Accessibility is for Everyone: What I Learned from My Podcast with Ginger Dewey

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Ginger Dewey on my podcast, My EdTech Life. Ginger is a former math teacher and faculty trainer who has dedicated her career to making education more accessible for all students.

Our conversation centered around the importance of universal design for learning (UDL) and how tools created for accommodations can benefit every student. As an educator myself, I was fascinated to get Ginger’s insight on this topic.

One story that resonated with me was about a blind student Ginger taught in college algebra. Since the course relied heavily on graphing, Ginger had to get creative in order for this student to learn the material. She made a tactile graphing board with yarn and pushpins, allowing the student to “see” the graphs through touch.

While this technique was designed specifically for this one visually impaired student, Ginger realized it could help other students grasp graphing concepts in a concrete way before moving to the more abstract. Her approach showed me how accommodations for some can become effective learning tools for all if we keep an open and curious mindset.

Ginger also discussed the power of text-to-speech tools like ReadSpeaker in making content accessible. As an English…