2024 Internship Reflections

---

These blog post shares reflections on chosen summer activities from our 2024 interns. Each of the reflections has been crafted using the STAR model as our interns were all stars!

Accessibility Allies

This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to intern with the Digital Learning team at the University of Southampton as an Accessibility Ally. The primary focus of my role was to enhance the accessibility of modules to support the Blackboard Ultra project. A major part of this involved improving the accessibility of various files, such as PDFs and PowerPoints, which are commonly used for distributing content across different modules. 

Throughout my internship, I encountered numerous files with various formatting and tagging issues that posed challenges for students with accessibility needs. My responsibility was to address these issues—fixing nesting errors within tags and ensuring visual elements had accurate and meaningful alt text. The end goal was to make these resources more accessible, so students using screen readers or other assistive technologies could interact with the content seamlessly. 

To tackle these challenges, I sought out resources to expand my knowledge of accessible file formatting. I attended daily stand-ups where accessibility skills were frequently discussed, and I turned to YouTube tutorials to refine my ability to resolve nesting errors and properly tag elements in documents. Another great tool I found valuable in learning about wider accessibility issues and techniques was Matthew Deeprose’s (iSolution Accessible Solution Architect) GitHub blog. I applied these techniques to each file, ensuring that their structure and alt text aligned with the Blackboard Universal Standards. 

Once the improvements were made, I uploaded the files to Ally, the platform used to assess and enhance the accessibility of module materials. It was incredibly rewarding to see that the accessibility scores of the modules significantly improved, ensuring that all students could now engage with the content more effectively and inclusively. 

This internship has been an eye-opening experience for me. What once seemed like a small detail, such as choosing a document format, turned out to have a significant impact on someone else’s learning experience. Moving forward, I’ll carry these lessons with me, especially when I return to teaching first aid in my society in the coming weeks. I plan to be much more mindful of the formats I use and will make it a priority to ask students at the start of the year if they have any specific needs, like receiving printouts in advance. I want to ensure that the content I teach is accessible to everyone. 

Lastly, I want to extend thank you to the entire Digital Learning team. Everyone was so kind and supportive, and I’ve learned so much during this internship—knowledge and skills that I’ll carry with me throughout my career. 

– Shuzeda C, Accessibility Ally

I have taught so many lessons in the past, to groups and one-to-one. I always recognised that some students needed extra or even special support. I would think of alternative ways to explain the information, explain slowly and simplify the vocabularies I would use; and think this would do the job.

However, the opportunity I was blessed with this summer – working with the Digital Learning Team at the University of Southampton – exposed me to the incredible work, with the best possible quality, that the Team puts into the most minute of detail in digital accessibility.

I was privileged to work as an Accessibility Ally intern where I worked on enhancing the accessibility of certain modules. I ensured that:

1. Images within documents had alternative text to allow those using screen readers and non-sighted individuals to access the important information the image provides.
2. Documents had clear heading structure to allow quick navigation.
3. Ensure sharp colour contrast to make it easier to read text.

One of my proudest achievements this internship is working on a particular module whose instructor was blind. I had to ensure that all information was in the correct order for the screen reader and that documents were well-structured to allow easy navigation. To achieve best results, I had to put myself in this lecturer’s shoes. I would try to open, navigate and use a document without looking. I failed almost every time: I would always uncontrollably open my eyes and use the cursor. It was always easier to do things by looking. Except that not everyone has this blessing. It must be extremely difficult (and if I am being honest, frustrating) for blind individuals to carry out many everyday tasks such as opening a document or editing a piece of text.

Unfortunately, as a society, I don’t think we are – yet – providing enough support for individuals with special needs, disabilities or those who simply require extra support. We should all do what we can – within our capacities – to facilitate equal chance to those less fortunate than us. And I am immensely proud to say that I have contributed my share via this internship; but we can never do enough.

I raise my hat to all those who overcome the impossible and defeat the odds and succeed in their careers albeit everything is many folds more difficult.

– Yosuf Ali – Accessibility Ally

VLE Interns

Throughout my degree I have had very little experience with presenting to an audience due to the nature of my course and I think exposing myself to it will be good practice if I ever need to do something similar in my career. The biggest presentations I did were to my project supervisors and team members during my software engineering group project meetings so my audience only consisted of 5 people, so presenting to a larger crowd would be great.

Luke asked me if I wanted to take the reins for the digital learning team’s slot in Septembers education sharing seminar and I agreed. My task is to summarise this year’s Blackboard and VLE awards and our data processing methodology for a wide range of education services staff across the university. The seminar will be presented to roughly 30 staff members.   

The first thing I did was get my slides together, Luke shared the universities slide templates with me and I began to build my slide deck. To highlight the data narrative I had to go back to perform some further analysis on the nomination data in order to produce some new results and charts. I made my slides as simple and clear as possible so the information was easy to digest and the narrative was easy for the audience to follow, whilst also making sure that my slides were still accessible using PowerPoint’s accessibility indicator. Once my slide deck was complete I got Luke to check it over to see if anything needed changing/rewording, once he was happy I did a rehearsal of the presentation to Luke and my fellow interns. I went into the rehearsal overconfident and had under-prepared my speaker notes so I knew that the presentation needed some work, my colleagues also gave me some valuable feedback on the wording of my notes and the pacing of my presentation. Taking this criticism on board, I rewrote my speaker notes with much more detail and began to practice my presentation to my friend and by myself until I was confident with what I was saying and could begin to speak naturally instead of just reading from my notes. At this point I was happy with my presentation and ready for the seminar. 

When I gave my presentation for the seminar, I was confident that I would be successful due to my practice. I made it through the presentation without any mistakes and answered any questions I had from the audience effectively. After I had finished I received a lot of positive feedback from the teams chat and from the audience directly, I was told that my presentation was “Well paced and clear”, “Insightful and very well presented” and that I “Answered questions thoughtfully”. I happy with how it went overall and I feel that I have gained a lot more confidence when it comes to speaking to a crowd, especially compared to the lack of experience I had before. I also feel now that I can use the skills I learnt in preparing and delivering this presentation in my future career. 

– Louis H, VLE Intern

I was responsible for surveying the longlisted modules to mitigate student bias in the Blackboard and VLE Awards. Surveyed 100 modules based on the Blackboard Universal standards. 

I began by sending emails to the module leaders to notify them of the survey and give them the option to opt out if they had objections. As I started surveying the modules on Blackboard, I noticed significant variations in layout and content, which initially made the process time-consuming. To improve efficiency, I identified common elements across modules and developed a systematic procedure for surveying. For example, this involved first checking the module information and profile sections, as well as reviewing the initial course contents that usually included introductions to objectives, activities, and structures. 

I successfully surveyed 100 modules in 2 weeks, gaining familiarity with different types of Blackboard course designs. This experience enhanced my ability to identify patterns and adapt suitable approaches in complex contexts as well as developing similar procedure for dealing with recurring steps.  

Qiaxion Ye, VLE Intern