Inclusivity in Technical Training
Someone asked me recently in a coffee chat how I incorporate inclusivity when developing technical training. Great question, folks!
And it might be easy to say that’s not really a consideration when building systems training, I mean, a video tutorial is just a video tutorial, right?
But technical training can and should be inclusive, and I want to share some real world examples of how I do this. There are two big areas where I think we can focus:
Representation - Representation matters because we want all of our learners to feel validated and confident. Easy wins include considering diversity of age, gender, race, and ability in our visuals, and ensuring people portrayed in leadership positions are not all men.
I had to create a practice activity where learners would change a customer’s name in the system. All of the examples were newly married or divorced women calling in to change their last names. I created a new example where a transperson was calling in to change their name, wanting to affirm trans life experiences.
Accessibility - Accessibility is another area that can make technical training more inclusive. Adding captions to video content and including a transcript is a great place to start.
I recently designed a simulation for a drag and drop application. Knowing that not everyone who will access the eLearning developed in Storyline with a mouse, I built in options. Users can drag and drop objects, but they can also just tap objects, which triggers a motion path that simulates a drag and drop action.
Those are a few real world examples from my own practice. There are many other creative ways to make our technical training more inclusive, and I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
