Supporting Accessibility for Advanced Technological Education

Featured

Featured Resources from DeafTEC

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DeafTEC, or the Technical Education Center for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Students, is an AccessATE partner and ATE grantee. DeafTEC, as their name suggests, strives to make STEM fields more accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing (HH) people, and to increase the number of deaf/HH individuals in highly-skilled technician jobs. DeafTEC also serves as a resource on STEM programming for schools and educators with deaf/HH students, and for potential and current employers. While their focus is very clearly on deaf/HH people, many of the materials provided by DeafTEC can be easily adapted for other disabilities, or even utilized to simply accommodate various learning or work styles. Here, we will highlight a few of their many resources.

Universal Design for Instruction

Universal design is defined as “the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.” It is one of DeafTEC’s favorite principles on which to build accessible materials, classrooms, and workplaces. Their Universal Design for Instruction (UDI) resource discusses the application of these principles to various aspects of...

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Tools

This resource from the TIES Center provides a roadmap for quality inclusive education programs for students with cognitive disabilities. Information on equity, civil rights, and research lenses; core values and outcomes; science foundations; supportive leadership; and other areas accompany this roadmap. The roadmap is broken down into the following...
In this video from DO-IT, undergraduate students with disabilities share their research experiences and offer guidance to faculty about how they can mentor students with disabilities in research. The work done by AccessComputing to facilitate these experiences is also highlighted. The video recording runs 3:29 minutes in length.
This resource from the TIES Center provides a tool that helps educators make instruction more inclusive for all, especially students with cognitive disabilities. The 5-15-45 tool provides three different timeframes to collaboratively plan for instruction both in-person and remotely. In the 5 minutes timeframe, educators identify the most important...
This resource from DeafTEC provides an overview of the Writing in the Disciplines workshops offered by Rochester Institute of Technology faculty for high school and community college STEM educators who have deaf students in their classes. "The Writing in the Disciplines workshop includes an introduction to the research that supports the Writing in...
This workshop from DeafTEC provides three modules for instructors about improving access in the classroom for Deaf/HH students. The following modules are included: The First Day, Interpreting, and Pace. The First Day module provides a list of best practices, as well as two videos, one which explores teaching and the other communication best...