Practice of universal design in administration staff in higher education

Abstract

In the current information era, while there is availability of plenty of information, it also gives rise to the technical, and ethical issue of making IT accessible and usable for everyone. Digital media plays a vital role in the field of education, with access to e-books and online tutorials. The role of internet is not only limited to learning but also during the administrative tasks such as admission, course information and examination. The administration staff involved has an integral role in ensuring that the vital information, news, notices concerning to students such as information regarding exams and results, events, seminars conferences, and holidays are available to everyone. This research was involved administration staff in incorporating universal design procedure and practices in the above-mentioned tasks which are part of their responsibilities. This case study comprised of qualitative analysis by conducting semi-structured interviews with a total of 16 participants where 8 were the administrative staff and 8 were the students with one of the higher education institutions in Norway. The collected data was analyzed by doing a thematic analysis. The observations of this research were that the staff members displayed positive attitude towards accessibility, and they were motivated to include it in practice. Currently, they relied on word processing tools to provide information to the students and were not aware of any specialized tool to improve accessibility. There is a need to provide formal training to the staff to increase awareness among them. Students although were positive about accessing information through university website, they stated that information on learning management tool is overwhelming and can be a distraction while using it.