Supporting Accessibility for Advanced Technological Education

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Best Practices for Accessible Education

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A team of three educators work together to develop an accessible curriculum.

For many around the country, the school year has come to a close, and preparations for next year have already begun! AccessATE has published a number of articles and tip sheets about making education accessible for a wide variety of people and disabilities, but here we will take a higher-level perspective and review some best practices for making education accessible for students with disabilities. You might use this as a means of brushing up on the subject or a jumping-off point for ideas on how to expand or improve your existing accessibility efforts, so you can go into the next school year with confidence in your curriculum’s ability to reach everyone effectively.

Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people. This is achieved by ensuring that all educational materials, activities, and assessments accommodate diverse learning needs, which involves providing multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement. UDL allows students to access information and demonstrate their knowledge in various ways. For more details, we recommend our partner CAST’s page about...

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Tools

In this video from DO-IT, one woman shares advice for instructors on how their behaviors impact an underrepresented student's decision to pursue a computing field. The importance of recruiting students into computing fields, the inclusion of students with disabilities, and the work done by a student in human centered design are highlighted. The...
This video from DO-IT explores the inclusion of students with disabilities in computing courses. Profiles of successful computing students and professionals who happen to have disabilities are highlighted. Accommodations, assistive technology, universal design strategies, and other best practices are described. The video recording runs 10:24...
This web page from the Job Accommodation Network provides information about individuals who are on the autism spectrum and related Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) information, publications, events, and organizations. Accommodation ideas are also included, which explore accommodations by limitation and work-related function, alongside sample...
This video from DO-IT explores captioning. In the video, professors, students, and IT administrators highlight how captions on videos can improve postsecondary education for deaf or hard of hearing students, non-native English speakers, people in noisy environments, and others. The importance of accessibility, the benefits of captioning, and other...
This video from DO-IT explains why and how to create electronic documents that are accessible to all users. Examples of inaccessible documents, assistive technologies that need to be considered to make documents accessible, solutions for making documents accessible, and other best practices are covered. The video recording runs 3:54 minutes in...