Please join us for the 2026 Midwest SoTL Conference on April 10, 2026 in person on the Indiana University South Bend campus.
The conference theme is "The Human Element of Education" and our keynote speaker is Dr. Anne-Marie Womack.
Beyond Best Practice: Reimagining Disability & Access in Higher Education
Typing. Texting. Email. These everyday practices, all rooted in disability innovation, show how designing with disabled people in mind leads to better design for many. Yet the promise of inclusive design often contrasts with the lived reality of disabled students and faculty, who remain excluded from classrooms—by policy, by pedagogy, and by so-called best practices.
This keynote invites educators to recognize disability as always present in our classrooms and always essential to our pedagogy. Through stories and scholarship, we’ll explore access not as a checklist but as a relational practice, one shaped by intersectionality, sustained by flexibility, and built through community.
A disability-centered approach to teaching deepens our engagement with the human element of education.
Typing. Texting. Email. These everyday practices, all rooted in disability innovation, show how designing with disabled people in mind leads to better design for many. Yet the promise of inclusive design often contrasts with the lived reality of disabled students and faculty, who remain excluded from classrooms—by policy, by pedagogy, and by so-called best practices.
This keynote invites educators to recognize disability as always present in our classrooms and always essential to our pedagogy. Through stories and scholarship, we’ll explore access not as a checklist but as a relational practice, one shaped by intersectionality, sustained by flexibility, and built through community.
A disability-centered approach to teaching deepens our engagement with the human element of education.
Dr. Womack is an award-winning teacher, creator of AccessibleSyllabus.com, and coauthor of Inclusive College Classrooms. At Rice University, Anne-Marie is an Associate Teaching Professor in the Engineering Communication Program.
- Full-time Faculty: $120
- Part-time Faculty (or Midwest SoTL Advisory Board): $60
- Student: $30
Contact Us:
University Center for Excellence in Teaching
Indiana University South Bend
ude[dot]ui[at]TECU
(574) 520-4618