Institutional responses to accessibility
These notes are part of a series for the book.
Making learning accessible to all may be the ethically right thing to do, but also we can use North’s framework to investigate the ‘socio-political responses to accessibility: responses which involve games, conflict and power’ (Seale, 2014, p. 234). Konur applied North’s framework to his own work about accessibility, and here Seale provides a look at both bodies of work. Seale notes that there are limitations in using North’s framework this way: It cannot explain why organizations are not aligning themselves with the intent behind disability laws. Penalties exist, but organizations do just enough to avoid them and some have seemingly decided to not compete for disabled students.
Outline
- Introduction
- The institutional change framework as a potential analysis tool
- Applicability of institutional change framework to e-learning and accessibility
- Formal and informal rules of accessibility
- Enforcement and regulation of formal and informal rules of accessibility
- Opportunities and incentives
- Applicability of institutional change framework to e-learning and accessibility
- Expanding the institutional change framework of analysis
- Applicability of Konur’s concepts of teams to e-elearning and accessibility
- Learning technologists as rule implementers
- Legal and advisory organizations as rule enforcers
- Legal organizations and case law
- Advisory organizations and paradigm cases
- Accessibility consultants, disability advocates, and researcher as rule advocators
- Students with disabilities as rule-makers
- Conclusions
Notes
Disability is often couched as a legal issue, which leads the discussion to issues of compliance and enforcement. Institutions wait for legal decisions and precedence to be set, and that waiting is a form of resistance. We can use North’s framework to better investigate what’s happening.
- Note: A closer look at North’s framework, including definitions and examples for his terms, are in my notes for ‘Institutional change: A framework for analysis‘. In this chapter of Seale’s book, some of the terms are defined but I won’t repeat the information here since a fuller explanation is in my notes for North’s paper.
A few additional notes about North’s framework
As organizations go about with their activities, they follow the rules of the game which are set within the institutional framework — in this way, they are constrained (by the boundaries of law, for example). The institutional framework also establishes the incentive structure. Organizations try to bring into their group the skills and knowledge they need to do well according to the incentive structure, and to do well compared to their competitors.
Entrepreneurs and decision-makers within organizations are change agents, initiating institutional changes. The more competition organizations face, the greater their incentive to bring in the needed skills and knowledge. If they cannot tackle this problem successfully, they petition to make changes at the institutional level. The more competition that they face, the faster changes are made at the institutional level.
Within the institutional level, formal rules (such as laws) can change faster an informal constraints (such as traditions). Instability occurs when the formal and informal constraints within institutions are inconsistent.
- That informal constraints change more slowing than formal ones may explain why corporations do not embrace accessibility measures as fully as desired by accessibility laws. But, does this bear out? Is there instability?
Applying North’s framework to accessible e-learning
Seale asks:
- How does the institutional structure (formal rules, informal traditions) affect accessibility?
- Is there a tension between the formal and informal constraints? Does this affect accessibility practices?
- How do codes of conduct regulate and enforce the formal and informal constraints? What about retaliations from second parties? Sanctions from the state?
- Do the institutions provide opportunities or incentives for organizations to invest in accessible elearning as a path toward gaining the skills and learning they need to be competitive?
There are tensions between the rules:
- WAI guidelines and the guidelines other people have created are not completely aligned.
- Organizational policies may be different based on the standards they adopt, the level of compliance they require, and what they do when compliance isn’t met. They may also differ with external rules and standards.
- There may not be tensions between informal constraints, as people may all generally accept that accessibility benefits all learners and needs to be considered early in the design process (not as an after-thought). However, there may be tensions between the informal constraints held among different stakeholder groups within an organization.
You also have to look at how the rules are enforced.
- First-party enforcement:
- This is ‘self imposed codes of conduct’ (North, 1991, p. 2).
- That is, within an organization, has anyone been punished (for example, reprimanded or demoted) for not following laws or standards? Or, rewarded for following them?
- Second-party enforcement:
- This is ‘retaliation’ (North, 1991, p. 2).
- Would an example of this be boycotting, striking, picketing? On the reward side of enforcement, would this be gaining employees, customers, and students who either benefit from or appreciate accessibility measures?
- Third-party enforcement:
- This is ‘societal sanctions or coercive enforcement by the state’ (North, 1991, p. 2).
- That is, have their been lawsuits that clarify case law and enforce rules?
- Would rewards be public money spent to help organizations meet accessibility needs? For example, there have been federal tax credits and deductions to offset businesses’ costs for meeting accessibility needs and companies that hire people receiving welfare because of a disability also have gotten tax credits .
There is a business case that can be made for providing accessibility in general. If you are creating learning resources for internal use (not for sale), then making them accessible improves learning overall, makes it more available even to people without disabilities, and may reduce costs. If you are creating learning resources as a product for sale, then making them accessible increases the number of potential customers. Looking at the issue from this perspective ‘has lead [sic] some to argue for the abandonment of accessibility arguments based on rights and justice’ (Seale, 2014, p. 238).
- I think this might reflect a change in norms, conventions, and values — instead of seeing disabled people as “the Other”, we are viewing them as equals within the marketplace. If so, it’s a welcome and positive change because North notes that informal constraints (like values) change more slowly than formal rules (like laws). I also think this change more closely aligns us with North’s overall framework, which is an economic one.
Konur’s expansion on North’s work
Konur (2000) focuses on rule enforcement and finds that competitive games have cheating, so he calls for referees. In his view, there are four teams, which can correspond with Seale’s stakeholders:
- Rule implementers: People who provide and use disability-related services
- May be these stakeholders: Lecturers, learning technologists, and student support services
- About learning technologists as implementers: Some resist accessibility measures because they feel it constrains their creativity or forces homogeneity across their work products. This causes tensions between them and the other learning technologists in their organization who adopt accessibility measures. ‘In striving to retain creative freedom, designers and developers may be striving to retain identities as artists as opposed to engineers’ (Seale, 2014, p. 241).
- I think identity is key.
- Rule enforcers: Referees who find the people who break the rules and resolve conflicts
- May be these stakeholders: Senior managers
- Other enforcers: Legal organizations, advisory groups
- About legal and advisory organizations as enforcers: Legal organizations (judges, lawyers, etc.) help establish case law. Advisory groups establish principles, which may lead to case law.
- Rule advocates: Teach and persuade people to follow the rules
- May be these stakeholders: Staff developers, student support services
- Other advocates: Consultants and researchers
- About consultants and researchers as advocates: Some accessibility consultants have taken to “naming and shaming” companies who don’t offer accessible websites. Others have debated the value of automated accessibility checking-tools, and others debate standards such as those from WAI. Still others argue about the arguing.
- Rule makers: Write and rewrite the rules (but don’t enforce or enact them)
- May be these stakeholders: Students
- About students with disabilities as rule-makers: At an individual level, these students can complain, negotiate, or sue to gain accessibility, but they have less power than the other three teams so they cannot enforce rules.
- It’s worth considering how this meshes with Seale’s contentions elsewhere in this book that student voices are mediated in the research and literature.
- Seale summarizes Konur as saying that ‘we cannot assume that the “rules of the game” in terms of disability discrimination legislation is to end discrimination, because evidence from case law within higher education and employment would suggest that this is not happening’ (Seale, 2014, p. 248).