Alex Burke Barrier Free Learning for All

"Learners are never looking for the easy way out of schooling, but the right way in."

Patricia L. Vail (1987)

This website has ideas and resources to help learners, teachers and their families understand what barriers to learning are, plus how and why to get over, under, around them! Visitors are encouraged to think about their own role in removing barriers for future generations.

What is a barrier?

To one person, a printed page is something that makes them feel happy. But to a person who has a visual disability or any kind of print reading challenge, that page is a barrier. A solution might be to have different ways to read the page: for example. changing the colour of the page, or listening to the text. 

Try it yourself. Click on the blue Accessibility Icon with the person in the circle.

. 

• colour (page background and text)
• font (font face, serif, non-serif, dyslexic-friendly)
• font size, kerning and letter spacing
• line height
• image visibility (show or hide images to minimize distraction or give context)
• link highlight (make the links easy to see or less distracting) or
• reset all

Hidden barriers - We can't see always see what people are feeling, but it is still real!

Often people don't really understand a barrier until it happens to them. So part of the goal of this site, is to help people understand what barriers might be and feel like. No two people are the same. But there are many options which will help people. You might even find a new way to do something that could help others. 

Why don't people just use the services at schools, universities or work?

This is the heart of why making all classrooms barrier free is important. Ideally, people would use support services. But for some people, it is hard to accept that a learner is different. They might feel unhappy about needing help, or the family might think it is shameful or that a learner is "just not good at school". 

But are these barriers real?

Absolutely. Everyone wants to succeed. The hardest thing for learners is the feeling that others believe they are not trying hard enough. Within a family, siblings have equal potential, but some may need to use a keyboard rather than a pen, or read with their ears, rather than their eyes. It doesn't matter how we get information in and out, as long as we don't have a barrier in front of us.