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Guest post Learner Experience Teaching

Improving engagement in live sessions: the power of the chat

Our last accessibility drop-in clinic featured a few of our Accessibility Community’s Leadership Team introducing themselves and talking a little bit about their areas of practice. You can view the recording and access the transcript on the accessibility drop-in clinic page (March 2021). Following on from this, Miranda Melcher, shares more of her thoughts and […]

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Guest post Learner Experience Teaching

Low-effort, high-impact: how small changes to your teaching can create a more inclusive learning environment

One of our most popular accessibility drop-in clinics featured three practitioners sharing how they support staff with accessibility. View the recording and access the transcript on the accessibility drop-in clinic page (November 2020: Supporting teaching staff to create accessible content). Here, one of the presenters, Miranda Melcher, shares more detail on her approach. For more […]

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Learner Experience Teaching

Stay home – Stay Safe?

Moving learning online is a major challenge for educators and students alike. Staying Home also needs to include staying safe online.
How safe are we communicating, working and learning via online platforms. What do we need to remember as we go all out for online delivery?
Julia Taylor, Jisc subject specialist in access and engagement reminds us about online safety.

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Assessment Deaf awareness hearing loss Inclusive Digital Capability Lectures / seminars Margaret McKay

Empowering the storyteller: supporting Deaf/Deafblind students

The most compelling life stories are often ones that allow us to connect with the storyteller and for many, the pursuit of academic opportunities form the basis of their narrative With this in mind, how do educational institutions enable Deaf/Deafblind to pursue their story- underpinned by equality of access in their educational journey? In our […]

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Alistair McNaught Alternative formats e-books Reading effectively Researching effectively Resources

Open access resources (OERs) and accessibility

It seems tautological to write a blog post on open access and accessibility. Surely if something is open access then it is open to anyone and therefore accessible to anyone? Alistair McNaught argues that the link between open access and accessibility is more nuanced than you might expect. Authors and institutions need simple guidelines to […]

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Inclusive Digital Capability Julia Taylor Learner Experience Subject Specialist Teaching

Why digital capability needs to be inclusive

What digital skills do you need to do the job? In the fast changing, competitive landscape of employment, Digital Capability is seen as essential to developing a competent individual and an effective organisation. Defining the digital skills needed to do a job efficiently is only part of the challenge in education. Because technology offers so […]

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Learner Experience Margaret McKay Reading effectively Teaching Writing effectively

Accessible material audit checklist

As the start of the academic year is just around the corner we’ve pulled together some quick reminders and quick wins for you to consider when creating accessible resources, information and/or learning material.  How do you make sure your Word documents are accessible? I use inbuilt heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2 etc.) to structure […]

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Assessment Learner Experience Lectures / seminars Teaching

Collaborative activities and inclusion

Online collaboration offers learners new opportunities. Alistair McNaught explores the inclusion pros and cons. There are many pros… ‘Collaborative’ is not new; but it’s better now Collaborative approaches have been around since the first hunter-gatherer apprentices worked together to net birds on the marshy shores of Doggerland. But digital technologies have brought new opportunities. Learners […]

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assistive technology Learner Experience Quality improvement Teaching

The BEST use of technology to support disabled learners?

Disability statistics are stark: Government statistics show Disabled people are around 3 times as likely not to hold any qualifications compared to non-disabled people. They are half as likely to hold a degree-level qualification. 19.2% of working age disabled people do not hold any formal qualification. Compare that with 6.5% of working age non-disabled people. […]

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Equality Learner Experience Lectures / seminars

Lecture capture: mainstreaming reasonable adjustments

Lecture capture is a subject that often generates healthy discussion (and often debate) across academic communities and over the last few years we’ve seen the emergence of a range of differing approaches. Some institutions have embedded lecture capture into policy in order to adopt a more universal way of embedding anticipatory arrangements as part of […]