Access vs. Equity and the Role of Digital Learning: How to Overcome Typical Barriers and Help Students Thrive

Providing access to digital learning is just the first step—true equity means ensuring every learner has the tools, support, and inclusive experiences needed to thrive. In this blog post, Jaslyn Hughes, Global Manager of Customer Value Design at Open LMS, explores how higher education institutions can bridge the gap between access and equity to create more inclusive and impactful learning environments.

What’s the Difference Between Access and Equity In Education?

Because access and equity are closely related concepts, we’ll first need to agree on a definition for both terms to allow us to illustrate what advancing from one to the other actually means. The definitions given in this literature review in a study on the subject of equity in education are ones we would agree with. Specifically:

• Access refers to the availability of educational opportunities and resources to all students.
• Equity refers to providing all students with fair opportunities to succeed, compensating for their individual needs by providing different levels of support and resources.

Access is obviously an essential first step for equity. If opportunities and resources aren’t available for everyone in the first place, you clearly have an inequitable situation. However, inequity also undermines true and complete access, so the relationship isn’t strictly one after the other. If institutions or instructors conclude that “we have provided the opportunities and the resources, the rest is up to the students,” they’ve failed to account for the way that inequities may undermine access.

A similar discussion exists between equality and equity, where equality is about providing the same resources to everyone, and equity offers differing levels of support based on individual need. You’ve likely seen this illustrated by a family watching a baseball game over a fence, where equality means everyone gets a box to stand on regardless of how tall they are, whereas equity redistributes the boxes to allow everyone to see. As one comment on the page linked above points out, it would perhaps be more accurate if the barrier itself was built higher or of a different material (representing how our systems often have inequities built in), but overall it’s a neat encapsulation of the access issue.

4 Key Educational Access Issues and Inequities to Overcome (And How to Overcome Them)

1) Geographic

Worldwide, students in or near major population centers enjoy several advantages associated with sheer numbers. There are more institutions to choose from, more qualified teachers to hire, and there’s often more money to go round, meaning better facilities and resources.

Access isn’t just a matter of “there is a school available”. The quality of education an individual can receive at available institutions is hugely important, and this can be a problem in rural areas. The OECD once observed that “In most countries and economies, students who attend schools in urban areas tend to perform at higher levels than other students.”

This isn’t to say that there aren’t advantages that rural institutions enjoy when compared to urban institutions—one study points to stronger local community links to leverage, as well as the availability of certain grants. There are also other positive factors, such as greater field trip potential that comes with proximity to the countryside, and sometimes better teacher/student ratios.

It could be said that this rural/urban divide becomes less relevant in higher education (particularly as a number of college-age students will move and live some distance away from where they grew up). However, the effects of the divide at lower educational levels have an outsized effect on student ability and preparation for moving on to higher levels.

Infrastructure is often key to solving geographic problems, particularly via improving transport links and communication networks. An obvious example lies in the various digital learning technologies that can be used to bring resources, teachers, and students together regardless of geographical location. However, rural areas generally have less developed infrastructure, and learning technology needs to be able to compensate for unreliable or slow connections (such as allowing for learning material to be downloaded ahead of time for offline consumption via a mobile app).

Finally, the needs of your institution’s international students must also be considered. From helping them cope with culture shock and the intricacies of local government and support systems, to accounting for the added difficulty of completing a degree in a second language, these students need a layer of extra support.

CHECK OUT THIS CASE STUDY | ‘How Smart Osvita Fills Knowledge Gaps for Displaced Students in Ukraine With Open LMS’

2) Social and Economic

To somewhat state the obvious, students from higher-income backgrounds have significantly better access to quality educational experiences. Students from low-income backgrounds are less likely to be able to access:

• High-quality institutions that require tuition fees to attend
• High-quality institutions within commuting distance (because of transport costs)
• Extracurricular activities
• Electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and desktop/laptop computers (or to have exclusive access to such devices)
• High-speed, reliable internet access
• Ample free time in which to study (due to work or family commitments)

Many governments use financial aid programs to mitigate these access issues, and institutions operate scholarships for the same purpose. Institutions can also have an impact by ensuring that the learning platforms they choose don’t exacerbate access issues, making sure they work well across all device types, connections, and usage patterns.

LEARN HOW AN LMS CAN HELP | ‘Your LMS’s Role in Bridging Education’s Digital Divide’

3) Race and Gender

Educational access issues and inequities related to race and gender can be overt policies preventing certain groups from accessing education, but in most countries, the forces at work are more subtle. Female students and students from minority groups may encounter systemic biases and fewer opportunities that have their roots in old prejudices.

For example, traditional gender roles and stereotypes can be reinforced by curricula, potentially discouraging students from pursuing certain subjects. A lack of role models and group representation can send signals that a certain line of work isn’t for them. There may be other concerns in certain communities—lack of safe transportation and violence in and around schools can be a deterrent.

Counteracting these systemic issues requires outreach efforts and the creation of strategic programs that boost participation, and institutions (and governments) that implement them may have to wait many years to see positive effects.

LEARN ABOUT ANOTHER IMPORTANT SUPPORT ISSUE | ‘Supporting Teacher Mental Health: Easing the Burden With Open LMS’

4) Disabilities

In many contexts, including education, the concept of accessibility almost exclusively refers to the access needs of individuals with disabilities. Disability can take many different forms and when a disability creates a specific access challenge—such as getting a wheelchair into a classroom or making the content of a lesson available to a person with a visual or hearing impairment—alternatives must be considered. Remember that not all disabilities are visible or physical: for example, you will need to account for dyslexia, ADD, autism, and mental health challenges.

In many countries, institutions are required by law to make reasonable adjustments to ensure students with disabilities can access the same educational materials as the rest of their peers. Adjustments may need to be made for admissions, classrooms, learning activities, learning materials, and field trips, and additional help or support may be required during lessons to ensure their access is equitable.

Digital learning can facilitate access in many scenarios, but learning environments and courses have to be built using accessibility principles. You may need to account for:

• Ensuring high-contrast color usage between different on-screen elements
• Audio description and video transcripts
• Text size and proper HTML formatting, including use of heading tags
• Proper tagging of elements to ensure a smooth experience with a screen reader
• Use of clear language
• A logical order to on-screen elements when users “tab to select” (as certain assistive devices jump from element to element in this way)
• Spacing of elements

An accessibility audit of your existing content will help you determine whether anything needs to be changed to ensure content is fully accessible. Open LMS’s Brickfield Education Labs extension is one effective way of gaining this insight.

KEEP READING ABOUT ACCESSIBILITY | ‘How Mobile Learning Fits Into Your Accessibility Strategy’

Bridging the Gap From Access to Equity to Justice

Moving from addressing access to addressing equity is about not just providing the right initiatives, programs, and platforms, but making sure the groups that really need them know they’re available and achieving uptake of what you offer. Here are some examples of what that looks like:

• Assistive technologies need to be available to those who need them, and understood by teaching and technical staff. Institutions should be able to advise students how to get what they need (or provide it outright), and understand how these technologies interface with their curriculum. They should also be able to offer a degree of technical support and be prepared to adjust systems that present newly discovered barriers.
• Financial assistance needs to be both available and targeted, so that students from low-income backgrounds can cover tuition fees, books, and essential costs.
• First-generation higher-education students should be identified and offered specific support to help them navigate academic challenges and adjust to life on campus.
• Mentorship and guidance should specifically target underrepresented groups and be made available well ahead of the student having to decide subjects of study or whether they will advance to higher education.
• Start with an accessibility first mindset when building your LMS, courses, and content. Accessibility often benefits everyone. Consider a video with subtitles: if an adult student is on their way home from work and watching a video on the train, they can read the subtitles even if they can’t hear the audio. Alternatively, English might be the learner’s second language, and those same subtitles will help them better understand the content. Some students (including the author of this piece!) also learn better when they can hear and read along at the same time.

Institutions must strive to go further than this, however. Beyond equity is a just system that, as far as possible, seeks to remove outright barriers rather than merely compensating for them. The University of Birmingham, UK, has suggested this would involve:

• Proactively confronting systemic barriers: addressed via revising admissions processes, expanding outreach, and creating scholarships.
• Creating inclusive and supportive environments: going beyond providing physical and academic resources to ensure an inclusive, understanding, and respectful culture.
• Offering tailored academic and social support: not just financial assistance, but mentorship, support, and peer networks.
• Ensuring representation at all levels: if an institution’s faculty and administration have diverse leadership, then that institution is more likely to be informed about issues affecting marginalized groups.
• Investing in long-term systemic change: acknowledging that there are no quick fixes, institutions must make long-term commitments.

The quality of the education a society offers isn’t just about the curricula that institutions build and the faculty they assemble to deliver them. Breaking down barriers and inequities is a critical step in becoming a leader among modern educational institutions—because if only some of your students get the quality education you strive to offer, are you really a quality educator?