of disability. I remember many years ago when I came across the concept of the social model of disability, I thought why didn’t I think of disability this way before? why is it that we look at disability as a deficiency?
I came across this “Alternative Disability Icon” today and thought this will be a good image to use in the blog today.
You can download the Alternative Disability Icon from Disability Positive website.
In my next post I will talk about the second section of the course Assistive Technologies

I am a Learning Technology Researcher and the Chair of the Online Learning Research Centre at the University College of Estate Management. My principle research interests lie in the area of social implications of information and communication technologies, especially eLearning.