Free webinar: HE and Public Sector update with the University of Southampton

Annie Mannion | 19 Oct 2021

In November 2021, we hosted a 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.

Our guests shared their learnings and approach to making accessibility improvements to courses, with the help of students themselves.

The speakers included:

  • Dr Sarah Fielding, Digital Learning Team Manager (pictured below, left)
  • Matthew Deeprose, Senior Learning Designer (pictured, centre)
  • Luke Searle, Learning Designer (pictured, right)

Sarah Fielding, Matthew Deeprose, Luke Searle

AbilityNet's Annie Mannion, Digital Marketing Manager, and AbilityNet's Education and Workplace Relationship Manager, Helen Wickes, also discussed eLearning tools and accessibility in the higher education and public sectors.

Access the webinar recording

'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 shared 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.

Do you need to train your organisation about digital accessibility dos and don'ts?  AbilityNet has two HE and FE customisable, cost-effective online eLearning modules.
Find out more about eLearning modules


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):

Accessibility Allies A summer internship with the Digital Learning Team in iSolutions, focused on the roll out of Blackboard Ally and improving the digital accessibility of existing files on Blackboard. Avg 32% improvement in course overall accessibility score after intern work Avg 87% improvement in course file accessibility score after intern work 6000+ students benefitting from more accessible content in their modules Selected modules with 150+ students and <50% file score 24 modules remediated by interns over the summer holidays 11 weeks 4 days to complete a module (avg.) 10 debrief meetings with module leaders 5 student interns Find out more at www.southampton.ac.uk/digital-learning

Further resources

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