Event Description

How can we facilitate maximally accessible online learning environments while recognizing that some learners will experience access barriers where other learners experience access supports? Access friction can pose challenges to implementing access and demonstrates there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach (Glossary, Access Anthology: Reflections on Disability Art and Culture, Gallery TPW, 2023, p. 66). 

During this Facilitating Learning Online (FLO) MicroCourse, learners will have the opportunity to explore effective methods for navigating what some disability communities call access friction. Through problem-based learning, participants will develop inclusive, non-hierarchical ways of anticipating, navigating, and responding to access friction by drafting statements for their course syllabi that detail their planned approach.

Participants also will review each other’s draft statements, allowing them to:  

• Identify frequently encountered sources of access friction (Example: cameras on to facilitate lip-reading versus cameras off to support mental health needs) 
• Craft student-centered approaches to navigating access friction in online environments
• Provide constructive peer review for syllabus accessibility statements using online asynchronous annotation tools  

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Recognize what constitutes access friction in online learning  
• Practice effective methods for mitigating access friction in flexible and inclusive ways 

Course Logistics

Time commitment: Six to eight hours

Format: Asynchronous  

While most of the learning will happen asynchronously, we will offer an optional synchronous session on Thursday, January 22, 2026, 10:00–11:00 a.m. PST.

Registration Coming Soon

This notice is to inform you that this session will be recorded, archived, and shared with course registrants. By participating in this session, you acknowledge that your participation in this session will be recorded and the recording will be made available to other course participants.

About the Facilitator

Stefan Sunandan Honisch (he/him) is a disabled researcher, educator, and musician. He is a sessional instructor in Theatre Studies, and a Scholar-in-Residence at St. John’s College, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Musqueam Nation, on which the University of British Columbia’s Vancouver campus is situated. Honisch has also previously worked for the B.C. Public Service Agency’s Learning Centre.