EP-88: Reimagining Accessibility and UDL with AI
Every instructional designer knows that accessibility and UDL are significant, but how can AI help with these principles? I'll share some new features with ChatGPT that I've been experimenting with to make learning experiences more accessible and UDL friendly.
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Transcript:
00;00;00;03 - 00;00;29;29
Luke
Why? Hello, learning nerds. Before we begin today's show, I want to thank our awesome sponsors with first giving a shout out to Idol Courses. Academy. Idol Academy is the first and only authorized vocational school for instructional design and online learning. It includes a comprehensive hands on curriculum with certifications, credentials, expert coaches, mentors, a community of practice, paid experience opportunities, industry, preferred software access, live events, an ongoing updates.
00;00;29;29 - 00;00;55;26
Luke
Your entire instructional design career is neatly packaged behind a single log in for just $88 a month. Check out all the details that idol courses dot com forward slash academy and you can use my code to look for $88 off the yearly membership. Okay, now let's start the show. Hello learning nerds an welcome on in to the nerdiest podcast you're going to hear today.
00;00;55;28 - 00;01;20;02
Luke
I'm your host. My name is Dr. Luke Hobson. I'm a senior instructional designer, program manager, author, blogger, podcaster and instructor. My purpose is to be able to help you to learn more about instructional design and helping you to learn more about how to design meaningful learning experiences. And you can find all of my information over at drlukehobson.com.
00;01;20;03 - 00;01;48;11
Luke
Before we talk more today about A.I. and accessibility, I have a question for you. Do you want to learn about instructional design with me? If you do, the next cohort for Instructional Design Institute is happening rather soon. Starting on Monday, December 11th. If you haven't heard about this yet so far, this is a seven week long learning experience where I bring together learning nerds from all different types of sectors and backgrounds and educations.
00;01;48;11 - 00;02;08;26
Luke
And really, we put us all together to go through this entire program from start to finish. As a cohort, you're going to be having hands on learning experience as you're actually going to be designing a learning experience of your own and building this inside of our new elements, which we will be using. Bright space that is created by D2L.
00;02;08;26 - 00;02;26;27
Luke
If you haven't seen it yet so far. Go to LinkedIn or go down to the show notes and you can take a little snippet about what the current and new instructional Design Institute looks like. It's looking awesome. So if you want to be able to experience this for yourself too, in order for you to create a type of a portfolio piece, put everything together.
00;02;27;04 - 00;03;02;18
Luke
This is all going to be happening soon. So go down below inside of a show. Notes apply. Today you'll be hearing from me and I'll walk you through with the next steps. So today, folks, I want to chat with you a bit about UDL, A.I. and accessibility. So here is the thing that I have been thinking about a little bit more over the last couple of months or so since everything came bursting onto the scenes, with ChatGPT, Googlebard and everything else is thinking more about A.I. for the greater good.
00;03;02;29 - 00;03;28;25
Luke
And one thing that I've been thinking about in particular is something that people aren't talking about as much, which is kind of odd to me, which is thinking about the universal design for learning framework and thinking about essentially designing learning experiences for all. Can we use A.I. to help us with this endeavor? And as you can probably guess from listening to this episode, yes, we can.
00;03;29;09 - 00;03;58;22
Luke
Now, when you think about UDL and maybe you haven't been introduced to UDL as much, but essentially the framework about UDL is how do you design learning experience for all people, all backgrounds, all walks of life, and making sure that everyone essentially has a meaningful type of a learning experience? And I've been very fortunate. I've known some incredible people within the UDL space, some of which have been on this very podcast.
00;03;59;00 - 00;04;20;05
Luke
Dr. Kati Novak and Tom Thibodeau are the two who really come to mind. And I was talking with Tom one day and he's like, Look, I have a new way of explaining about udl. Like alright, Tom. Let's hear it. And he says, or imagine, Luke, that you were hosting a dinner party. 15 guests are going to be coming to your house soon.
00;04;20;17 - 00;04;40;02
Luke
What are you going to serve them? I thought about it for a second. Thinking about I quantity, type proportion. A lot of food. And I'm like, I got I got some ideas. And he's like, well, you don't know the full story yet. You see, every one of these dinner guests are coming with different types of allergens, lifestyles and food preferences.
00;04;40;09 - 00;05;02;06
Luke
You're going to have some people who are gluten free, some who are lactose intolerant, some who are paleo, some are keto and everything else like that. So what would you serve them? Now I'm looking at Tom and I'm like, I, I don't know Tom. Whatever. What am I going to serve him? And he's like, Well, the best answer is a buffet.
00;05;02;19 - 00;05;30;10
Luke
Allow your dinner guests to pick and choose what they want to be able to eat. And in turn, we can do this with our students, allowed them to pick and choose how they want to be able to learn, and that is how we can best serve them. I was like, Ah, Tom, brilliant. I am stealing that. And I'm going to be sharing that with everybody because this is something that we should be doing as educators, trainers, instructional designers.
00;05;30;18 - 00;05;49;19
Luke
We should be thinking about this as far as for really how do we help all students? How are we really going to serve our target audience in the very best possible way? So what does this look like inside the real world? Let me give you an example. Some of you have actually taken this course before that we had over on edu flow academy.
00;05;49;26 - 00;06;11;23
Luke
That was all about the principles and the basics of instructional design. When you went inside of this course, people were coming from all different backgrounds, all different sectors. And as you entered into the course, you selected what type of learning path that you wanted to go down. And by learning path, these were separated by different forms of sectors.
00;06;12;00 - 00;06;43;09
Luke
So you could choose between corporate America, higher education, K through 12 government nonprofit and depending upon what track that you selected. It would customize the content and the discussions based around the sector. So a discussion that was going to be talking about it from a corporate America lens around a problem or working with SMEs or whatever it's going to be is going to be different compared to K through 12 or for a government agency.
00;06;43;20 - 00;07;05;13
Luke
And at the end of the day, no matter what track that you selected, you had the opportunity as far as you're being able to move in between tracks. You were not stuck inside of there. Because of course, things happen. Your goals could change. Maybe you actually changed your job during this time frame. So one area is now more relevant for you compared to another.
00;07;05;21 - 00;07;31;26
Luke
Whatever the case, wanted to make sure that there was flexibility and freedom built inside of this. But at the end of the day, everything's still aligned to the same types of goals and outcomes and objectives that we created. This essentially in a nutshell, folks that is UDL is that we were able to customize the different forms of content and activities and assessments based around the needs of where you were coming from.
00;07;32;02 - 00;07;53;14
Luke
And making sure that we would meet those needs. Now, as you can probably imagine, that took a lot of time. Special shout out to my friends William Cronje and Tara Van der Lugt for being able to put everything together. And it really hats off to them. They were absolutely the superstars behind Edu Flow Academy and really this course in particular.
00;07;53;25 - 00;08;19;20
Luke
But this took quite a bit of human power to really create. Now, luckily for all of us, we are living in a day and age of 2023, soon to be 2024. And hey, there's this little thing called AI that we could probably get a helping hand from. So how does this work? If we're thinking about UDL and AI, where does this really all come together?
00;08;19;21 - 00;08;51;00
Luke
Well, let me give you a use case in the real world of where this is happening right now pertaining to AI accessibility, UDL everything of sorts. If you haven't yet heard of this organization before, I would highly encourage you to look them up. They are called Be My Eyes the way that be my eyes works. Think about it like a person with a visual impairment would be using this app, which essentially kind of looks and feels like face time.
00;08;51;07 - 00;09;20;23
Luke
And if they wanted to be able to either get some direction or clarity or to be able to help them out with day to day tasks, they could essentially use this app to face time. Another person who volunteered for my eyes and they would be able to help out the person on the other side of a screen. So imagine a person who is fully blind going inside of their refrigerator and they can't read the expiration date on their yogurt, their milk, eggs, anything of the sort.
00;09;21;01 - 00;09;45;13
Luke
They can use this app in order to hold their phone into the fridge and they can ask the other person on the other side, Hey, can you tell me what's the expiration date on this Greek yogurt? And they could say what the date is going to be. Now, is this helpful on its own? 100%. But as you would probably imagine, this also can be a bit odd, a bit intrusive if you're trying to get help for something.
00;09;45;13 - 00;10;17;11
Luke
And it feels a bit odd, essentially. But you do have a person, you really don't know walking through your home with you. So is there an alternative to being able to do so? Will be. My eyes said yes. And they said, Why can't we partner with open A.I. in order to put this inside of an app so that now when a person goes to their fridge and they hold up the Greek yogurt using the app and using A.I., it could scan it and then it can actually say what the expiration date is.
00;10;17;21 - 00;10;38;00
Luke
But not just that. We can really take things one step further. Imagine going into your closet using this app to be able to scan everything and say, Tell me what's inside of his closet. Can you find for me the purple shirts? But then can you actually find a matching outfit for the purple shirt based around the other clothes that I have inside of here?
00;10;38;08 - 00;11;02;08
Luke
Or if you walk into the pantry and essentially scan in the pantry and be able to say, Tell me of all of the foods I have in this pantry, what dish could I make tonight for dinner? And right now, the app can actually do that. And the one thing with this that truly blew my mind when watching one of these videos is that they had a user with a visual impairment and she was going into the gym.
00;11;02;15 - 00;11;34;02
Luke
And then what she did was that she scanned the gym and said, Find for me the treadmill. From there, the app said, No problem, it's in the back right hand corner. Do you need assistance getting there? She said yes. So I started to actually talk outloud about how to get to the back corner of the room, but then from there she can actually take the phone, scan the rest of the room and then say, Tell me with all of the available types of exercise equipment, create for me a workout program for the day.
00;11;34;07 - 00;11;58;17
Luke
And it could do it just sort of like magic. It's not magic, but it kind of feels like magic to be able to put that all together. And this is truly in my opinion, this is revolutionary. This is where we should be. Using A.I., is to help with all students, all learners, especially thinking about things from an accessibility perspective.
00;11;58;28 - 00;12;40;14
Luke
Where could this go if we wanted to be able to help out someone? As far as for learning more about culinary, about fashion, about the arts, about personal training, whatever it is, this truly is going to open up more doors for people. But one update came out the other day that really was like, Oh, oh, okay. I can see how we as instructional designers, teachers, educators, trainers, how can we really use this right now to help not just us, but our subject matter experts, anyone else really we're working with in order to create a type of a learning experience?
00;12;40;24 - 00;13;14;15
Luke
And this update, in case you haven't seen it yet, because also there's a thousand updates every single day. What it feels like with AI. But this actually was a significant one, is that now you can create your own customized chat team. Essentially, you're creating what's being called a GPT inside of here. You can work with GPT. You need the fourth version by the way, for that's the paid version, which is how they're going to get you in order to use their more advanced versions of the products.
00;13;14;15 - 00;13;34;00
Luke
But that is what it is that you can essentially say that you want to create a GPT of your own and it can walk you through a process about how to be able to do this. You don't need to be a software engineer. You don't need to know anything about coding. All you really need to be able to do is to keep on entering in the promise that you're looking for.
00;13;34;01 - 00;13;56;10
Luke
And this can help you with creating this new customized GPT. So I had this idea of can I create my own customized GPT that focused on universal design for learning and focused on accessibility? Could I make this happen? So I fire this thing up and then this was my prompt that I said. I said that I'm an instructional designer.
00;13;56;10 - 00;14;19;04
Luke
My priority for online learning is to be accessible. Let's say that you are the greatest instructional designer ever when it comes to thinking about accessible, witty. Create for me a team that will help others to make sure that their designs are accessible from here. It started to build it out and it started to be able to process. It created for me a little logo.
00;14;19;05 - 00;14;47;18
Luke
It essentially nicknamed it at first the accessible design helper. And then it said, okay, let's start to refine this and really figure out your goals. And it asked me a few types of follow up questions. It says, in terms of guiding instructional designers, what specific areas of online learning accessibility would you like this to focus on? For example, should it concentrate on visual design, content structuring, or something else?
00;14;47;23 - 00;15;10;29
Luke
And to that I simply replied, Yes, all of it. And all of a sudden it gave me a preview that essentially has this little logo and it says, expert in designing accessible online learning materials. And it has a couple of different types of examples that people can ask it about with questions and it would appear. So essentially some of the questions are, how can I make my course more accessible?
00;15;11;05 - 00;15;33;07
Luke
Help me review my design for accessibility, suggest accessible design practices and what are key accessibility features. So I started to be able to enter in a few more things and eventually I gave it its own nickname that's called your UDL pal, and it has a couple of different types of more UDL perspectives and spins to it in order to help out other people.
00;15;33;07 - 00;15;56;21
Luke
As far as you're being able to use it. Now, while I was programing your UDL pal, I remembered one thing in particular about CBT and that it's notorious. We're talking about learning styles. Learning styles have been debunked for years. There's no credibility to them. There is no significant amount of research that backs them in any way, shape or form.
00;15;56;28 - 00;16;22;16
Luke
They simply don't exist. They are not credible. So I tested this out to be able to say, Tell me about learning styles. Sure enough, it went into a whole thing about them and I was like, All right, let me stop you right there. Learning styles are not real. If someone asks about learning styles, I want you to tell them that indeed they are not credible and to gently guide them towards seeing the light.
00;16;22;29 - 00;16;45;02
Luke
Sure enough, they learned and that was able to share a bit more about the next time. But I said, Tell me about learning styles. It did when I asked it to be able to do and it mentioned more about the idea of learning preferences and trying to be able to guide people down towards the correct path. I had to clean up a few more details, but then all of a sudden it was ready and good to go.
00;16;45;02 - 00;17;12;15
Luke
And I shared it on LinkedIn the other day and I'll put a inside of a show notes. I'll make sure to link to this because right now you can use this and be able to go through it with this all yourself. Now, did this take me a huge amount of time? No, not at all. At most, I spent 20 minutes on this thing, so if I wanted to spend even more time to really make this as amazing as humanly possible, I certainly could.
00;17;12;24 - 00;17;36;08
Luke
But as far as, ah, just being able to try to experiment with it, to use it, to have other people use it. This is kind of like my MVP of testing this out to see how this will work. But once again, let's think about this for a second. We now have an AI accessibility buddy who can actually review what we are creating in order to give us better tips.
00;17;36;16 - 00;18;06;15
Luke
It can provide better suggestions based around what we currently have and where we want to be able to go. It can create for you a checklist as far as we're saying. Give me the top ten ways to make my designs more accessible or anything else of the sorts you now have this type of an accessibility companion that you never had before, and instead it could be taking a significant amount of time doing this research, trying to figure out everything out and thinking more about your designs.
00;18;06;20 - 00;18;30;01
Luke
Now, the one angle that I really wanted to be able to hear from a little bit more about to see what would happen is that there is certainly talks and conversations that I have had with other people and they mentioned about their hurdles and their challenges when thinking about UDL. And some of those challenges are usually something along the lines of a this is hard to do.
00;18;30;01 - 00;18;51;01
Luke
Which don't get me wrong when thinking about trying to design a learning experience for everyone, it does take a significant amount of mental brainpower to really put this all together. A lot of pilot programs, a lot of testing, a lot of collecting feedback and really just trying to get as creative as you possibly can to do this from all perspectives.
00;18;51;01 - 00;19;11;15
Luke
Not only is this hard and bad, it can take time. It also can be costly. Is it worth it in the long run? 1,000%. But for someone who is trying to be able to learn how to do this at the very beginning, I can see why this would be a significant hurdle if there was a type of financial implication going into this entire mix as well.
00;19;11;26 - 00;19;35;26
Luke
So if all of that said, I was thinking about this and I was like, there's a few different types of concerns that I've heard about over the years. If I asked this customized CBT in order to share more about addressing those concerns and providing more details around how to really tackle these types of topics, could it do it?
00;19;36;15 - 00;20;05;26
Luke
Now, I wasn't really sure. So sure enough, I mentioned about how summary of what I just said to you. I've heard about a couple of different concerns over the years in regards to UDL and accessibility. Please tell me these concerns and tell me how to solve each one of them. Sure enough, it gave me a bunch of bullet points of all of these things talking about initial investment versus long term benefits, broadening the audience reach legal and ethical considerations.
00;20;05;26 - 00;20;26;26
Luke
Quality and engagement. Innovation and improvement. ROI Return on investment. And it broke down each one of these steps and trying to be able to help the user to know about where to go from here. So how to be able to talk about this with stakeholders, but also to make sure that they are getting to the end destination of helping out all people.
00;20;27;02 - 00;20;47;24
Luke
So all in all, this is pretty cool. This is something that we should be using AI for. As many people talk about the dangers of AI and all of these other different forms of negative points. And yes, understand, I get it. AI is not perfect. There's a bunch of things that we just simply don't know about yet. There's a lot of unknown.
00;20;48;03 - 00;21;10;09
Luke
But if we're talking about the greater good, if we're talking about thinking of where we can use AI in the future to help out more people, this is where we should be going. We should be thinking about it from UDL perspective and accessibility perspective and inclusion perspective. We should be really thinking about this from all perspectives really, and trying to be able to figure out how we can improve our designs.
00;21;10;15 - 00;21;27;05
Luke
And once again, this is live. It's free. It's to the public. You can use it if you want to be able to go and check this out right now, you can. And I would encourage you to actually take a type of a sample exercise or assignment you have, upload it into your UDL pal and see what it tells you.
00;21;27;08 - 00;21;57;23
Luke
Ask it to be able to give you a rating on a one through five Likert scale of how great is this from a UDL perspective? It will give you a rating. It will actually tell you a bit more about different types of suggestions of how you can improve upon things. I actually did this with a different type of assignment that I have, but I ask you to think about from a DEIJB lens to review everything and give me suggestions about what I could do to make it better to serve all people.
00;21;58;01 - 00;22;18;03
Luke
And sure enough, it gave me some suggestions and it's extremely interesting to be able to think about this. As far as for the fact that you now essentially have your own type of reviewer of sorts to be able to guide you and to provide more alternatives that you would never think about on your own. Now, once again, please be smart about this.
00;22;18;03 - 00;22;40;24
Luke
Don't put any intellectual property. Don't do anything silly. Don't put in student data. Don't do anything that could potentially be a hazard to you or your organization. Please be smart about. But if it's anonymous, if it can't be tied back into anything, if it's not related to IP or anything of a sort, then yeah, give it a try, upload a sample assignment, see what it says, or if you are truly stuck.
00;22;41;00 - 00;23;01;16
Luke
Ask it to be able to give you a sample of an exercise that does perfectly capture the ideas about UDL, DEI accessibility or anything else you're trying to be able to work with. And if you create your own GPT, by the way, let me know a few of you already have you been tagging me on LinkedIn saying thanks for the inspiration.
00;23;01;16 - 00;23;27;07
Luke
Here's what I created and they've been extremely interesting. What you've been creating so far has been extremely fun and cool to be able to experiment with and to test out myself. So try this yourself today. Once again, you need for. I forget how much that cost per month. I think it's like $20 per month. Worth it for me in order to invest in this, and especially since I will have more plans to keep on experiment.
00;23;27;07 - 00;23;48;15
Luke
Think of AI in using and the future business did actually make sense for me to be able to purchase. Maybe this does make sense for you to use as well, but that is all I wanted to be able to cover with you today. Reminder once again. Next cohort for Instructional Design Institute starts on December 11th. Be sure to get your applications in before that deadline.
00;23;48;21 - 00;24;16;01
Luke
Also, if you have any questions for me, you can always find me over on LinkedIn or you can send me over an email luke@drlukehobson.com But that is all I have for you today. Stay nerdy out there and I'll talk to you next time.
