Who can I contact for accessibility advice?

The best place to start looking could be the disability services at your institution. They may be able to offer a variety of services and information, including braille translation services and sign language interpreters. They may also be able to provide advice on making learning and teaching materials accessible and offer training courses for both staff and students.

A variety of other organisations may be able to offer specific advice and/or training courses:

TechDis is an educational advisory service that works in the areas of accessibility and inclusion, they aim to "enhance provision for disabled students and staff in higher, further and specialist education and adult and community learning, through the use of technology". TechDis offer a range of services, including staff packs (for example about accessible assessment), they also run events on assistive technology. Visit their website at http://www.techdis.ac.uk for news, full events list and all their resources.

The Action on Access website also provides a wide range of information, resources, case studies and extensive events list relating to disability. Visit their website at http://www.actiononaccess.org

Excellence Gateway brings together hints and tips to support students who, for example, have difficulties handling and manipulating or difficulties hearing and seeing. Although mainly aimed at FE practitioners, there is still much of interest for HE. The resource isn't prescriptive, but aims to get course and module designers thinking about how they could make adjustments or improve accessibility.

The DEMOS project developed online modules on a number of aspects disability and higher education. These modules can be taken to increase awareness of e.g. assessment and examination regulations, students with dyslexia in higher education and SENDA.

The Open University has a searchable database of learning and teaching resources for disabled students.

The Brain.HE website brings together written, audio and video resources on a variety of specific learning differences (SpLD's) including dyslexia and Tourette's.

The Accessible Curricula: Good practice for all guide produced by the University of Cardiff, the Higher Education Academy and TechDis could provide some useful information.

Skills for Access has a number of case studies of the experiences of disabled students in higher education, the site also offers advice on a variety of aspects relating to disability and improving the accessibility of multi-media learning resources.

Back to: Disability and Accessible Curricula