Like many other grade 11 students at the time, I was required to select an elective that year. Now, I did go to a relatively small school, so the options weren’t very diverse in nature. The main options available were Woodshop, Textiles, Visual Art, or Digital Art. Although I did have some interest in Woodworking and Textiles, I had some concerns regarding accessibility and safety within the classrooms. Since there weren’t many resources available that allowed me to feel comfortable choosing those options, and since I had already taken visual arts the year prior, digital art seemed like the only real option I could take.

I had some reservations going into the class since much of it seemed heavily visual and inaccessible with much of the text-to-speech technology I used. I voiced my concerns to the teacher on the first day of class, and he assured me that he would work with me to make the class as accessible as possible for me. However, looking over the syllabus didn’t really give me much confidence in the adaptability of the course, as most of what we were doing revolved around photography skills and photo editing software like Photoshop.

I spent some time looking over tutorials on Photoshop, and seeing if any of the features were accessible to me. After many days of scouring the internet, I couldn’t find much success in finding accessible tools within Photoshop, especially for a novice user like myself. I was considering just dropping the class and possibly trying to switch into a different elective a few weeks into the semester when I came across an article that compared Photoshop to another photo editing app. This one was called "Publisher," and it was available on iOS devices like the iPad we used in class. The main contrast to Photoshop with Publisher was that Publisher was accessible with VoiceOver and Zoom, which were already built into many iOS devices.

After bringing up this app to my teacher, he allowed me to download it and play around with some of the features. Although it wasn’t as comprehensive as Photoshop, and it definitely took some time getting used to, I slowly started getting better at using the features within the app and creating some digital art. I actually started enjoying playing with the different editing options that were available in Publisher, and creating some unique artworks that I didn’t think I would be able to do independently.

Although some elements of each assignment needed to be adapted for my individual projects, I was able to overall follow along with the syllabus along with the rest of the class and create some digital art that is in no way amazing, but I am pretty proud of. So for any of you readers out there who are considering taking visual electives, like digital art, but are hesitant, just know that there is no reason why you can’t participate just like any other student. Technology has come a long way, and you might be surprised to see just what you can do with a cool app, a little bit of patience, and creativity.