PgCert

Designing for Cognitive Accessibility – A Plain Language and Content Structure Intervention

As I develop a fully online Graphic Design course at UAL, I am proposing an intervention focused on improving the cognitive accessibility of course content. This project aims to make written and visual material more inclusive by embedding principles of plain language, clarity, and structured design from the outset.

In my experience teaching at both BA and MA levels, I have seen how complex language, academic jargon, and inconsistent formatting can present barriers to many students—particularly those who are neurodivergent, have learning differences, or speak English as an additional language. I believe that accessible content benefits all learners and is fundamental to inclusive practice.

My intervention will involve creating a plain-language framework to guide how I write and structure course materials. This will include strategies for simplifying language, using clear and consistent formatting, incorporating visual aids, and providing glossaries for technical terms. I will pilot this framework by rewriting one week’s worth of course content, redesigning it with accessibility in mind.

To evaluate the impact, I will gather feedback from students and/or academic support specialists through a short survey or reflective discussion. I will use this feedback to refine the approach and develop a practical toolkit or checklist that can be applied across the course as it evolves.

This project is grounded in the principles of Universal Design for Learning, which advocates for flexible approaches to teaching that accommodate diverse learner needs from the outset (CAST, 2018). By proactively addressing cognitive accessibility, I aim to create a more equitable learning environment where all students can engage meaningfully with the material, regardless of their background or learning profile.

Ultimately, I hope this intervention will set a standard for inclusive content design within online teaching and contribute to a broader culture of accessibility in higher education.

CAST (2018) Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Wakefield, MA: CAST. Available at: http://udlguidelines.cast.org (Accessed: 25 May 2025).

Reflective Account: Faith and Inclusive Teaching during Ramadan

When working as an Associate Lecturer on the residential BA Graphic Branding and Identity course at LCC, I have become increasingly aware of how religious identity intersects with other aspects of students’ lived experiences, and how these intersections influence their engagement with learning. This reflection emerged particularly during Ramadan, when I observed that Muslim students were navigating their faith while managing the demands of a studio-based course in a shared learning environment.

Ramadan can significantly affect students’ daily rhythms like energy levels, eating and sleeping patterns, and participation in activities. In our course context, students often fast during long contact hours and are balancing attendance and participation with the physical and emotional demands of religious observance. What became evident was that not all students observing Ramadan communicated their needs with the same level of comfort or confidence.

This variation in response made me reflect more deeply on how intersecting factors such as cultural background and confidence within the institutional system may affect how students advocate for themselves. While some students approached staff to request changes to tutorial timings, a private space for prayer, or flexibility in attendance, others remained silent, despite signs of fatigue or disengagement. These differences cannot be attributed to one single factor such as religion alone, but to the complex interplay of identity and experience.

Rekis (2022) provides a helpful lens for understanding this complexity through the concept of epistemic injustice. Rekis argues that students with minoritised religious identities often face subtle forms of exclusion. In this context, silence is not necessarily a sign of disengagement, but may be shaped by institutional cultures that don’t always make space for diverse expressions of need.

In response to these reflections, we as the course team set up a small multi-faith prayer and reflection space during Ramadan in a corner of the studio typically used for private tutorials. Its presence enabled students to practice their religion or take a moment to rest discreetly during class time. We also adjusted our tutorial scheduling to allow more flexibility during Ramadan, recognising that students may not be at their most alert or productive during typical session hours.

This experience has reinforced my understanding of inclusive teaching as an active, ongoing, and relational process. It requires attentiveness not just to general policy or accommodation, but to the nuanced and individual ways students inhabit their identities. Moving forward, I intend to continue creating spaces, both physical and pedagogical, where students feel empowered to express their needs without fear of judgement.

Rekis, J. (2022) ‘Religious Identity and Epistemic Injustice: An Intersectional Account’, Hypatia, 37(1), pp. 107–124.

Rethinking Normalcy in Education

DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education challenges the dominant narratives about what is considered “normal” (Connor, Ferri and Annamma, 2016). It highlights how race, ability, and sex intersect to shape students’ educational experiences. Intersectionality is grounded in intersectionality theory originally coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1991) which argues that people experience multiple overlapping systems of oppression not separately, but simultaneously. 

Growing up in Germany and attending university there, I was immersed in a system where the pressure to conform to rigid standards. Teachers, professors, and administrators in Germany must undergo stringent health evaluations before being granted civil servant status and securing a permanent contract. One of the most troubling aspects of this process is that any history of mental health treatment, such as attending therapy or taking antidepressants, can disqualify an individual. The rationale given by the state is that civil servants must be “fit” to work reliably until retirement. But what does that really mean? It feels less about true fitness and more about erasing the human complexities we all carry.

The implications of these exclusionary practices extend beyond individual discrimination. By filtering out those with lived experience of mental health challenges, the educational system loses valuable forms of insight, empathy, and resilience—qualities that could profoundly enrich pedagogy and institutional culture. Policies like these send a message to students as well: that to succeed, to belong, one must hide or suppress any form of difference or vulnerability. It creates, as DisCrit warns, an education system more concerned with managing bodies and behaviours than with nurturing diverse forms of learning, being, and knowing.

As DisCrit teaches us, such standards are far from neutral. They reflect deeply entrenched normative assumptions about ability, health, and value. In doing so, the German system reinforces a rigid ableism that DisCrit argues is central to the operation of educational systems. Yet this ableism does not operate in isolation – it intersects with other systems of oppression, including racism, sexism, and classism. The expectation of emotional neutrality and permanent health privileges a normative ideal often coded as white, middle-class, neurotypical, and masculine. This mirrors DisCrit’s analysis of how institutions reify categories of dis/ability in conjunction with race and other social markers to sort, manage, and exclude people from full participation in public life (Kozleski, 2015). In fact, the likelihood of being labelled or treated as disabled increases significantly when individuals also experience marginalisation based on race, gender, language, or socioeconomic status. Annamma, Connor, and Ferri argue (2016), dis/ability is disproportionately imposed upon those who carry multiple, intersecting identities – making disability not just a medical label but a social and political designation shaped by structures of inequality.

Reflecting on these personal and systemic realities, we must also involve a radical rethinking of who is deemed worthy to teach, to lead, and to represent education itself. Following DisCrit’s call to challenge “common sense” assumptions about ability and normalcy, we must dismantle policies and cultures that treat human complexity as a risk, rather than as a strength.

References:

Connor, D.J., Ferri, B.A. and Annamma, S.A. (eds.) (2016) DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Crenshaw, K. (1991) ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color‘, Stanford Law Review.

Kozleski, E.B. (2015) ‘Reifying categories: Measurement in search of understanding’, in Connor, D.J., Ferri, B.A. and Annamma, S.A. (eds.) DisCrit: Disability Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education. New York: Teachers College Press.

Introduction

BA Graphic Branding & Identity has been on the Amber Accountability Framework by UAL in the academic year 2022/2023. As part of the Accountability Framework we, as the teaching body, received specialist assessment training and alll our assessments have been second/triple-marked by the course leader during that year.

Evaluation

Being supervised by several parties during the assessment process surfaced emotions and insecurities within the teaching body. Our intention during any assessment process always has been to be nurturing towards the positive aspects of the student’s work, but equally highlight where there is need for improvement. “Feedback identifies a gap between what is understood has been demonstrated and the standard of performance expected” (Price et al, 2010) With the additional layer of having to take into account elements like the awarding gap, an equal spread of grades a.o. assessing students’ work became a labour of mixed emotions and started to feel in parts more political than educational. This has affected my abilitily to assess purely based on evidence leading me to doubt my own assessment procedures. 

In this case study I focus on recent summative assessment practices, specifically the complex situations us lecturers encounter in the attempt to ensure parity during the said period. As the teaching team of a Year 3 unit called ‘Self-Initiated Project’ we decided to combat these mutual emotions around the assessment by setting up rigid frameworks to help enhance transparent and fair feedback further. Ahead of the hand-in date we created pre-written feedback templates and a detailed matrix for each grade which were organised against the Learning Outcome in the Unit Briefing. Within these frameworks, the members within the teaching team were free to add their own personal assessment strategies and personal voice to make sure the written feedback didn’t become too formulaic. I approach the assessment empathetically in-line with the UAL guidelines which advises to “[connecting] with your own feelings when…writing the feedback” (Dwyer, 2020). This scaffolded approach of assessing and benchmarking student’s grades and writing the assessment using an agreed tone of voice and sentence structure has been emotionally very helpful.

Figure 1. Huber, Antonia (2023), Assessment Feedback Template, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Figure 2. Huber, Antonia (2023), Assessment Matrix, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London

Moving forward

1. As a teaching team we make sure we set aside extra time during every project briefing to unpack the academic language of the assessment criteria and learning outcomes as the same language will also be used in the written feedback. An Q&A at the end of the project briefing has been proven valuable. 
   
2. We started to include a student-led formative assessment whereby students assess themselves against the learning outcomes to enhance their embodied knowledge around the assessment criteria we deploy.
   
3. We set aside more time for feedback tutorials in the following term to be able to talk the students through the grades and the written feedback.
   
4. In the postgraduate course of Graphic Branding and Identity we introduced an asynchronous lecture around the concept of feed-forward. Feedback can only be effective when the learner understands the feedback and is willing and able to act on it (Price et al, 2010). The use of language of this concept has been particular interesting to me and I intend to dive deeper into Price’s approach.
   
5. Spaeth highlights this emotional labour of assessment and the conflict between amplifying our emotions to maximise nurturing feedback and distancing ourselves to be more efficient and mitigate burnout when assessing increasingly large volumes of students (Spaeth, 2018). I am investigating how these two elements can co-exist.

References

Dwyer, K. (2022), Compassionate feedback: Ideas for prompting reflection on compassionate approaches to feedback. Available at: https://canvas.arts.ac.uk/documents/sppreview/73b9e100-e4db-452f-8109-0600aff48b96 (Accessed: 1 April 2025)

Price, M., Handley, K., Millar, J., & O’Donovan, B. (2010) ‘Feedback: all that effort, but what is the effect?’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930903541007 (Accessed: 1 April 2025).

Spaeth, E. (2018) “On Feedback and Emotional Labour”, Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice.

UAL (2020) “Adjusted Assessment Guide for Students”. Available at: https://www.arts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/369404/Adjusted-Assessment-Guide-for-Students-2022-23-PDF-565KB.pdf (Accessed: 1 April 2025)

Contextual Background

I am comparing two teaching sessions which I helped prepare and deliver for the MA course Graphic Branding and Identity. The first session “Brand Identity” consisted of a convoluted and thematically challenging task around brand social justice and decolonisation. I used the second session “Brand Audience” in the following week as an opportunity to address the problems of the first session, deploying alternative teaching methods.

The first session’s workshop and homework task were based on an asynchronous lecture and contained a vast amount of brand references to critically unpack the topics ‘Social Justice’. The examples given were relevant,but seem to not connect with the students. Additionally the task was bolted on the previous week’s “Brand Experience” session whereby the students were asked to revisit the said brief and analyse the cultural references of their designated experience brands. We asked students to assess whether they appreciated the brand references they encountered during their brand experience as authentic or appropriated to then interrogate any issues related to decolonisation and summarise their finding using the What, So What, Now What model (Rolfe, 2001). 

Evaluation

Many students seemed confused as the task blended many different elements. On reflection, I realised the lesson dynamic was one of information selection and transfer: the knowledge in the presentation lacked a clear angle and used very academic language. The task was not well scaffolded, the outcome not fully clear and there was limited opportunity for meaning-making activities. A better scenario would allow space for students to “participate in their own information-to-knowledge transformative processes” (Morrison, 2014). 

Moving Forward

Together with the course team we drew on the negative experiences of the first session and made the following changes when planning the second session:

1. To help them empathise with the audiences, we created a workshop series which was based on Gen Z as the student cohort expressed they feel a sense of belonging with that generation.
   
2. We limited the amount of case studies in our presentation to four and we took them from Social Media to make it easily relatable.
   
3. We asked them to work collaboratively in small groups and explore their own subcultural tribes they identify with which validated their social/contextual knowledge and connected it to the lesson topic. Robin Canniford explores the concept of tribal consumption, emphasizing the “linking value” that emerges when individuals seek social connections through shared consumption experiences fostering a sense of belonging and shared identity. (Canniford 2011).
   
4. We asked them to work in small groups and set the time limit for the task to 30 minutes and share their draft findings via a pre-set up Padlet board. Padlet’s flexibility of pace, place, and mode allowed them to “[take] more responsibility for their own learning” (Gordon, 2014).

The second session was more enjoyable and meaningful for the students. I will continue to make future sessions more student-led by favouring group activities and creating opportunities to engage with the material in more relatable ways.

References

Gordon, N. (2014) Flexible Pedagogies: technology-enhanced learning. Advance HE. Available at: https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/flexible-pedagogies-technology-enhanced-learning (Accessed: 1 April 2025)

Morrison, C. D. (2014) ‘From “Sage on the Stage” to “Guide on the Side”: A Good Start.’ International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Available at: http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/vol8/iss1/4 (Accessed: 1 April  2025)

Orr, S. and Shreeve, A. (2018). Art and Design Pedagogy in Higher Education: Knowledge, Values and Ambiguity in the Creative Curriculum. London: Routledge.

Rolfe, G., Freshwater, D. and Jasper, M. (2001) Critical Reflection in Nursing and the Helping Professions: A User’s Guide. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

BRIEF: To deliver a 20 minutes Microteaching Session / the audience could be staff, students or unspecified.

In my practice as a brand designer I work with purpose-driven brands which aim to bring back traditional methods of production. In my teaching practice I am passionate about creating a learning environment which enables students to approach design by ‘thinking-through-making’ (D. A. Schön, 1992). The two objectives when choosing my object and planning the microteaching session in general have been A) that I would like to incorporate traditional craft which enables to  a deeper understanding of its medium and production mechanisms and B) that the object allows a meditative and reflective act of making while having a clear outcome in mind  to ultimately gain some ‘insider knowledge’ about the object. ‘We do not obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because ‘we’ are of the world. We are part of the world in its differential becoming.’ (Ingold, 2013). After dwelling in different ideas which ranged from darning to vegetable dying, my full-circle reflection took me to block printing which combines my own subject area and passion: printing and graphic design. Block printing is the process of printing patterns mostly using hand-carved wooden blocks. It is a slow way of printing, but it is capable of yielding highly artistic results, some of which are unobtainable by any other printing method.

In order to condense the labourious block printing process into a 20-minute microteaching session with limited resources I created a simplified version of the traditional methods by using hand-produced rubber stamps containing very simple geometric shapes (instead of wood carved blocks) and ink pads (instead of traditional inking tray, a roller and and wet ink).

I drafted a detailed session which started off with a brief two minute lecture outlining the history of the printing method and showing some examples of patterns for inspiration. I then randomly allocated 2-3 rubber stamps to each peer and handed out simple white A4 sheets of paper asking my fellow colleagues to experiment with their shapes creating a set of draft patterns, encouraging them to not overthink the task and rather work ‘quick and dirty’ for three minutes. After the warm-up task I asked all participants to choose one of their trial patterns to block print a pattern on to a piece of plain unbleached calico fabric. I allocated 15 minutes to this task asking them to reflect on their thoughts and feelings while executing a monotonous task.

I appreciated the feedback overall as positive – we talked about embodied knowledge, craft, insider-knowledge, getting into a meditative mindset, being inspired to doing printing more at home. My peers expressed that liked that it was one singular task allowing them to fully immerse themself in the singluar task.The initial draft printing on paper seem to have been helpful, some wished to have used it differently. Eva expressed that she felt her print result has been in-line with her expectation as she likes to work fast and messy. Katriona on the other hand appreciated the visual expression of her print out of character as she was surprised that felt the unknown urge to work slowly and with caution.

I had the impression that the briefing and instructions of the task had been clear and didn’t cause any confusion. In hintsight I wonder if I could have stressed more that the testing of alternative patterns on the paper is for the purpose of setting their master design. In future I would like to give clearer instruction of how to print (i.e. appling the pattern very carefully aiming for a precise outcome) to deepened the learning instead of letting each participant figure out things themselves.

Schön, D.A. (1992) The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. London: Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2013) Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge

Contextual background

Together with two colleagues we have been awarded an EDI Grant as an Associate Lecturer at BA Graphic Branding & Identity for two years in a row. While art and design education is becoming more diverse, there is still more to be done to effectively break the glass ceiling. There is a need to challenge the often taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin curricula in art and design, which can inadvertently perpetuate exclusionary practices (Richards  & Finnigan, 2015). 

Evaluation

With our grant we wanted to create a safe space to educate students about creative resilience within the design industry and motivate them embrace one’s own identity and share best practices on inclusive design. We designed a lecture and workshop series inviting diverse voices and perspectives from creative communities to give students insight into their practice and share the impact they made to ultimately inspire and break down barriers for students with disabilities themselves. 

In the first year we decided to focus on the under-presentation on women in the industry. Despite the fact that women currently account for around 60% of students enrolled in university arts and design courses, only 22% of the UK’s creative and design workforce is female (Design Council, 2018). With the project Women Up we intended to ask students to investigate the gender-specific misrepresentation of LCC alumni by going through the LCC archives as well as interviewing female LCC alumnis. Those interviews were meant to form a showcase of their creative talent through a range of informal show&tells as well as public facing exhibition.

Women Up was set up as a non-mandatory and extra-curricula activity which students could sign up to. There has been a great turn-up for the kick-off meeting which included an introduction to by an LCC archivist which brough up relevant footage to investigate. However as the term went on the students’ priorities shifted and from initially seventeen students only one turned up at our first show-and-tell and we didn’t have the workforce to exhibit our findings. 

Moving forward

When applying and planning for the grant the second year we made the following changes in the proposed project set-up to increase participation and engagement: We renamed the project to Alt+Shift and were aiming to discuss a wide range of EDI issues. We not only widened the subject areasm, but also built the EDI sessions into the curriculum. With those two elements we have witnessed a very positive change in the students’ engagement. We have successfully delivered all three panel discussions and one workshop as planned in our project proposal with an attendance ranging from 45–90 students from all three year groups of the BA. Our sessions seem to have striked the right balance between introducing them to new yet relevant EDI topics, and combining them with relevant course’s subject matter and pathways of the students into industry. It has been refreshing to students to have a platform for inspiring designers to come in, not to showcase their best work, but for honest and unfiltered ‘behind the curtains’ conversations about how they emotionally appreciated their journey with disabilities into the industries, which obsticales they encountered and how they managed to change it from within. We also recorded all session and turned them into podcast to make them more accessible and long-lasting (please click link to listen: https://shows.acast.com/altshift/episodes/altshift). During the Q&A sessions at the end of each of those four session the students expressed of a new sense of agency and empowerment to help shape the design world into a more diverse and inclusive space. 

References

Design Council (2018) Design Economy 2018: Executive Summary. Available at: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/fileadmin/uploads/dc/Documents/Design_Economy_2018_exec_summary.pdf (Accessed: 20 March 2025).​

Richards, A., & Finnigan, T. (2015). Embedding Equality and Diversity in the Curriculum: An Art and Design Practitioner’s Guide. Higher Education Academy.​

Figure 1. Huber, Antonia (2024)  alt+SHIFT Lecture Series, EDI Grant 2024, BA Graphic Branding and Identity, London College of Communication, University of the Arts London.

The brand designer Michael Johnson describes in his book “Branding in Five and a Half Steps” the role of the half step as “bridging the gap between strategic branding and the design process” (Johnson, 2016). He calls this “leap of faith moment” as the most challenging yet rewarding part of the creative process. In that very moment the designer must let go intellectual strategies and logical insights and embrace intuition, emotion, and creativity to develop visual concepts. The leap from research to design requires a shift from logical reasoning to embodied knowing, where tacit knowledge plays a crucial role (Grey & Malins, 2004).

This stage in the creative process seems to fill students with the most amount of anxiety. There have been many times in my ten years in teaching where students turn up with metaphorically blank sheets of paper and “talk me” in my tutorial through their ideas up to two/three weeks before the hand-in date. The reason why they haven’t gone put their ideas to paper yet is often because they are too afraid of making the jump of their beautiful and perfect idea in their head to giving it a physical shape.

In order to distill a sense of of excitement instead of fear to make this “leap of faith” from an conceptual idea to an initial visual expression, I try make the studens realise that communicating ideas verbally (as suppose to being shown it on paper / on the screen) has limitations. Each solely verbally described idea – by the very nature of our minds – will evoke a completely different imagine in each person’s mind. I talk them through how it currently looks in my mind. With this exercise I often manage students from turn their fearful staring at the gap into joyful laughter and the following week they eventually jumped to the making and trying stage within design. 

I want them to learn to trust their intuition (tacit knowledge) as it naturally will guide them in finding the right expression and help them understand that the design process is a messy one and full of little uncertainties. Gray and Malins highlight that the jump from strategy to design is not a straight path—it involves iteration, uncertainty but ultimately result in a beautiful outcome and add embodied knowledge to the tacit one. The studio and tutorial settings are where ideas can truly take shape, bridging the gap between research and tangible design outcomes. Design research does not follow a linear path; it is iterative, where insights from making and testing continuously refine the process(Grey & Malins, 2004).

References
Johnson, M. (2016) Branding: In Five and a Half Steps. London: Thames & Hudson.
Gray, C. and Malins, J. (2004) Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design. Farnham: Ashgate.

As a practictioner I engage in creative practices, my knowlege as a practioner is often tacit, experiential, and process-driven. As a teacher I facilitate learning, translating practice into structured pedagogy. I guide students through reflection, critique, and skill-building in ways that may differ from their own practice but often are the same.

Orr and Shreeve explore in “Signature Pedagogies in Art & Design” how practitioner and teacher identities interact, cross fertilise and influence each other (Orr & Shreeve, 2017). As a practitioner I am bringing industry relevance, live projects, and experiential knowledge into teaching. As a teachers I use critical pedagogy, structured reflection, and student-centered learning to deepen both my own and my students’ understanding of creative processes. 

The studio environment however blurs those boundaries, making learning immersive and fostering a community of practice where students learn by doing, just as professionals do. The studio highlights the hybrid nature of my roles, requiring both creative expertise and academic rigor. As practitioner-lecturer I often act as translators, making tacit creative knowledge accessible in a educational context (Biggs & Karlsson, 2011).

As much as I expect creativity from my students, I believe it is the role of us teachers to show outstanding practice as part of our teaching, to take risks and to surprise. Teaching in art and design is not a one-way transfer of knowledge; it is an exchange where practitioners also learn from students. Students bring new perspectives, approaches, and cultural influences, which can inform the practitioner’s own creative practice (Shreeve & Trowler, 2010). Students learn as much from observing the practitioner’s creative processes as they do from direct instruction. Practitioners model professional behaviors, ways of thinking, and problem-solving strategies which students absorb through observation and practice. The practitioner’s own work and research become a source of inspiration and learning. On the other hand the process of explaining artistic decisions and critiquing student work often leads practitioners to reconsider their own methods. It is constant interplay where teaching is informed by real-world practice, and practice is enriched by pedagogical reflection, for the students as well as teachers.The research informs the teaching, and student work conversely inspires new directions for research, as students and graduates become collaborators. 

References
Biggs, M. and Karlsson, H. (2011) The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts. London: Routledge.
Orr, S. & Shreeve, A. (2017) Signature Pedagogies in Art & Design. Abingdon: Routledge.
Shreeve, A., Sims, E., & Trowler, P. (2010) A Kind of Exchange: Learning from Art and Design Teaching. York: Higher Education Academy.