Overview of accessible personas

These personas are fictional characters created to represent students with different disabilities and access requirements. They were co-created with students with lived experience from SLAC (Student Learning Advisory Committee). By considering these personas, and the collective experiences they represent, you can create more inclusive and accessible learning experiences for all students.

It’s important to note that while these personas can provide valuable insights, they are based on generalisations and may not fully represent the diversity and full spectrum of individuals with disabilities. Even people with the same disability or medical condition can have different access requirements. Therefore, they should be used as a guide and not a definitive rule, as individuals are the experts of their own experiences.  

SLAC (Student Learning Advisory Committee) is a group of students aiming to change the narrative that students with disabilities or access requirements are “SLAC”KERS. They are offered paid work through the Education Portfolio and the Accessibility Service to meet once a month and provide feedback on how to make UTS more accessible.  

The main audience for the personas are teaching staff and the wider learning and teaching community. However, they are useful for any academic staff or professional staff who have anything to do with the student experience at UTS.  

You might have been sent a link to a persona by the Accessibility Service, you might have attended a workshop on inclusive practices and been directed here for further reading, or you might have stumbled upon these in the hopes of improving your teaching practices.  

However you got here, these are some tips to get the most out of the personas:   

1. Remember personas are fictional characters, based on an amalgamation of people, and the specifics we have included might be different to an individual student you encounter. If that’s the case, the individual is the expert in their own experiences of disability; follow their recommendations for themselves.  
2. Start by familiarising yourself with the persona(s), understanding their unique goals, accessibility requirements and frustrations.  
3. Reflect on your own teaching practice, and how it might help alleviate frustrations, or inadvertently add to the frustrations. Accessible and inclusive practices are a learning curve, and no one is ever an expert because different people have different needs. Don’t be dismayed if there are practices you have identified that you could do more intentionally.  
4. Identify what is in your sphere of influence to change.  
5. Based on your sphere of influence, identify elements you can do to change your practice to be more intentionally inclusive and accessible, and then implement.  
6. Get feedback from your students.
7. Repeat, to continue to improve your teaching practice.  

These tips are helpful for when you are designing a new subject, designing assessments, delivering a class or uploading content into Canvas.