Dr. Ann Gagné, Guild Companion and Senior Educational Developer, Accessibility & Inclusion, Brock University and host of the Accessagogy podcast, explains why we should have a commitment to making the spaces where we share Ruskinian ideas accessible.

ACCESSIBILITY TO RUSKIN

I am sure from the title of this piece some may be thinking that this is going to be a piece about how we can include Ruskin in more conversations in schools and in the media. In some ways it is, but it is about more than that. It is about how we should have a commitment to making the spaces where we share Ruskinian ideas accessible, in person on campuses, or virtually on Zoom, or on social media accounts. I will provide some straightforward, actionable suggestions in terms of what could be done going forward, but first I think it is important to start of the beginning and how I come to be sharing this with you right now.

I came to the kind of work that I do, which is supporting faculty in higher education institutions with accessible pedagogy and inclusive course design, from Ruskin. I have written about how I came to Ruskin on the Victorian Web. My work on The Ethics of The Dust in my dissertation, and in my subsequent monograph, allowed me to think about how closely the sensory informs the kind of learning spaces we encounter and create.

The scene in The Ethics of The Dust where The Old Lecturer asks the schoolgirls to act as atoms (233-237), is a piece of sensory pedagogy as well as performance-based pedagogy. The schoolgirls reflect and enact proximity and distance, but also come to understand learning in a collective and collaborative way. I use these principles in the work I do as an educational developer, by reminding faculty, instructors, and graduate students of how design choices can exclude the very learners one is trying to include. 

Learning collectively and collaboratively is premised on everyone being able to do the activity or assignment as instructed by the instructor. The schoolgirls all had to move simultaneously to achieve the crystal structures The Old Lecturer suggests. But with a 2024 lens to this passage so many pedagogical questions arise. What happens if one of the schoolgirls was a wheelchair user? Was the space they were doing this activity accessible? What if one of the students was Deaf or hard of hearing, what sort of supports did The Old Lecturer have to ensure they could participate in a meaningful way?

These are the kinds of questions and reflections I bring to consultations with faculty, but it is also the kinds of questions and reflections I want to bring to the Companions as we think about the ways we would want to make Ruskin more accessible to others. I know there have been great pieces on how Ruskin is in fact the exact kind of thinker we need in a time of COVID and many other simultaneous socio-economic and socio-political tragedies, such as the great piece on Ruskin and work from Hill (2019) in The Financial Times, or Dinah Birch’s (2017) piece in the Times Literary Supplement. Some of these pieces do talk about how to bring Ruskin to the masses, but I fear that the masses others want to bring Ruskin to are masses that have a very particular socio-economic, geographic, and bodymind lived experience. In short, I would like us to collectively think who we think our Ruskinian community is, and provide suggestions as to how we could make Ruskin, and the work we do on and about Ruskin more accessible to those with disabilities, more accessible to those who don’t live in the UK or the US, and more accessible to those who don’t have a lot of disposable income, or any combination of these identities.

We need to be more collectively committed to making articles, resources, and websites about Ruskin digitally accessible. There are many tools that we can use to support the accessibility of the documents and websites we create. For most of you using Microsoft products, these come equipped with accessibility checkers. These accessibility checkers will go through documents, like Word and PowerPoint, and indicate issues with headings, colour contrast, or images that don’t have alt-texts. 

Alt-texts or alternative texts are descriptions of images that are added to documents or websites that support those who use screen readers, or may be blind or have low vision.  This is particularly important for work on Ruskin when his visual work and art is shared. I have a podcast episode that is 11 minutes long that explains what alt-texts are and shares resources on how to create inclusive alt-text.

WebAIM also has an accessibility checker that works with browsers to identify accessibility errors on web pages. Determining web page accessibility gaps and then having conversations with people who are responsible for updating those websites is a great inclusive accessibility practice. With the advent of the European EN 301 549 Digital Accessibility Standard there will be more and more pressure to have documents, resources, and web sites to be accessible. Therefore, starting to think about them now and the ways you can support accessibility is a good proactive way to be in inclusive community. 

An easy way to support accessibility is to make sure that captions are enabled for Zoom meetings. I have tinnitus and I need captions on some days to support my ability to engage with others online. Some do not think to have the captions on as default, and that creates awkward asks or simply means that people will stop attending meetings because they are not accessible to them. There are instructions on how to enable captions in Zoom. This would be very helpful to so many in online meetings, and I hope this reminder will encourage you to ask for these to be enabled for every online meeting you are in so that the accessibility work is not always put on those who need the accessibility support.

Another way to support accessibility and inclusion is to use plain language where possible. Plain language refers to the kinds of words we use to express and explain ideas. I have another eleven minute podcast with resources to share on plain language and this resource from The Sensory Trust is a very good overview of what you can do to support plain language in your work. I will admit that I am probably one of the worst at writing in plain language, but I have tried with this piece as I know I am writing about concepts and sharing resources that are new to so many.

Another suggestion that will help engagement and accessibility from people in many different spaces, is to have ways to participate asynchronously.  Do not assume that participants are all in the same country (or time zone) when organizing events or assume they have the income to be able to fly across countries and continents to come to an event. The amount of times someone in the Ruskin community has told me to “just go to Venice” or “just fly to Los Angeles” in the last eight or so years is a lot. There are a lot of assumptions in those asks and comments. I live in Canada, in a smaller city with no access to international flights unless I go to Toronto. Also flights are expensive. It would be a lot more inclusive if we started thinking about how others could participate asynchronously, maybe by adding thoughts to a shared Google document, or even recorded events that could be shared, instead of suggesting international flights.

I am committed to accessibility work, and to reminding everyone of ways we can include more people in conversations.  If we think of accessibility to Ruskin not just in terms of what Ruskin has said, but how we are closing off access to Ruskin to many disabled, low income, and geographically disparate participants by the ways we build in barriers to accessing events and resources, we can continue a collective commitment to Ruskinian values of inclusion. I am happy to chat with any Companion who would be interested in making their work more accessible, and I hope this piece starts a conversation about how we can collectively do better when it comes to accessibility. 

Ann Gagné

Website

References

Birch, D. (2017). Clarity is poetry: Why John Ruskin is more relevant than ever. Times Literary Supplement. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/politics-society/social-cultural-studies/john-rusking-more-important-than-ever-essay-dinah-birch

Gagné, A. (Host). (2023, March 13). Episode 2- Alt Text. [Audio podcast episode]. Accessagogy https://anngagne.ca/podcast/episode-2-alt-text/

---. (2023, October 4). Episode 13- Alt Text. [Audio podcast episode]. Accessagogy https://anngagne.ca/podcast/episode-13-plain-language/

Gagné, A. (2019). How I came to Ruskin. Victorian Web. https://victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/encounters/gagne.html

Hill, A. (2019). Ruskin’s revival: can the great Victorian make us happier at work? Financial Times.  https://www.ft.com/content/f0bff442-1d92-11e9-b2f7-97e4dbd3580d

Ruskin, J. (1905). The Ethics of the Dust. In Cook & Wedderburn Eds.  The Complete Works of John Ruskin. London: George Allen.