Ixchell Reyes
The DIESOL podcast

Brent Warner
Developing Innovation in English as a Second or Other Language,

Ixchell Reyes
Episode 73: Accessibility in TESOL

Brent Warner
Welcome to DIESOL, This is episode 73. We are your hosts. I’m Brent Warner.

Ixchell Reyes
And I’m Ixchell Reyes. Hello November!

Brent Warner
Hey, we’re here starting to get cold too

Ixchell Reyes
It is! it’s chilly and windy. And by chilly. I mean it’s a it’s a frosty 70 degrees. (laughter)

Brent Warner
Yeah. I mean, we can’t really complain about cold in Southern California either, but it’s it’s a bit colder than that.

Ixchell Reyes
But hey, next week, next Saturday, it’s projected to be 58. So…

Brent Warner
While our listeners in Minnesota are like…

Ixchell Reyes
or Canada,

Brent Warner
They’re just throwing screens.

Ixchell Reyes
They already have snow in Canada. That’s not winter.

Brent Warner
So yeah, here we are. Everything going okay?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, I was recently at TED X. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The the topic was resiliency. So it’s very useful. I got a lot out of it. Cool. That you survived the serial killer.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So the the Fall CUE was, I mean, it’s not a beautiful city to be sure up in Stockton, but I did survive. And the school where it was at the San Joaquin Teachers College up there was a gorgeous, what a gorgeous building such as so beautifully laid out. So I’m all inspired. I’m trying to steal their designs and trying to we’re doing building designs on our campus for you know, upcoming projects. It’ll be years away. But I’m trying to influence some of those conversations around like, pedagogical building and those types of things as well. So we had a fun time. I went through with Ryan and Brian from Check This Out. We went through a haunted carwash for halloween (laughter)

Ixchell Reyes
I heard about those a couple of friends were telling me like and so so you got your carwash and you got your scare in?

Brent Warner
Got scares, and they were like, they’re like pulling open the door. One of them jumped in the car with us. And like it was pretty good, but like, and then you get a free car wash out of it at the end. And some of the money went to charity too. So I was like, that’s cool. So I like that nice little thing. But anyways, yeah, so here we are in November. And Ixchell you brought up today’s topic. So let’s jump over and get into things you want me to say jump into it.

Ixchell Reyes
All right, today we’re talking about accessibility. It the topic really stemmed from a student I had when I first started teaching, and she had a vision problem. So we had to make the tests we had to enlarge the text for her when it came to tests. So the definition from North Carolina State University says accessible means a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner. With substantially equivalent ease of use, the person with a disability must be able to obtain the information as fully, equally and independently as a person without a disability. And this is it. This is exactly what I was thinking about.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So I had a student that was similar to yours, Ixchell with the you know, she really needed massive zooming in on the screen. So like we were in a computer lab. And it was like it was it was almost like to me it was like whoa, like, you know, like I hadn’t ever considered that much need because she was on a like a 15 inch monitor. And she was she got our accessibility specialist to come in and help us and everything but but she was zoomed in where it was like three words across an entire 15 inch screen like it was just full massive zoom and she was still like, putting her face up to the screen pretty close to be able to see. So she had some pretty, pretty serious vision issues, you know, like just barely being able to get through it all. And so that was One of the first times that I had like a, at least an awareness that like, Okay, I see what’s, what’s going on here. And absolutely how we need to help this person, I wanted to point out a few things around accessibility, just kind of the conversations that we have. Because I think, especially in tea soul, this is, once again, late to the party and late to the conversation. But you know, our field in general has not mentioned it very much. But I think a lot of and this includes me too. So I’m not, I’m not singling anybody out. But there are frustrations with accessibility because of the work that goes into making sure documents and online resources and whatever else it is, is accessible, does seem like a barrier to entry to a lot of teachers. And what I mean by that is like, Okay, I’m gonna go do a bunch of work, I’m going to make sure that all of these images are all tagged and whatever else it is, and then and, and then maybe people will look at it, and maybe they won’t, right. And the majority of my students might not, I understand that’s problematic view from my, from my perspective, or from any, any other teachers perspective. So don’t get me wrong. And in saying like, Oh, I don’t, I’m not going to do this, or I don’t want to do this. I’m just saying like, when I first started kind of learning about accessibility and trying to understand it, those were some of my objections, or some of my issues and same things that I’ve heard from other people where they’re like, like, How much work do we have to do for zero, potentially zero purpose if we don’t have that student? Right. I don’t know if you’ve ever had other people kind of bring these issues up for you. But that’s one that has has been a major barrier to getting accessibility to work across a lot of, you know, online classes or, or digital resources for students, etc.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, I can only think of back to that one student where my mind went to Oh, yeah, of course, we’ve got like this whole set of things we can do for you. And when I mentioned it, to one of our administrators at the time, and again, that was brand new. So you know, I was thinking, I was gonna get full support. And it was more of like, well, no, no, don’t mention it. We’ll just enlarge assess for her. And if she asks again, then we can talk about it. But otherwise, it’s a lot of paperwork. So at the time, I just thought like, wait a minute, wait a minute vote. You know, so I, I can see, I can see that. The frustration? And I guess that’s that’s just one of the things that is worth mentioning. Yeah. As we are right now.

Brent Warner
Well, I also think it’s, it’s over the last few years, especially, it’s gotten so much easier to use tech to become accessible, right? Yes, like, so like, now it’s getting to the point where it’s kind of click button for a lot of things. And a lot of, you know, like, whether it be and accessibility has so many different parts to it, right? Like, there’s vision, there’s hearing, there’s all sorts of things, even like the amount of screen contrast, like between the letters and the in the background, like it’s, if you have

Ixchell Reyes
a way to shape the style of the font for some, in some cases,

Brent Warner
yeah. So there, there are now a lot of plugins and things that you can do just to kind of do a quick sweep and make sure that you’re basically okay with everything, and then some of them, and we’ll talk about them a little bit later, you can just click a button, and it will automatically make the changes for you. So like the, the, you know, if you’re saying, hey, this font is bad, not a good choice, it will just go and convert it to an accessible font or something like that, as well. One other problem that I have with accessibility, though, Ixchell is the word itself accessibility, because it’s it because sometimes you’re just talking about being able to get access to something, right? Not the whole, like legal compliance side of things, but you’re just trying to say like, Hey, is this is this accessible? Meaning can I get into it? Or can I can I use it somehow. And sometimes we end up having kind of confusing conversations with people and we’re like, oh, wait a second. We’re, we’re using Yeah, different meanings of the same word or term or like, you know, kind of semi semi parallel ish, but not the same thing. Right. And so, so that can also create some, some frustration and confusion. But I do think that overall when we’re talking about this, and and this, you know, when when I get in, like as soon as the legal talk starts happening, my brain kind of shuts off. Like, okay, like, let’s just figure it out. Right. But I do think it is a something that does help everybody at the end of the day, right? So we’re starting to recognize these things and saying, Hey, that there are some ways to make the These things work. And the last little issue that I sometimes have as a as a Teasle teacher, right is there are some times when I don’t want all text or I don’t want, you know, alternately like descriptive text or anything like that on a picture, because I’m trying to get the students to describe that picture for themselves. And so I don’t want them like if they’re, if they’re right clicking on the picture to go, oh, well, now I just know what it says. And you know, so if it’s something like that, where it’s like, hey, the picture is kind of the prompt, and the goal is for you to make your own language around it. But if I’m providing the background language to that in there, then I’m not able to assess your ability to, you know what I mean? So like, so there’s a weird little, there are these weird little points inside of accessibility and T Sol that like, I don’t know how to describe them. They’re not exceptions, but they’re like, Oh, okay. Is there a solution to this particular way that I’m trying to approach it? And sometimes I find that tricky, or I don’t always have the answer to it. Or maybe the tech just doesn’t exist to kind of do exactly what I’m trying to do. And so those can be parts of things that are good, bad in between, tricky about,

Ixchell Reyes
express need more development, as he said, development.

Brent Warner
It’s all coming. And it’s good. Like we said, it’s getting better. We’ll talk about quite a few of them as we as we move forward. Let’s, let’s skip over and talk about some ways that we can actually ensure some accessibility so Ixchell before we jump over there, it hasn’t been a while. We’ve mentioned this before. We haven’t gotten any reviews in a while. But we did. I did find this. I don’t know if this is legit or not. We’ve had a couple of these before. But there’s a blog post that came up it was a little got a little indication 15 Best ESL teacher podcasts. And guess what number we are we well, first surprise, we made the list? Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes
Well, we’re not number one, yet.

Brent Warner
We’re not number one.

Ixchell Reyes
We’re not number two, because that’d be hard to top.

Brent Warner
So number two is Carol salva, we lucked out on the show a friend and colleague, colleague, friend of the pod, all that stuff. So she is number two. And we are number three, that’s pretty cool. I’m excited. That’s nice that like, you know, if someone comes across this, but one of the things about these types of posts is I’m never sure if they’re just like, scraped and automated from something and like, how are they choosing those numbers that might be based on like Facebook likes, it kind of seems like possibly, I’m not sure, or different things. But it still is kind of nice to be up there on that list. And it does seem like it’s somewhat customized language around what we’re doing. So

Ixchell Reyes
at least if you do stumble upon that you’re gonna get 15 relevant podcasts suggestion. So.

Brent Warner
And I saw, there’s actually a lot on there a couple of things that I haven’t heard, as we’ve we’ve mentioned before, sometimes, you know, podcasts fade away over time. And that does happen. We’ve been pretty consistent, but But it’s nice to see a couple of other choices on there. And I haven’t even heard this number one, which is called Let’s Talk TEFL out of

Ixchell Reyes
Canada. Nice. So something to check out.

Brent Warner
But it is Jackie Bolin, whose name I don’t know, she she does a lot of you’ll find a lot of her books on Amazon and stuff. So I’m actually going to download that and check it out. Cool. All right.

Ixchell Reyes
All right. So, um, considerations, from guidelines for accessibility for English language learners. That’s the article that you found right? Front? Yeah,

Brent Warner
it’s a little bit older article, but it was when I was reading it. I was like, Oh, this thing is 10 years old is from 2012. But

Ixchell Reyes
oh, this is the same article I found. Like a little older, but still relevant.

Brent Warner
It’s super good. It’s not really any independent tech related. And so and I also point out that I think that some of the language around this accessibility is doing that same thing we were talking about is like conflating like, technically legal accessibility versus making things easy to access for students, right. And so I think it’s kind of blending both of these things, but that’s still fine. Like it’s still the conversation that we want to have and make sure that our students are able to understand directions that we give to them information, all of those types of things. So I think we should kind of go through this list. And the other cool thing I liked about this, this list in this collection is that they did all the work that we normally do, like finding 20 different research resources and putting them all together, and then summarizing them. So now we can just review this here. And it is all based on pulled research research. So we’ll have the link to this. And then you can go and find all of the individual articles and journal and research.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. All right. So one of the points that they touched on is to when designing test instructions, they should be designed so that they maximize clarity and also minimize the potential for confusion. And that’s very important, because oftentimes, I’ve seen that again, this is not my experience. So teachers design tests, and they want to make sure they cover everything so that a student doesn’t get confused. But then at the end, when they asked me to proofread it or take a look, the part for instructions is so lengthy. And it’s like wait a minute, all you needed to say was this and that to verbs.

Brent Warner
So it’s like overcomplicated. I’m certainly guilty of this, because it’s like I want to I want to ensure that you definitely know. And then it’s like yeah, here’s a 10 page instruction paper on how to write a one paragraph and it’s like,

Ixchell Reyes
and then with with like a footnote at the bottom, when you have like an unknown.

Brent Warner
You’re Yeah, you’re putting in all your glossary terms of like everything in there like,

Ixchell Reyes
yeah, like scan Tron?

Brent Warner
Yeah, for sure. I think we’re all guilty of this one. And it’s like, it’s one of those things where it’s like, you know, our best intentions are totally positive, right? Like we’re trying to help students out, we’re trying to make sure that they understand what’s going on. But we’re actually doing them a disservice through this. So yeah, we always want to be careful about intentions versus actual outcomes, right? Like those, those can be quite,

Ixchell Reyes
you know, what I what I’ve now sort of a tent that I noticed, I tend to be doing now I bowled at the key verbs, and whatever directions I’m giving, so that if somebody’s just skimming, they at least are gonna pause at the key verb. Yeah, so hopefully, that’ll help.

Brent Warner
You can also do. And I think we’ll cover some of these in the other parts. But like, if you’re being really proactive. So if you’re using, for example, an LMS, like Canvas, you can actually and maybe this is getting too much into it. But if you have a service like design plus where you can do all these cool like HTML tricks, you could actually have a word that you would hover over inside of Canvas, or a student would hover over, and then it would pop up and give them a dictionary, like a definition that you provide for them as well. But I think part of the slow them down, right, right, right. Yeah, so part of the argument here is like, well, then just write it in a way that they don’t need to have that dictionary definition. Instead, we’re just going to tie into point to its use vocabulary in test items that is widely accessible to all students and avoid unfamiliar vocabulary that is not directly related to the construct. And so, you know, a lot of times, especially like, in my classes, we’re doing, you know, academic English. And so a lot of times, I’m like, Oh, well, then they should be practicing more academic language. And I should be presenting this in a more academic way. And it’s like, okay, so then I then I intensify the vocabulary is me putting two or three harder vocabulary words in there ultimately going to change the quality of the writing response that they give to me. You know, like, I mean, there’s definitely arguments for learning new vocabulary, but then maybe I should be spending that time directly on vocabulary teaching in class, instead of trying to sneak it into a writing prompt or something.

Ixchell Reyes
Maybe the writing prompt may or may not be the place to introduce brand new difficult vocabulary, if you’re looking to in their writing reflect what they’ve already internalized as what as what they’ve taken in from the lessons, right. So I think it’s carefully making decisions, conscious decisions of what we’re going to where we’re going, what the purpose for that new vocabulary is right? Especially if that’s going to give us a product that we’re going to use for assessment. So, kind of along the same line, avoiding the use of syntax or vocabulary that is above the test target grade level. The test items should be written out of vocabulary level no higher than the target grade level and preferably at a slightly lower grade level to ensure that all students understand the task presented. And so here I am going to give an example a recent example. We are developing a Introductory Video with a script of the do’s and don’ts, and you know, welcome to our school, et cetera, et cetera. And the first version of the script that I saw was obviously, not written by someone who was keeping, keeping in mind all of the what, what a brand new student from a, from another country who’s never set foot here. And this might be the first introduction to English, not keeping in mind that all of this is brand new information in addition to a brand new setting, being away from family, etc. So my first response was, whoa, I would not understand what any of these words are as a brand new emerging speaker of English, so we had to go back and revamp it. Because the purpose of that instructional video is for them to understand and be welcome. So if they’re hearing immediately all these rules and guidelines, and they may not be, it will just be words to them. So that we had to go back and revisit the purpose. So using syntax and vocabulary, simplified it and then made it a very conversational piece that was easily to be understood by even the the most emergent of our learners.

Brent Warner
Yeah, well, I know what teachers listening right now are screaming, if they’re, if they’re driving to work, as they’re listening to this, they’re going Vygotsky z, we have to, we have to push them, we gotta give them the the i plus one, right, like all the like, push it pushing our, our language acquisition, the whole concept of, you know, pushing beyond our comfort level, just going one one level beyond where they’re at. And like all of these theories, which are great, and they drive a lot of my pedagogy and my teaching, but I think what they’re trying to get to here is like, actually, I think inside of this article, if I remember correctly, they kind of mentioned, hey, none of these are meant to be taken alone, or as a, you know, like a gold standard. Absolutely, you kind of have to make adjustments to it. So if you’re doing, you know, like you’re saying, if you’re doing like an introduction to something where you’re trying to bring people to think about the purpose, or if you’re doing an assessment, right, like, you don’t need to be teaching them in those times, you need to be assessing them, right. And so, so you don’t need to always be pushing those, that extreme language. And I know when people are like, you’d never go elite level below where they’re like, Well, you do.

Ixchell Reyes
Well, if you’re doing Yeah, if you’re doing a diagnostic versus a final assessment, or a cumulative assessment, which I have thoughts about, but you know, depending on what you’re doing, if it’s an instructional video to help them figure out how to access the lab, the lab material, or the homework at home or digital, you know, digital material, etc. boils down to me on the purpose and the tasks that they should be able to accomplish.

Brent Warner
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hey, I’m gonna teach you how to use Google Docs. And I’m gonna make it challenging for you to figure out what I’m saying. It’s like, not a good idea.

Ixchell Reyes
So if Mastadon people out there are listening, you’ll you’ll want to take some of this into consideration for us.

Brent Warner
So this is behind the scenes everybody. Ixchell and I are like testing out Mastodon because of all the craziness on Twitter right now. And Mastodon is it’s

Ixchell Reyes
not easy to transfer over could

Brent Warner
be cool. It has potential but like there’s a learning curve for sure. Alright, so I digress. What does that mean? Let me explain it to you a long, complicated. Alright, so next one is keep sentence structures as simple as is possible while expressing the intended meaning. In general ELLs will find a series of simpler, shorter sentences to be more accessible than longer, more complex sentences. Yeah, like, can you say this in an easier way? Are all of the details that are going into your sentences really necessary? I guess. And I don’t know if you you read this part down below at the at the bottom of that article he show where they actually kind of gave some some examples of these. But I’ll just read one right as kind of a one that they set up for. For children, right, like a fifth grade mathematics the original version, right? And it was a word problem and said, Cherie scored the following numbers in a in in points of five sorry, numbers of points in five dark games. Sheree scored the following numbers and points. Why can’t I get my language? Oh, sure. I scored numbers of points in five Dart games. See, look how hard it is for even me to say and then it gives the numbers 880-890-6112 135 144. What is the median of these numbers? So this is like a test question, right? And then they’re saying, well here, do this as a modified version. Look at the five numbers below 8896, whatever, what is the medium of these numbers? And it’s like, oh, yeah, I don’t need to set it up with like this con text of your game. And again, I do think that a question like that would be intending to engage students, it’s like students might like darts. Where am I going to apply this? Right? Like, like, so there is kind of a sense where you can see where, where a teacher might like to do this, because they’re trying to make it, you know, applicable or interesting to them somehow, but it throws you off. Like I couldn’t even say the sentence three times and trying to read it right. And the goal is not in this case, like, it is a math question, right? And so if you’re a math teacher out there, are you trying to trip students up over the different possibilities of understanding the following numbers of points in five Dart games, like whatever that means, you know,

Ixchell Reyes
if you’re a language learner, the word Dart, you might that might be a difficult word for you. Yeah.

Brent Warner
Well, and also following too, right? Because you’re like, like the word following. It still trips up some of my advanced students, because like, does that mean the things that were before it, or the things that were coming behind? Which one? Which one goes first? And second, right, so. So yeah, we want our students to learn those things. But again, if it’s an assessment time, or like, are we teaching is that the goal of the teaching? Or is the goal of the teaching in this case to get those numbers averaged out? Right and right, and that’s what we’re trying to have a conversation around or trying to help our students get through.

Ixchell Reyes
So along those same lines, words that might also trip up, our students are cognates, particularly false cognates. Some people call them false friends. And these are words that may appear to have the same meaning, or two or more in, or two or more.

Brent Warner
And we’re all tripping up.

Ixchell Reyes
So these are phrases that appear to have the same meaning and two or more languages, but they actually do not. And there’s plenty of examples in many languages. Brent, Have you have you come upon any?

Brent Warner
I mean, I think that there’s like, well, so you’re talking about false ones? Ones that are not

Ixchell Reyes
that have? Yeah, either one. Yeah,

Brent Warner
I mean, I’m trying to think back to my own, like, my own language learning. I think they’re, you’re putting me on the spot here. The one that I always kind of think of is Japanese the word toll toll and like, the gate or the door, right, and then, and the word door and like, Oh, does that come from the same source? That no relation really, right. But like, in my head, I was able to, but then you can also make mistakes with those things. And I think these are a lot more common for us in, you know, like the Romans or the geomantic, dramatics or, you know, Latin based or whatever language is, right. I’m sure that there are a lot of them where you see the word like if you’re a French speaker, or a Spanish speaker, and then you’re bringing that idea over into English. Oh, here’s a really common one. Maybe it’s not quite right. But one that I’m seeing a lot with my, my Spanish speaking students right now. And always anyone who has Spanish speaking students is the S versus the it is right. Yeah, absolutely. Like, because a lot of my students just write is in sentences. And I’m like, okay, like, let’s, let’s, you know, to me, I’m like, I’ve explained this so many times, but for them, like, they’re not thinking of that right.

Ixchell Reyes
Sounds Yeah. Their their brain is going to the most comfortable. Memory accessible, which is, is s o make sense? Sounds complete. To the Spanish speaking brain, right? Yeah.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So and then I think another couple other ones that came in the article was like, like deception, I think like deception, which, like, I think in Spanish, what does that mean? That’s

Ixchell Reyes
us. Deception is disappointment, like

Brent Warner
a disappointment, right? And so we would definitely see

Ixchell Reyes
not like a lie. Not not not like. Yeah, deceptive.

Brent Warner
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. So things like that. Right? And it’s like, you’re by no fault of your own. Are you trying to do anything? Of course, right. So students are trying to trick themselves into things, but you can see where these, these cognates might be, like, confusing and, and create problems. So again, as we’re paying attention as we’re writing, like, and then once we hear from our students, we make adjustments, we’re like, oh, that’s how you misunderstood it. Okay, let me make a change to it the next time around so that I can make it a little bit better overall for you.

Ixchell Reyes
And really what it does for the teacher, the person doing this, you just get better at at personalizing things, it gives you a broader way of writing things. Which brings me to the next point. Do not use cultural references or idiomatic expressions that are not equally familiar to all students. And the example they gave here is being on the ball. And I have a thing about this right. So as a language learner, and later on I’m someone who loved writing, I loved writing, I love writing in English. And one of the things that was stress throughout my writing instruction was to be clear and being clear meant not using figures of speech or idiomatic expressions. So I took great care throughout my college years to write clearly. And then me going into, into the classroom as a English teacher. And here, I was expected to teach idioms when I was like, wait a minute, but this makes it so difficult to understand. And, and I had all these teachers, some of my colleagues, native English speakers, speaking to their students, in idioms, unintentionally, sometimes, but natural for them. And I was thinking, well, all you need to tell them is this and this and that, and he’ll understand that’s, I see exactly why he didn’t understand you. And again, I every once in a while I get students who are hung up on I’ve got to be able to learn as many idioms as possible, because that’s going to make me a better native, like, speaker and my thing is no, that’s gonna make you sound crazy. In fact, that’s gonna make you seem like you’re from a different generation, because I don’t know. It’s very confusing. And I, I find, I find it interesting that my sister, she’s younger, she speaks in idiomatic language more often than I do. And I catch it every time I’m thinking, How’d you learn all these idioms? Why are you using that? And when and then she struggles to, to get herself out of the idiom into just a clear English. Yeah, I guess. And and it’s different than I just think, oh, what you’re trying to say is this. And I’ve told her many times how to learn all this language. And again, we go back and forth on it, but it is confusing. And it can, it’s taken literal, like a student was asked to bring a dish to a potluck. Well, I’m sure after he figured out what potluck was. Yeah, yeah. But he brought an empty plate. He had no idea. He did. And that was his story, his story of how embarrassing it was for him. And again, nobody explained to him a meal from your country. And also he probably, you know, he must have thought it’s a game. I mean, pot luck that the thing itself the name of it doesn’t make sense. And if you’re trying to translate it, you’re gonna think pot and luck. Lucky pot. Oh, it must be like we’re sharing something, you know, a game? I don’t know. But but think. Never thought about it.

Brent Warner
I don’t think you’ve told me that story before. That’s so funny.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, how about being on the ball?

Brent Warner
Yeah, well, you weren’t on the ball when you were trying to teach. Course I wasn’t on the ball. I had a student once. So this was wild. When I had moved back to Japan. After after I got my, you know, after I graduated and everything, I moved back to Japan. Actually, totally by chance, like I was teaching in elementary school, and playing with the kids out in recess or something like that. And a friend of mine, a Japanese friend that I had met in San Diego, drove by and saw me and like, pulled over. Like, we’re talking anyone who knows the geography of Japan, this isn’t, which is like straight up middle of nowhere. It’s like being in the middle of Kansas, right? And then somehow saw me. And then I was just going in as like inside as he saw me. So he was like, in like, you can’t just like walk onto an elementary school campus, but he passed a note to a teacher to give to me. And then my friend, great guy really likes studying idioms. And then he’s like, he wrote a note to me that said, Brent, I am tickled pink that I saw you and now I am over the moon. Let’s let’s catch up. And I’m like, what, like, be tickled pink. Like, I love this guy. He’s still still awesome. And I’m like, okay, like, we need to talk a little bit about overusing idiomatic expressions. But it’s kind of the same thing, right? And we have idioms classes at our school right now. And they’re very popular because they do lend insight into things but also really been

Ixchell Reyes
coding it is it is decoding code.

Brent Warner
Yeah. So again, again, same thing. It’s like, okay, where are we using this language? Are we being intentional with it? I had another colleague that used to just use ATMs like you were saying all over the place when he’s giving presentations to students and things like that. And all the students are just like, I don’t I don’t know anything. And like, it was like, Okay, let’s, let’s, let’s make some adjustments to the language here. But yeah, so these can be a few ones. Got a couple more. So what’s what’s next?

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah, other things that can be equally confusing or more confusing is the use of sentence structures that are difficult to Follow. So the passive voice or sentences with multiple clauses, those can definitely I’ve had, you know, multiple instances of students asking me, but there is no subject, how do you know? And it’s like, oh my gosh, but sometimes it’s just it’s implied. And it would just be easier to flip it to be an active sentence. And I understand if it has to be a legal, you know, it’s legal writing, or it’s business writing, and you’re deflecting, you know, who’s ordering, whatever it is or ordering. But, but when you’re trying when it comes to testing materials, or giving instructions or something that will automatically add a barrier to the access of that information for the student, then you’re not helping them.

Brent Warner
By the time you pass this test, you will have understood how to develop Wait, what isn’t like everything that you could possibly mix in there is customary

Ixchell Reyes
that as one finish. Like that’s not necessary, that’s also not appropriate, because that type of writing is appropriate. And in particular cases, maybe not

Brent Warner
instructional. Oh, so next was don’t use syntax that might be confusing or ambiguous, such as using negation or double negatives in constructing test items. Right? So there’s a lot of that one, like, which one is the wrong choice, right, which one doesn’t belong? Or something? Which, you know, again, if you’re more advanced in my class, yeah, it might work, right. But it’s like, are we trying to? And if that’s part of the language, same thing, right? Like, if that’s the language you’re testing, then okay, let’s play around with it. But like, you know, double negatives, and all of these types of things. And it’s like, well, what is the question itself asking me? And we’re like, in, you know, again, are we designing the questions where the questions are the actual assessment? Or is it the concepts behind it? Right. And so I think what ends up happening is, it sounds obvious to say, Yes, the question that I’m developing is a question that I want them to understand. But a lot of times, it’s really not about the way the question is formed. It’s about understanding the content of the answer, right? And so, so then you’re playing with different ways that students can understand it, make mistakes, right? All sorts of possibilities inside of there. And so you want to be thoughtful and not, you know, you can develop challenging questions, but you want to make sure you know why you’re phrasing it in the way you are, as well.

Ixchell Reyes
And it’s probably you know, as we’re getting to the last of the points listed in that article here, it’s probably worth mentioning that for those teachers who spend a lot of time developing test questions and test materials, or just groups of test developers to revise and revamp every every two years or so if you’re using a bank, because different people come in and put into, you know, there you see the different style of questions. And also some things just become outdated. I sometimes see test questions that my students are getting from a test bank that is created, and I think I didn’t know how to answer that question, because the way it’s written is weird. So it tells me it may be, it may not accurately tell me what my student can or can’t do. So minimizing the use of low frequency long or morphologically complex words and long sentences is something that we should also take into account. I can’t think of a particular one right now because I’m so I’m so aware of what I’m writing when I’m writing it that I tried to simplify all the time. It’s when I when I struggle with writing, now that I don’t have to read and write research anymore. Now I struggle with putting it into that. That framework language that’s so inaccessible to many and so hard to translate almost right. So

Brent Warner
yeah, yeah, it can, it can definitely be like a set of challenges even for us right as like, Absolutely. As we’re building these things. And so if it’s hard for us again, you want to make sure you’re like, well, if it’s hard for me, and I can’t figure out what I’m saying then my students definitely can’t right.

Ixchell Reyes
I guess an example of all of these is when we if you if any of you have ever attended that drinks with DIESOL and played my stump trivia, I use every possible way to trip anybody up on eight questions

Brent Warner
often pull together and other drinks at least one of these days. And you’re gonna have to meet the problem is you’re gonna have to spend eight hours building these insanely complicated

Ixchell Reyes
questions that no one can pass anyway. And everyone feels so bad after taking it the number one, the number one comment I get is you show this is so hard. I feel so dumb, like no, it’s not gonna make you feel like the way that questions are made. Yeah, yeah, for sure, again.

Brent Warner
Cool. So I thought you saw that we might jump through a couple of tools as well just again, we’re kind of talking different parts of accessibility, like how well students can understand that, but also like, you know, also the technology and the legal requirements. So for example, there is, and I’m gonna jump jump around a little bit here, but, you know, essentially, if you’re working for any kind of government type of teaching, so whether that be you know, public schools, or, or whatever else it is, then you’re going to have some 508 compliance issues. There’s again, I know as soon as we start saying, like code numbers and assembly bills, and whatever I’m like, my brain started working.

Ixchell Reyes
Even if you haven’t heard of fiber, wait, you probably should be aware of

Brent Warner
it. Yeah. So five away, like you need to be five, five a week compliant, which is five away is the law that that allows for the accessibility under the definition that we had mentioned at the beginning. And that requires it not allows for it, I should make sure to get make sure that I’m using the right words as well. But the you know, if you want to make sure that you’re being compliant there like software that you might want to buy, and you want to go and check with those companies, that hey, is what I’m buying actually 508 compliant. So let’s say for example, your school is looking at bringing in Pear Deck, for example. And a big these big ed tech companies are almost always compliant, right, they’ll be able to provide you with the documentation. But like, before you start pursuing these things, you want to make sure that hey, like, would it even be kosher for me to bring these things in, right. And so 508 compliance is one of those. And then we’ll put a link in there as well. But there’s a kind of a cool free eBook out there, called professional web accessibility, auditing made easy. Again, same thing, it’s a title that just puts me to sleep almost immediately. But there is good content. Inside of it, I always feel bad. I’m like, that’s boring. But, but that, like, when you start picking and choosing and diving into individual parts, then it’s kind of cool. And there’s a lot of fun stuff to play around with. So we’ll have those available inside of the show notes. But then, then we want to talk about a few of the actual tools that you can use to make things more accessible. So I’m gonna start with one, Ixchell you ever heard a lot? Yeah, there’s new for me. Yeah, because we do a lot of this stuff. We talk more about accessibility on my other show on the higher ed tech podcast. And so I’m I’m and because I’m also on the Online Education Committee at our school, these are common, more common conversations for me. But one of the tools that we have, which I think is really cool is grackle. Have you have you seen this before, I have not heard of grackle. So grackle is a Google Docs plugin. And basically, you are and I think slides and different things as well, but you just run it and it will run it will do an accessibility check on your document. And then it’ll give you little click through in order to make sure that it is like, Hey, your font is not not accessible font, right? Or you know, your color contrast, you kind of have this light gray color going on here. There’s not enough contrast between that in the background, right. And so it shows you all the potential problems in the document that you build. And then you can just click through, and you don’t necessarily even have to go in and re change it. It’ll say like, here’s a suggestion, and you just click on it, and it will make that change for you. So that level of accessibility makes it a lot easier to make sure that you’re being compliant and that you’re doing the right and illegal things with your documents.

Ixchell Reyes
That is pretty cool. Is it? Is there a charge for it?

Brent Warner
There is it’s not very expensive for your institution. I can’t remember exactly how much it was. But but you can go in and look at it. And I think there’s a free version to like if you’re only doing it for yourself, but I think if you’re doing it like at a bigger level, there might be you know, at some of those freemium type of things, I think I haven’t looked at the pricing for a while because we just have access to it now.

Ixchell Reyes
So there’s another one that’s new for me, and you can talk a little bit more about it. It’s Pope tech. Yeah. And it sounds like it’s something that you run through your system to see what is not compatible. Yeah, my correct. And

Brent Warner
Yeah. And we’re looking at this one. There’s different versions of this, but built into Canvas. So if you’re a canvas school, it’s same type of thing as grackle. But instead of in Google Docs, you’re clicking a button and you’re seeing if your Canvas pages are accessible for people.

Ixchell Reyes
That is pretty cool. So it’s LMS specific, so it’ll run through your LMS is that what –

Brent Warner
Correct, Yeah, it’s so cool. Yeah, puts in and Canvas has its own Accessibility Checker. Which is pretty cool and does a lot of the work. But this one’s a little bit more robust, it may, it’s a little bit more connected to the right things. And then you can also do a whole version where your if and most people here, don’t need to worry about it. But if you’re in some sort of leadership position, you can also do an audit of your entire department or school, not seeing any individual person’s bad design, necessarily, but just saying, hey, overall, you know, 70% of your pages are accessible and 30% need to be updated, or whatever. And so that can be give you good overall guidelines in terms of helping the rest of your faculty are the or your colleagues to, you know, make those adjustments or understand what they need to make changes to.

Ixchell Reyes
Very cool. So the next one is something we’ve talked in a few of our episodes, or maybe if not our episodes, some of the workshops we’ve given, and that is BeeLine Reader, Chrome extension, and it’s an extension that will colorize the text to eliminate or minimize screen fatigue, and also improve focus as you’re reading. And if people are familiar with over different color overlays for students that that need to focus when they’re reading. This is something similar, so except that it colors, the text and it colors it on a digital on a digital page. So I believe there’s a free version, I think they must I’m sure that they’re now they now probably have something bigger than than their regular. I think, if you’re looking to use it for an institution, there’s probably a paid version. Yeah, yeah, it’s been around for a while. So that’s what I’m expecting.

Brent Warner
Probably read and write is definitely one of those that does have different versions of free ones. So we’ve talked about Read and Write for sure. So I’m not gonna spend a long time on it. But it’s a great tool. As soon as I teach it to my students, they’re like, I see them using it many semesters later in their own work, which is it drops down a, like an activity bar inside of your browser. I think it’s in Chrome. I don’t know if it’s another ones but but basically, it lets you let students highlight words that they can click on a button, and it will read that out for them, it will let them you can highlight different words, and then click a button and it’ll isolate them into its own new document and create a it’ll create a vocabulary list for you, you can, you can click a button, and it’ll bring up a picture dictionary of the word you’re looking at. So lots of different ways for students to recognize what’s going on with with the, the text that they’re reading here. And so read and write is super powerful. Again, it does cost for students to use it but and teachers always kind of struggle to find the free version for themselves. But there is a free version for an individual teacher. So you can all build at least build parts of the things by yourself. If and then if you want to get your students access to it. You might look at an institutional license.

Ixchell Reyes
Okay, so another tool that we’ve talked about, and I know my colleagues learn about it from you, Brett is Mote and I know you love Moe, I think aren’t you like an ambassador or something?

Brent Warner
I haven’t seen any. Like, I still like to tell people I still paid for my last updated version. So I’m not sure if there’s anything supposed to be special about being an ambassador, but like, but I just love it. Yeah.

Ixchell Reyes
Yeah. So Mo is voice notes. And you’re able to leave feedback for the student student can respond with feedback, but you’ve used it I haven’t used most, because I haven’t been doing a lot of teaching of writing. So

Brent Warner
yeah, use it all the time, all the time. I mean, that’s how I kind of try to make my my feedback loops a little bit more human, they’re

Ixchell Reyes
more efficient. Yeah. And it’s more efficient, really, because the student will listen to it and might listen to it a few more times and actually read a comment. That’s right, yeah. And then internalize the feedback.

Brent Warner
Correct. And then they’re by default, they’re already considering accessibility. Because if a student has hearing issues or can’t understand what you’re saying, it’s also using AI to pretty well not perfect, but do a pretty good job of transcribing what you’re saying. So they can listen and read at the same time. And they can even click on a button to translate what the AI has said into their language. So if they’re really struggling, and I have to talk with my students about that too, and say, like, Hey, make your choices for yourself, like are you really trying to learn something? Or are you just trying to skip through and get this right but but it is cool that it’s there and it does give them some different options. So So Mote is great and I’m also going to tie that in with one more shell which is called Screen pal from Screencast O Matic. It’s kind of the same thing except it’s a video version of Mote. And they’re playing around they’re still building that I think it’s still maybe in beta, but it does kind of the same thing where it’s like it will put in right into your Google Docs or whatever, it’ll put a video of you talking or you can. Yeah, like all these other little options there for students to kind of go okay, these actually

Ixchell Reyes
that’s excellent. Yeah, that’s excellent. Yeah. So not heard of screen

Brent Warner
pal. Yeah, it’s it’s new ish. I think it kind of launched over the summer or maybe he’s a little bit and they’re still kind of talking it through and figuring out how it’s going to work but but it is a an upcoming option for a lot of people. So that’s a lot about accessibility. Let’s, let’s let’s work on working our way over and out.

Ixchell Reyes
All right, it is time for a fun finds. And this time I have something that takes me back to Japan. So I miss Japan. It’s been officially a year since I left. Yeah, so I’m returning to a land of chaos. Anyway, what takes me back to Japan is John’s blend in white musk. John’s blend is a popular for some reason they’re made in New York, but I don’t

Brent Warner
want Japan I don’t see it here.

Ixchell Reyes
But they’re popular for their room sprays. They’re all sorts of laundry detergent, like scent type things. Car deodorizers, a lot of scent type things. And if you’ve ever been to Japan, a lot of the stores out have different types of white musk about white masks just takes me it’s like this crisp sort of linen smell. It’s so good. But yeah, you can find it on Amazon, like all things. And it’s about $12 it’s also good.

Brent Warner
Nice. All right, cool. Mine is a song. So recently, I think I think you might might have been a little surprised on Twitter when I told you that I was. I was at the Harry Styles concert recently. A couple a couple a month or so ago. And now I was at Harry Styles.

Ixchell Reyes
I love that your music ranges from one end to the other

Brent Warner
Oh Harry Styles is amazing. But here, so we’ll talk about that some other time. So opening act was Ben Harper. And Ben Harper has been around for a long time too. And people… whatever, I never really got into him or followed his music but, but he was fine. He was good. But the best part was that he pulled his kids up on stage and they did a song, which his son and his daughter with Laura Dern the actress. And they did this song called the longest apocalypse. And it was just like, Oh my God, it was such a good song. And so then I was searching all over trying to find this song because they’re like, Yeah, and we did find it. I think there’s something weird with the upload, because it seems to cut off kind of like in a weird place. And I’m like, that’s not the end. That can’t be the end of the song, right? Like it kind of, it almost feels like sometimes on an album, like when a song cuts off, and like it jumps right into the next song. But it’s like, if you only listen to that one song track by itself, it sounds weird. So it’s kind of got one of those things going on. But the two minutes and 20 seconds that do exist of it still is just this beautiful, moody, kind of brooding song. And was really just outstanding. So I did find it. We’ll put the link in the show notes. It’s called the longest apocalypse. And the group I get, I guess the two of them or maybe just the daughter’s name, but it was produced by the son I’m not sure but it’s called Harris. And so really outstanding song and happy that I heard it live and then even though it’s an imperfect recording, I hope that that gets updated as well. So very cool. Yeah, lots of fun.

Ixchell Reyes
As always, you could win a one of a kind DIESOL pin by leaving us a review on Apple podcasts. If you’re giving us a shout out any other way tag us on social media.

Brent Warner
We do have a patreon if you want to support us that way. And of course you can find show notes and other episodes at DIESOL.org/73 and you can listen to us at voiceEd Canada. We are also on Twitter for now. We’ll see how things go. The show is at @DIESOLpod I am at @BrentGWarner

Ixchell Reyes
and I’m Ixchell at @Ixy_pixy that’s I x y underscore p i x y. In Thai thank you is Khob Khun Kha. Khob Khun Kha for tuning in to the DIESOL podcast.

Brent Warner
Khob Khun Kha, Everybody. Oh wait, I can’t say that as a man.

Ixchell Reyes
Khob Khun Crap. Crap.

Brent Warner
Bye!

Ixchell Reyes
BYE!!