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

Taking a strategic, joined up approach to improve outcomes, reduce risks and change culture

Why you should attend

For disabled students, now more than ever, an inclusive digital experience is crucial to their ability to participate in education on an equal footing, yet we consistently find investments in one part of the organisation are undermined by lack of awareness in another or lack of long term planning

The legal requirement to provide platforms and documents that are compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA has helped to move things forward, but a focus on compliance is only part of the solution. Universities and colleges are extremely complex organisations. A whole institution approach is required to create sustainable cultural change.

The session will help you

Evaluate your digital accessibility maturity holistically,
Frame your institution’s strengths and weaknesses through a range of lenses
Identify gaps in policy, practice or responsibilities
Set priorities and plans to progress embedding lasting change and new ways of working.

The training can help create your digital accessibility strategy and roadmap and engage key stakeholders throughout the institution to recognise their role in moving this forward.

Who is this training for

The intended audiences for this training include anyone with responsibility for (or interest in) improving equity and student experience. This may include senior managers, digital teams, student experience, learning and teaching.

Get 10 training courses for the price of 8

To help you get even better value this year, we have a 10 for the price of 8 bundle on AbilityNet online training courses for you and your team to enjoy.

Book your training bundle

Book now: New date to be confirmed

Please note: after purchasing a ticket you are able to reassign the ticket, if somebody different to the ticket purchaser will be attending the training.

If you're looking for training for more than 8 people on a single course, please contact us about our great value in-house training options.

If you have any questions about your booking please email training@abilitynet.org.uk

Length of course: 2 hours.

Buy on demand

Attendees of the live training will receive a recording of the course. If you are not attending the live training you can buy an existing recording of the course on demand:

You may also be interested in our How to deliver and sustain accessible digital learning - for HE and FE professionals training course.

Contact us for in-house training

Upskill your team so together we can create a more accessible digital world.

What will be covered

Attendees will:

Understand the importance of a joined-up approach to enact lasting cultural change
Review the Institutional HE & FE Digital Accessibility Maturity model
Discuss each lens of reflection
Review evidence from your own institution and collate points for each lens
Determine scoring at bronze, silver, gold level
Discuss barriers to progress, compare with anonymised data from other institutions and share best practice

"When I first signed up for this webinar I felt it would simply provide some useful background information. Working through the maturity-scoring Excel has made me realise this is actually a fantastically useful tool to help us figure out how to improve our organisational approach to accessibility.

We attended the session off the back of what is quite a limited accessibility project for us at the moment, focussing only on our virtual learning environment. As a result of the webinar we’ve been able to use the checklist to engage senior stakeholders in a follow-on project which will scale this up to the rest of the institution in a way which we simply hadn’t considered until now. We probably wouldn't have been prompted to do this in such a coordinated way without seeing this.”

"The process was really good and showed how close we are, even where scores are low, I can see what needs to be done and can use the findings to encourage senior leadership into taking action."

"Thank you, this provides a great roadmap for us and what we need to focus on now."

Meet our trainers

Alistair McNaught

Alistair McNaught of McNaught Consultancy is 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. Alistair worked as a front-line teacher for 20 years then worked for national organisations supporting e-learning and accessibility in Further and Higher Education.

Amy Low

Amy Low is Service Delivery Director at AbilityNet, and heads up our workplace, education and free services teams. Having spent 15 years working in a variety of leadership and transformation roles within serviced property and IT services, Amy joined AbilityNet in 2016, drawn by the opportunity to leverage technology to remove barriers to participation for disabled people and create a better digital experience for everyone. She works with a wide range of institutions and organisations providing services and support to ensure their digital practices are meeting the needs of the widest audience.

About our training team

Our trainers have decades of experience between them. They deliver accessibility consultancy ranging from technical audits and user tests, through to ongoing involvement in the accessibility of enterprise-level agile projects. They regularly champion accessibility at conferences, lead webinars, and run workshops.

Important information

Class size: We limit the number of people on our training courses to ensure all attendees can engage with the presenter, ask questions and have an informative experience