Our specialist HE/FE Digital Accessibility Bundle offers a clear picture of your current accessibility position, as well as support and guidance on how to achieve compliance. Our expert consultants will help you outline your plan of action, identifying priorities and accessibility issues to address depending on your institution's needs, to develop a roadmap for the future. 

The Bundle includes a range of options to suit your budget:

HE/FE Digital Accessibility Review

Work with an experienced accessibility consultant to establish a baseline of accessibility support across your website, focusing on site functionality and templates. Ideal for organisations who want to achieve accessibility compliance but need assistance with prioritising accessibility improvements. We review accessibility using the WCAG success criteria and offer recommended solutions and further reading to support our findings.

HE/FE Digital Inclusion Overview

A 3-day 'mystery shopper' style exploration of your digital platforms, undertaking 'typical' journeys a disabled student might take. We test whether students are getting an accessible teaching and learning experience and whether you are getting appropriate return on your digital investments.

HE/FE Accessibility Statement Mapper

A half-day session to help you scope and summarise your digital accessibility needs, build your organisation's unique accessibility profile, and consider your next steps to ensuring sustainable accessibility. 

Download our free HE and FE Accessibility Maturity Model to judge the maturity of your organisation's digital accessibility. All public sector organisations have a legal obligation to meet a base level of accessibility, but where does your organisation sit on the spectrum between outmoded practice and leading-edge accessibility excellence?

Download a copy of our HE and FE Accessibility Maturity Model

Online training course How to grow your accessibility maturity - for HE and FE professionals

Enquire about a guided accessibility maturity evaluation session with AbilityNet and McNaught Consultancy where we will evaluate your current maturity using an evidence-based scoring framework and provide you with a detailed roadmap of recommendations. 
 

The key accessibility test for any organisation is the learner's experience of online content. But it's not just about the technical accessibility of documents and presentations. The way courses are designed, navigated, delivered all impact on the experience of a disabled user. Our module/course level accessibility maturity model is a facilitated session by AbilityNet and Alistair McNaught Consultancy.

This practical and interactive session looks at technical accessibility, pedagogical accessibility and "informational" accessibility. We help course leaders and designers evaluate existing courses, identifying both good practices and areas for improvement. Our model is mapped to a range of highly respected learning frameworks so is complementary to existing frameworks you might use (for example, Universal Designed for Learning, ABC Learn, ARCS etc).

You may know that your organisation needs a full HE/FE Digital Accessibility Audit of your virtual learning environment (VLE) and external websites.

Our team of consultants will use automated and manual techniques to test your websites, apps and VLE against WCAG 2.1, the global standard for accessibility.

We can tailor the scope and cost of the service to meet your organisation's accessibility needs and goals.

Call our team now to discuss which options would work best for you.
 

Investing in your in-house capability is a great way of making your budgets stretch further and we offer a range of training courses to help your team embed accessibility in their work. This is great for their professional development and also helps to reduce the need for external support.

We have a selection of affordable online courses available on a rolling basis:

• Introduction to accessibility
• embedding accessibility in your institution’s culture
• accessibility for developers
• accessible inspection of digital documents (PDFs, PowerPoint, Word, Excel) - find out how to check and fix common accessibility
• issues in online documents
• disability awareness, and
• practical training on using a screenreader.

Join our mailing list to be told when these courses are running.

Develop your skills: Courses designed specifically for university professionals.

Working with your team

We can also deliver online and face to face training courses to address your specific needs and preferred way of learning

Call us for a chat about how we can help.

With our document remediation service we take your existing documents and complete checks on the content and make adjustments to ensure they meet the required standards of accessibility.

We can help with various file types including Microsoft Word, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe PDF, ePub, DAISY, photo and video media.

With education providers in particular we understand there may be substantial estates of documents that hold value for current users, and in some settings it is mandatory for the institution to ensure the accessibility of the content in these documents.

Are you seeking an online learning solution to provide accessibility guidance to your staff?

Created just for HE and FE institutions, AbilityNet's pair of cost-effective online eLearning modules on digital accessibility enable you to train your staff in accessibility dos and don'ts.

Module 1: Introduction to accessible teaching and learning course

Module 2: Accessibility and Me: Lived experience series of mini courses

New modules - Office 365 and PDF Accessibility: Find out more about our two new eLearning modules within our Accessible Workplace eLearning options - get in touch to discuss these courses.

Watch our video about eLearning:

Find out more about our eLearning modules

Our accessibility awareness events help you and your team share knowledge and learn about accessibility in action. 

• Our Accessibility Awareness Days include talks from experts in the field to provide you with ideas and solutions.
• Inclusive Tech Demo Days - fun, friendly, interactive sessions demonstrating assistive technology to enable those who support disabled students to experience the technology we most frequently recommend, and help you better understand users’ needs.
• Sign up to attend annual digitally focused events including TechSharePro 

As well as accessibility analysis services and training, we offer a range of tools and resources to support your broader inclusion strategies.

Information for Disability Advisers

• Information and resources for Disability Advisers including free resources to share with students.

Free factsheets

• Share our factsheets about assistive technology and accessibility with your team.

Diverse User Acceptance Testing

• Learn from our pool of user testers to get valuable feedback about your services from disabled people and additional needs including dyslexia, dyspraxia, and autism.

Component Library

• Your web developers can access best practice advice and coding tips from AbilityNet’s broad component library.

Best Practice Guidelines

• Access AbilityNet’s Best Practice Guidelines documents to help embed accessibility throughout your institution.**

**Dependent on the support package chosen.

We are proud to be partnering with McNaught Consultancy, featuring Alistair McNaught formerly of Jisc, to deliver a complete package of accessibility services to educational institutions, including HE and further education (FE).

About Alistair McNaught

Alistair McNaught of McNaught Consultancy has long experience supporting FE and HE institutions in taking an holistic approach to inclusive practice. He has played a key part in award-winning projects including content creation, ebook accessibility and student support. He's well known for his skill in translating accessibility into the everyday practices of many institutional roles. He specialises in helping organisations get better return on digital investments by identifying the small changes that can make big differences to users.

Praise for McNaught Consultancy

“Alistair provided some extremely useful sessions on understanding Accessibility from a teaching, technology-enhanced learning and strategic staff perspective. Participants left the sessions feeling energised and ready to implement what they had learned" - Newcastle University

"Alistair McNaught’s technical expertise and professional delivery ensured that our digital accessibility courses were highly successful and universally praised. In the weeks following the training there is clear evidence of transference and application of learning. I am very happy to recommend the services of Alistair McNaught Consultancy Ltd." - Harper Adams University 

“We have been delighted with the service that we received from McNaught Consulting. The report and recommendations have given us a clear understanding of the work we need to do to make our website and VLE more accessible. This involved both technical accessibility; to help us meet accessibility standards, and informational accessibility;  how well can a disabled student independently meet their own needs in accessing the website and VLE.” - FE college