A4E

Accessibility4Equity: Cripping Technology-Mediated Compulsory Education through Sociotechnical Praxis

The Accessibility4Equity figure features four nested concentric circles, which create a small center circle surrounded by three rings. The center circle is labeled disabled youth. Moving out from the center circle, the inner ring is divided into three congruent segments. The first segment, born accessible, reads WCAG, legal requirements, and UDL. The second segment, individualized, reads access intimacy and swiftly responsive. The third segment, cripped, reads disability-led, transformative work, examining abled power. The medial ring features the labels reflection and action positioned across the ring from one another with two-way arrows connecting them. The dashed outer ring is labeled compulsory education. Below the nested circles, is an arrow labeled equity.

Abstract

During COVID-19, technology has frequently mediated schools’ emergency remote learning. Tragically, many of those technologies, despite legal requirements to the contrary, are inaccessible to disabled youth—a pattern of oppression within compulsory education that predates the pandemic by almost two decades and is rooted in ableism. In this paper, I advance a new inter- disciplinary framework—Accessibility4Equity (A4E)— that integrates existing single-discipline theories to explain the messy interactions among human and non-human actors engaged in learning that is equitable and accessible to disabled youth within the context of compulsory education. A4E asserts that equitable technology-mediated education is (1) constructed by educators and disabled people collaboratively cripping discourse and practice through sociotechnical praxis, (2) born technologically and pedagogically accessible; and (3) requires institutions to have the capacity to cultivate access intimacy and swiftly respond to individual needs. Hence, A4E is a framework that scholars and practitioners can use to begin the complex social change that is required to disrupt the unjust status quo and reimagine technology-mediated compulsory education as a place that values and is hospitable to disabled youth.

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