Educational podcasting and diversity - How can audio enhance inclusion?

I went to a really useful workshop at Sheffield Hallam yesterday organised by my colleague Manny Madriaga and presented by Mick Healey from the University of Gloucestershire. The workshop, 'Reflections on developing an inclusive curriculum', was as thought provoking as I hoped it would be in terms of my media-enhanced learning remit.
A couple of things in particular stand out, mostly because they connect to current themes for me. 'Variety' seems to be my word of the month. It's a response to the often silly suggestions about the way that people rationalise their use of podcasting; that it meets the needs of student's various learning styles. A much more useful way of looking at this, I believe, is looking at the benefits of variety in the way we engage our learners. In this workshop 'variety' was less concerned with 'mixing it up' and more to do with offering and supporting several ways of meeting learning outcomes and being assessed. By taking a more open approach to 'content' (and allowing for this in validation procedures) and by offering a negotiated assessment approach, we not only end up with a curriculum that is more meaningful and potentially more creative, but one that is able to address the diverse needs of our students and which makes the most of their differences.
By far the largest proportion of disabled students are those that declare their dyslexia. As has been evident in the work I have conducted with Anne Nortcliffe in Engineering and other colleagues in Art & Design, working with audio in various ways has clear benefits to dyslexic students.
I recently ran an assignment in Computing where the written form was patently excluding many students from demonstrating their true capacity. Given a variety of tasks that included writing a report, giving a presentation and making a podcast, these particular students, almost without exception, were comfortable and articulate in producing a group podcast. However, the written work was, in the main, startling to me. The presentations were also good but, to me, lacked the depth that was evident when just listening to the students.
What is more, the students had no training in making a podcast. Again this surprised me, but they showed how resourceful they were. All I heard about it was the podcast they submitted. No tales of woe.
I am conducting some research around this module and others and will hopefully give more useful reports on this experience elsewhere.
One of the useful outcomes of the workshop for me was the emphasis on difference rather than disability. This, on the face of it, sounds superficial and PC, but it's not. My story of the Computing students demonstrates that if we are really interested in supporting knowledge construction and assessing it in a meaningful way, then the needs of all students should be considered in terms of the way they are able to engage (not in terms of the way we engage them, for example).
I marked the podcasts last, and until I did I had felt quite despondent. There seemed to be little life and ownership of the assignment by the students until then. What I saw as disinterest in the subject was, to a large extent I think, a disinterest in the medium used to convey their knowledge. Now, part of the assignment was indeed about report writing, which is why they were asked to respond in several media, and there were some lessons to be learned by all about such skills with the marks reflecting this. But as an unintend consequence of that assignment I was able to directly observe how some media and methods inhibit learning unnecessarily.
The second point to reflect upon from Mick Healey's workshop was cultural diversity. And here I have just some fresh questions. Healey referred to research by Richardson (2008, but I need the full reference) that describes the attainment of ethnic minorities. Where 62% of white graduates obtained good degrees Black and Asian students are not able to do, literally, half as well. Either BME students are not as good as white students or we're getting something terribly wrong in higher education. What do you think?!
So for supporting diversity amongst ethic groups, how can audio help or hinder? There are patently some cultural considerations which, I have to admit, I am quite ignorant about. Then there are issues to do with the spoken word and comprehension: I do know from our Audio Notes work that International students appreciate being able to listen back to lectures because the accents of lecturers are often unfamiliar to them (another case for reducing dependence upon the teacher's voice alone perhaps..? Another case for variety!).
But there you go, my research agenda continues to mount up. How can audio enhance inclusion?