I am working on accessibility in our lab courses, and starting small with a barrier that is pretty easy to remove. I hope this will become a series of usable conversations as we navigate improving lab experiences for our students!

I assume (with anecdotal evidence) that a portion of students are filtered out of choosing certain programs of study because of perceived inaccessibility. One of these areas of inaccessibility in our program (biology) is the frequent expectation of student-delivered talks in front of peers. Many lab courses require poster presentations or talks, as do many seminar type smaller lecture style courses.

This specific accessibility challenge bubbled to the surface for me last year when two important people in my life were tackling a similar issue from different lenses. One was a brave student with an obvious stutter who enrolled in my course. The second was my daughter, a Speech Language Pathologist, who was at the same time attending a conference specific to stuttering. I have learned a lot through conversations with her on best practices for this situation as her profession suggests. I also learned a lot on implementation of usable strategies as I worked with my student last term to scaffold a  solution.

There are several disorders of speech that  can be addressed together for our purposes. These include stuttering, cluttering, and apraxia of speech. None of these reflect cognitive ability. SLP therapy for older children or adults with stuttering (specifically) encourages open communication. For example, a high school student may be encouraged to design and deliver a presentation to their class on stuttering and what that means for them. By the time these students enter our university classrooms, we can generally assume that they have lived experience navigating their speech with peers in a learning environment. So, unless a secondary problem arises, it is not necessary (as an instructor) to navigate those relationships. If it becomes necessary, the messaging can simply be that classroom expectation is to give adequate time for all voices to be expressed and heard.

When thinking about changing expectations in our classrooms to accommodate diversity in this arena, my SLP suggests not letting students out of the specific requirement. Rather, we should change the requirement to include all students.

Primarily, this means not timing talks.

The Stuttering Conference (mentioned earlier) included academic talks by participants who stutter. Nothing in this conference was timed in recognition of individuals’ needs to express their ideas in a time frame that works for them. I have translated this to my classrooms by fine tuning expectations for content/structure of talks and eliminating all timed expectations.

My anecdotal observations (across 2 years and 3 courses) is that students who are nervous about speaking in front of peers (for any reason, not just the abilities mentioned above) actually want to participate and are encouraged by the elimination of this small barrier.