March 15, 2024, by Ben Atkinson

Faculty of Social Sciences SACA Digital Accessibility Project

Throughout the 2023–4 academic year, we are running a new feature on the Learning Technology (LT) blog: a faculty takeover month! Each month, we will feature posts from different faculty members at the university. Every Friday, posts will highlight interesting work and ideas related to technology in teaching and learning and showcase unique projects from within the various disciplines across the UoN. So far, we have promoted the work of the Faculties of Science, Medicine and Health Sciences, Arts and Engineering. This month, we welcome posts from the Faculty of Social Science.

Following a successful Students As Change Agents (SACA) bid in summer 2023, the Faculty of Social Sciences are pleased to deliver a staff-student co-creation project that focuses on digital accessibility.

The objectives of this project are to:

1. Gain a greater understanding of the lived experience of students in the Faculty using assistive technology.
2. Integrate Nottingham Accessibility Practices into existing learning material and help support staff to embed good accessibility practice.

To achieve the project objectives, seven students (one from each school) have been recruited as Accessibility Project Assistants.  Project Assistants will facilitate interviews with students who use assistive technology to explore the benefits and challenges of using this technology to support learning.  The interviews will be analysed, and Project Assistants will work together to publish the findings in a report.  Project Assistants will also convert existing learning material supplied by academics in the schools and implement four key accessibility practices.  Before and after examples of learning materials will be shared with schools to help build the foundations for good accessibility practice.

The project is due to finish at the end of May, and we hope to share more information with colleagues in the summer.

If you have a question about the project, please contact Rebekah Thirlwall (FoSS Senior ESE Officer).

For more information about SACA and examples of past projects please visit the SACA page on the University website.

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