Mitigating screen time barriers: Lessons from the COVID‐19 pandemic.

The COVID‐19 pandemic forced colleges and universities across the country to shift emergently to virtual learning platforms. Health science programs needed to reimagine their curricula and mandatory clinical training under tremendous time pressure. The move to online learning decreased barriers for many students with disabilities, such as the need to traverse campus or high in‐person social engagement. In other circumstances, pandemic‐related shifts created obstacles. In this piece, we highlight some barriers for students with disabilities created by the increase in screen time necessitated by the pandemic, and possible solutions. We identified these barriers and solutions through our work as disability resource professionals for health science programs and as members of the Access in Medicine group, a national collective addressing pandemic‐related changes in medical education. Given the potential for schools to employ increased hybrid and online learning as we move through and beyond the pandemic, we propose individual and Universal Design solutions to mitigate these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]