Course and learning material

The study program takes place under the Flipped Classroom concept, namely the students prepare the theory at home and the practice is then discussed during the lecture. For this purpose, all documents must be posted online at least two weeks in advance.

However, the documents are rarely accessible, for example because of a comment that was written by hand or a scanned image that has not gone through OCR recognition. I solve this problem with the help of two assistants who also study law at UZH. They make the documents accessible for me.

The list of teaching materials is always announced two weeks before the start of the semester, but I ask for it two months in advance, since the teaching materials are often not available electronically and if they are, then only in a format that is not accessible. There is an organization in which a team works that focuses on an accessible and electronic implementation of course material.

Accessible documents

There are many reasons why documents should be accessible. In the following, I would like to explain one of them more specifically:

It’s a fact that in a law degree program, you’re basically only working with text. So, theoretically, I could use an OCR tool like Finereader to scan in a text. That would technically work, and I could read the text using a screen reader. However, the problem remains that the style sheets are lost in the process.

Why are style sheets in Word so important?

A small note about the screen reader: Those who attended our training courses will remember that a screen reader is navigated with keyboard shortcuts. So, when I’m on a page, I can use the “h key” to jump to headings, the “l key” to jump to lists, and so on. With this kind of navigation, I can jump through a web page pretty fast. However, this only works if there is a semantic structure on a page. Without going into technical details, you can think of semantics on the web like style sheets in Word.

If the style sheets are correctly used in a Word document, I can tell the screen reader to change its mode and I can jump through a Word document just as fast as I can on the web. I can jump to headings, tables, etc. In a document with more than 800 pages, you can imagine that the bare text (without style sheets) is very inefficient. I would have to read the whole text. With style sheets, I can jump to specific chapters or simply skip the famous “preface” of the author 😉 This is why accessible teaching materials are so important!

Infrastructure, cafeteria etc.

The following, I assume, will apply to 95% of universities, regardless of which country we are talking about; perhaps it is very different in the USA or England.

Those who don’t enjoy become unenjoyable with time, so I prefer to enjoy a cup of coffee every once in a while. Of course, I was looking forward to finding out, where the coffee machines are situated. To my disappointment, the initial enthusiasm disappeared relatively quickly: Although there is a coffee machine, it cannot be operated non-visually. Unfortunately, the machine was designed with a touch display. Touch without a screen reader is like flying blind.

However, I must add: The ZHAW is aware of the coffee machine problem, they have already contacted me about it. Currently, the ZHAW is trying to find new solutions. Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in the testing of a proposed solution. Using a QR code on the display, you can now enter your choice of beverage via your cell phone. This doesn’t work badly so far, but the product names are still a bit strange, which they intend to adjust.

When I go to the cafeteria to eat, I always have to rely on someone to go with me to get food. The concept consists of putting together menus. Something similar to this concept exists, I think, in the Migrosrestaurant. Personally, I’m not a big fan of that, because I can’t just eat spontaneously. However, this doesn’t affect me much, since I’m relatively rarely in the cafeteria and almost always eat out.

You can also buy sandwiches and salads. They are available in a fridge, which can be opened with your student card. The problem is: The food items do not have a fixed place. One day they are at the bottom and the next day at the top. However, this problem cannot be solved easily. For a start, a strict order in the refrigerator would be helpful. Before anyone raises the objection of an app, this would definitely work, but then I would have to take out every sandwich or every salad and scan it using the app. I would have to take half a day off work for this. I don’t know if the foundation would like it – I certainly wouldn’t 😉

Another problem are the garbage containers. You know them e.g. from the train station where there are always several ones standing side by side. Each container is intended for something specific, plastic bottles, paper or aluminum, for example. At the university, the trash containers are nicely distributed, and as a sighted person you can see pretty quickly where you have to dispose your plastic bottle. As a blind person, however, it’s not quite so easy. Unless you always use the same one. It would be easy to label them additionally with braille. To interrupt the train of thought that may come up now, “Well, you could memorize them.” No, I can’t. The sequence is never the same. I have already addressed this as well.

The issue with the labels can also be found in the rooms. Before a new semester begins, I practice finding my way to the rooms with an O&M teacher. In this case, O&M stands for orientation and mobility. There are teachers who are trained to teach blind people new paths. If the rooms were labeled with braille, it would be an immense relief. Again, this does not seem too complex to me. Most elevators already come with the labels. That’s the kind of thing I would like to see in new buildings in general, so that you don’t have to discuss at all whether you need braille lettering or not. If a sighted person sees a number, it should also be available in braille.

Something that, in my opinion, is not acceptable at all and should be considered a serious problem, even if the ZHAW is not directly involved: There is a student organization that sends invitations to events and information to all students by email. However, this information is only available as an image. I don’t know if the people in charge think this is cool, but I haven’t seen anything this bad in my whole career as an accessibility consultant, especially since the pictures don’t even have alternative texts. The problem was also already brought up by me last fall.

Conclusion

Overall, I feel comfortable at the ZHAW, I have a great class, the lecturers are very accommodating and the people in charge of the study program make a lot of effort to make me feel at home. In general, however, you can tell that there were no blind students in my faculty before me. I’d like to end with a short anecdote:

Sighted people work very visually, which is not surprising. When I sit in the lecture and I have an intelligent answer to the lecturer’s question – yes, in fact I also have intelligent answers from time to time – then the lecturer looks at me. It is usually the case that students then know that they can speak. Of course, the problem in my case was that I didn’t know that I was meant, until I was told so by my classmate. The lecturers had to get used to always addressing me by my last name when it’s my turn to speak.