Powered by
MOMENTUM
MEDIA
Against the backdrop of an increasingly digitised market and the need for human-led approaches to legal practice, the College of Law is moving to transform legal education by embedding accessibility and inclusive, human-centred design directly into its learning frameworks.
At the College of Law, assisting diverse learners is integral to the work of the teaching and learning department. The teaching and learning department has outlined its dedication to designing accessible, flexible, and supportive educational experiences.
The accessible learning portal user guide addresses the wide array of needs, strengths, and preferences students bring to their education, including personal learning styles, cognitive overload, and neurodiversity.
Spanning offerings from practical legal training and continuing professional development to postgraduate degrees, the platform consolidates practical resources across Canvas, web browsers, Microsoft, and Apple environments, incorporating features such as high-contrast display, specialised fonts for dyslexia, immersive reading, voice dictation, and mobile-friendly communication tools.
Michele Davis, senior digital teaching and learning designer at the College of Law, has great involvement in curating these educational tools across the organisation.
Utilising her dual background as a legal practitioner and educator, Davis highlighted how varied individual learning methods are, noting the substantial advantages offered by versatile study options and enhanced accessibility features during academic and professional journeys.
Talking to Lawyers Weekly, Davis explored how the learning portal user guide is designed for every learner and prepares lawyers for a diverse profession, accentuating the importance of inclusive education and its role in transforming the legal learning landscape.
Inspiration behind the initiative
Driven by a shared commitment to learner diversity and accessibility, the College of Law designed the learning portal user guide to empower students with practical, human-centred tools from the outset of their educational journey.
“Inspiration has come from a shared passion across many of our teams, particularly our learning, design and quality teams who work very closely with our content and learning environments and collaborate closely with those that teach in and all around our programs,” Davis said.
“The learning portal user guide is not about telling learners that there is one particular tool, method or way of learning that will work for them.
“It is about giving them meaningful choices and encouraging them to explore how they learn best.
By embedding these tools into everyday learning, Davis indicated that the guide transforms accessibility from an afterthought into a piece of an inclusive, human-centred legal education.
“Ultimately, the learning portal user guide reflects our belief that accessible education is simply good education,” Davis said.
“It brings together the shared commitment of our teams, the practical possibilities offered by technology, and our dedication to creating learning experiences that are inclusive, human-centred and responsive to the learners we actually have.”
Designing for every learner
According to Davis, embedding accessibility into educational framework design from the very beginning remains far more critical than treating supportive features as an afterthought when individual requirements emerge.
“Accessibility isn’t something that sits on the edges of legal education; it’s right at the centre. It’s not about compliance or minimum standards; it’s about designing learning that genuinely reflects real people and real legal practice,” Davis said.
“A people-first approach means letting go of the idea of an ‘average’ learner and designing and delivering education that is variable and diverse from the outset.”
This core idea directly shapes how the school handles adaptable learning, equipping both students and teachers with tangible means to foster increasingly inclusive academic environments.
“We want to be providing the learner the choice in how they engage with their education. It also extends to how we support our educators,” Davis said.
“Moving away from thinking about accessibility as something that sits at the margins, and towards designing inclusively from the beginning.”
“Equally important is shifting from a deficit view of learners to a strengths-based one, recognising that learners bring different ways of thinking, engaging, and problem solving, which are entirely aligned with the diversity we see in legal practice. And that is something really quite special.”
Preparing lawyers for a changing profession
According to Davis, the advantages of accessible learning reach well past academic settings, instilling key capabilities and self-assurance essential for navigating a multifaceted modern legal sector.
“Where law students are preparing to enter the profession, their learning environments need to mirror the diversity of the people they will work with and serve,” Davis said.
“In a profession that is becoming increasingly digital, that human-centred focus matters more than ever.”
“The skills that define good lawyers – communication, empathy, adaptability – are deeply human.”
Davis highlighted how inclusive academic frameworks directly influence the future shape and culture of the broader legal landscape.
“Legal education needs to be actively modelling inclusivity, otherwise it risks reinforcing narrow views of what a lawyer looks like, and how they succeed,” Davis said.
“Ultimately, we’re not just designing learning experiences, we’re designing accessible pathways into and through the profession that model inclusivity and humanism at its core.”
