Cultivating a Culture of Accessibility with Rebecca Mushtare

Welcome to Episode 125 of the Think UDL podcast: Cultivating a Culture of Accessibility with Rebecca Mushtare. Rebecca Mushtare is the associate dean of Graduate Studies and a professor of art and design at SUNY Oswego. With John Kane, she co-founded and co-hosts the Tea for Teaching podcast. Rebecca’s primary research areas are inclusive design, design for older adults, and digital accessibility. She’s committed to designing equitable and transparent experiences in and out of the classroom. At SUNY Oswego she co-founded the Workgroup on Accessibility Practices in 2016 which has been responsible for many accessibility initiatives on campus including the Faculty Accessibility Fellows program that launched in 2019. She’s expanded her work on accessibility within SUNY by serving on the SUNY Empowering Students with Disabilities Task Force and working with the SUNY Center for Professional Development to offer workshops and training. Additionally, Rebecca has worked to spread these practices within civic engagement spaces including the local Vote Oswego initiative and the national civic engagement coalition, Students Learn Students Vote.   She’s co-authored research articles related to accessibility in the Journal for Postsecondary Education and Disability, Journal of Communication in Healthcare, and the eJournal of Public Affairs. You can also find her work in community engagement projects like the Recollection Project. In today’s conversation, Rebecca and I talk about digital accessibility practices, accessibility plans, accessibility fellows and 10-day, 5-day Accessibility challenges. But throughout this conversation we find out we all have a role to play in accessibility on our campuses and we hope this episode gives you some ideas for yours! Thank you for listening to this conversation on the Think UDL podcast.