Inclusion

From a student affairs perspective, the word "inclusion" is significant in the field. Leadership specialists, cultural and diversity offices, and student activities offices all use this word to promote campus community and increase student retention. Having been in student affairs for 20 years, I have witnessed ideas and practices of inclusion. I could root this post by including theory and research that would support my claims, but for now I want to use the word inclusion to talk about how this concept in student affairs ties specifically to technical communication.

A few articles have gotten me thinking about this idea of inclusion as it relates to my dissertation. I am looking for areas where the two fields connect, intersect, and benefit from each other. Using the word inclusion as an intersection point, the fields touch in important ways. Student affairs professionals are not always seen as core to the academic mission of an institution and are sometimes described as extracurricular. This was a struggle that we talked about in my grad classes back in the day (my day being 20 years ago as I mentioned earlier). In his article, "Horizontal and Vertical Structures: The Dynamics of Organization in Higher Eduction," Fenske describes the challenges for student affairs professional in 1990:

"Student affairs divisions are particularly challenged, given their ambiguous purpose (to support holistic student learning and development); the perception that they are support services, rather than core academic functions; and their primarily historically and traditionally framed organizational structures" (p. 22).

In the student affairs field, we have struggled with being included ourselves and we have also advocated for marginalized students to be included. Many offices in student affairs exist for this purpose of providing support and encouraging inclusion, such as women's centers, diversity and cultural offices, LGBT centers, and offices for students with disabilities.

It is here, in offices for students with disabilities, that the idea of inclusion specifically intersects with technical communication. Writing digital content using open web standards provides an opportunity for student affairs professionals and technical communicators to come together to serve students. Student affairs professionals should be advocates for accessible online content, and one way that we can do this is by understanding how to read the source code for a page. With an imaged labeled in the source code for the web page, students who rely on an auditory reading of a web page and could understand an image without being able to see it. An article in the December 12, 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education reports on this idea of inclusion: "Mr. Shandrow hit a wall when he got to Spanish 101. The obstacle: an online workbook that failed to correctly label images." Though this is a small example, it is a representative of the wider issues that students with disabilities face as they learn using technology. Using standards-based web design, technical communicators at universities can make web pages that are not only accessible for members of the community with disabilities, but better web design also helps the entire university population using universal design principles.

Think about the television remote as a universal design. When I was a kid, I was the remote control so my father did not have to get up to walk to the television. When it was time for M*A*S*H to air, his favorite program, I was the one who changed the channel for my dad. That remote helped those who could not walk to the television, as well as the multitudes of children that served as the channel changer. Even as recent as last night, rather than just changing the channel, we searched the entire house for the remote control which traveled down to the basement courtesy of my partner's brother. Apply that idea of universal design to creating web sites using standards recommended by A List Apart article, The Inclusion Principle, like clearly structured pages and headers, properly labeled images, and separating content structure from design ideas.

If student affairs professionals can understand the basics of digital literacy, even if we cannot write digitally, we can advocate for universal design principles that promote inclusion by helping communicate to the university community and those who interact digitally with our institutions.