Free webinar: HE and Public Sector update with the University of Southampton
Annie Mannion | 19 Oct 2021Join our upcoming free webinar for Higher Education, Further Education and Public Sectors to learn from the University of Southampton about its successful 'Accessibility Allies' project, on Tuesday 2 November 2021, 1pm GMT.
Speaking on the webinar will be:
- Dr Sarah Fielding, Digital Learning Team Manager (pictured below, left)
- Matthew Deeprose, Senior Learning Designer (pictured, centre)
- Luke Searle, Learning Designer (pictured, right)
AbilityNet's Annie Mannion, Digital Marketing Manager, and AbilityNet's Education and Workplace Relationship Manager, Helen Wickes, will also discuss eLearning tools and accessibility in the higher education and public sectors.
The webinar will last 60 minutes. We encourage you to register for the webinar even if you're unable to attend live, as both attendees and absentees will receive automated emails linking to the recording and supporting materials.
'Accessibility Allies' project
To support the rollout of Blackboard Ally (a tool that provides insight into an institution's accessibility), five student interns were employed over the summer at the University of Southampton as “Accessibility Allies”.
In the webinar, the University's Digital Learning Team will share how the project was organised, details of the work the students completed, and how they achieved really impressive results.
Students were involved with remediating course content to make it more digitally accessible, and advised academic staff about how to improve accessibility, among other things. Their work resulted in an average 87% increase in the course files' accessibility, benefiting more than 6,000 students.
Attendees will also have the opportunity to pose questions to the panel.
Here's a taster of what the student cohort of 'Accessibility Allies' achieved during their summer internship working on improving digital accessibility (alternative text description of infographic included):
A recording, transcript, Q&As and slide deck will be made available following the webinar broadcast. You can find out more about AbilityNet webinars in our webinars FAQs.
Further resources
- Join our HE/FE training courses
- AbilityNet eLearning modules for HE and FE
- AbilityNet Accessibility services for HE & FE
- Webinar playback: Watch the recording of AbilityNet's webinar about the Free McNaught & AbilityNet HE & FE Maturity model
- Sign up to the AbilityNet newsletter
- Sign up to our next free webinars in our AbilityNet Live webinar series
AbilityNet provides a range of free services to help disabled people and older people. If you can afford it, please donate to help us support older and disabled people through technology