Events

On Monday 11th November (12-1pm GMT), Southampton Education School launches a new Education Seminar Series, focused on leadership in education practice, advocacy and the professions. We’re delighted that the inaugural seminar will be presented by visiting speaker Kate Sonka, Executive Director of Teach Access, a US non-profit organisation working with industry, disability advocacy groups and educators to address the digital accessibility skills gap. Kate is visiting the University of Southampton as a guest of our UKRI Teaching Accessibility project. Kate’s presentation will explore how educators can make classrooms and curricula more inclusive and accessible for all. If you would like to attend via Zoom, please contact the Soton Education Office directly via: EducationFOS@soton.ac.uk. This event will include BSL interpretation, and recordings will also be available after the event. We hope to see you there!

In November, Sarah Lewthwaite presented to the bi-annual UK Cross-Government Accessibility Meetup, talking about ways to build accessibility capacity in teams. In January, Richard Morton (Head of Accessibility, Government Digital Service) and Josie Partridge published a blog about the event – discussing some of the key themes and activities discussed during the day. The next Meetup will be in March 2021.

Join the UK Government’s Accessibility Community group to keep up to date and discover more about the diverse accessibility work taking place across UK government and government agencies.

Inclusive Design 24 (#id24) is a free 24-hour online event for the global community. It celebrates inclusive design and shares knowledge and ideas from analogue to digital, from design to development, from planners to practitioners and everything and everyone inbetween.

Sarah Lewthwaite will be presenting ‘Teaching accessibility: 10 messages from research’ as one of 24 presentations at 14:00 UK time (13:00 UTC) on 10^th October 2019.

“This is a talk for everyone who talks about accessibility. People need to know more about accessibility, but it can be challenging to teach. It requires a unique mix of conceptual understanding, technical skill and procedural knowledge. In this talk I will introduce 10 teaching tools – principles and strategies for effective pedagogy – that are drawn from more than a decade of empirical academic research in education. Join me to expand your educational repertoire, so you can more effectively share accessibility with colleagues, teams and wider audiences.”

No sign up or registration is required to follow or participate in sessions. Sessions are streamed live and publically on YouTube. Live captions are available for each session. Videos are available after the event.

This is a fantastic annual event, with a wonderful video back-catalogue that is worth exploring. Do visit the Inclusive Design 24 site to take a look at the full schedule and find out more about how to get involved.

Dr Sarah Lewthwaite will be presenting at a forthcoming Institute of Coding Forum focused on Accessible Curriculum on Monday 30th September.

Event Summary

The new Public sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations 2018 on Websites and Mobile Applications comes into force this month, meaning all publicly funded digital platforms require a statement of accessibility.

• Is education ready for this?
• Is the tech talent we are producing skilled up to meet these requirements?

This forum will explore inclusive education and the ‘Accessible Curriculum’ in relation to visible and non-visible disabilities, from two perspectives:

• Is higher education accessible?
• Are students learning to develop accessible digital products?

The forum brings educators and employers together to generate advice and case studies.

We aim to both share expert knowledge and inspire and support those who are new to this field, and want to improve the accessibility of their offer.

The day will be full of opportunities to share your own experiences and learn new perspectives on how accessibility can be integrated into the workplace and education.

People should leave the event with more and shared knowledge about the different practice of accessibility and understand the identification of required actions.

Please note that this event is only open to:

• Teachers, lecturers & education professionals
• Learning technologists
• Disability service managers
• Designers and developers of educational products and services (private & public sector)

To register visit the IoC EventBrite pages.

Monday 23rd September is a milestone date for UK digital accessibility as the first stage of the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Apps) Accessibility Regulations 2018 comes into force. On this date, Sarah Lewthwaite and Abi James will be talking at the 29th London Accessibility Meetup, 18:00-21:00, Sainsbury’s London, to coincide with this.

To register and for full details, visit the London Accessibility Meetup #29 pages. This promises to be an excellent event, and we look forward to seeing you there. Live Streaming and video details will be added when these become available.

Details:

Talk 1: Learning and teaching accessibility (Dr Sarah Lewthwaite, University of Southampton)

Digital technologies have revolutionised daily life, yet the capacity for accessible tools and services has not kept pace with demand, resulting in the ongoing exclusion of disabled people and older people. Despite the social cost, new legislation and a trajectory of growing demand for accessible digital services, there is still a lack of detailed understanding of how accessibility can be effectively taught, learned and scaled.

This talk introduces new research into the pedagogy of accessibility – reporting on a systematic literature review of published work in this field. Together we will consider what is known about the teaching and learning of digital accessibility, what makes it distinct and challenging, and how we – as practitioners, trainers, educators, advocates and experts – can work together to build upon this knowledge, to cascade our skills and understanding more effectively to co-workers, colleagues, clients and others.

Talk 2: Digital Accessibility Regulatory Landscape – are you ready? (Abi James, AbilityNet)

Legislation and regulation are an important part of the jigsaw for improving digital accessibility support. Over the past decade, countries have increasingly implemented accessibility requirements into statutory regulations with the EU, UK and Canada all adding new regulations in the past 12 months. September 2019 sees the first date by which UK and EU public sector organisations must ensure new website meet accessibility standards and publish accessibility statements. In this talk, Abi will talk about key requirements of the Public Sector Accessibility Regulations and how organisations are adapting to the requirements to test, comply and roadmap for accessibility standards. She will also look at how increasing regulation could impact the role of accessibility professionals both in public and private sector organisations.

Our Speakers:

Dr Sarah Lewthwaite is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and Principle Investigator on the UKRI-funded ‘Teaching Accessibility’ project at the Centre for Research in Inclusion. Sarah and her team are researching the teaching and learning of digital accessibility in universities and the workplace, to build evidence-based understanding of how accessibility can be more effectively taught. The 4-year study received over £650,000 from UKRI, and seeks to forge new collaborations and dialogue between academia and industry. Sarah has a PhD from the Learning Sciences Research Institute (combining Education, Computer Science and Psychology) and research experience and expertise across education, accessibility, HCI and disability studies.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/slewth

Abi is an accessibility consultant with the assistive technology charity AbilityNet. Motivated by her own experiences of using technology to overcome barriers, she is passionate about communicating the benefits of assistive technology and the need to create a digitally accessible world. Over the past 15 years, she has been involved in projects ranging from developing new assistive technologies, creating training courses and contributing to accessibility standards. Working with the University of Southampton and the British Dyslexia Association, she is also involved in research on accessible technologies and how inclusive policies and organisational culture impacts digital accessibility. She contributes to numerous government forums on digital accessibility policy an is co-chair of the Further and Higher Education Digital Accessibility Working Group set up to organisations implement the Public Sector accessibility regulations.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/abijames