Building a Sustainable Approach to Digital Capabilities Development for Accessibility and Inclusion

Richard Walker, Associate Director (Digital Education), the University of York

Richard Walker, Associate Director (Digital Education), the University of York

Improving the accessibility of learning for all students is a common aspiration of educational institutions and one of the leading drivers for digital education, as highlighted in the recently published 2024 UCISA Digital Education Survey Report of UK higher education (UK HE) institutions. And yet, according to this report, support for the development of staff digital capabilities appears to be a much lower priority for institutions. This is all the more surprising when academics are engaging with a wider range of digital tools and services in the post-pandemic period and are confronted with new challenges, not least the mainstream emergence of generative AI services and their impact on learning, teaching, and assessment activities. How should we address this problem and join up institutional policy aspirations with practical support to teaching staff sustainably, enabling the development of digitally capable staff?

A logical starting point would be to identify staff training and development needs across the institution and design digital training programmes to address these needs. Optional in-person or online training and webinars are the most common approaches employed by UK HE institutions, according to the UCISA survey, along with providing online resources to create accessible and inclusive resources. Still, systematic and mandatory training provision is minimal across the sector. At an institutional level, less than half of the institutions responding to the survey formally benchmarked the effectiveness and take-up of their training, and only a quarter of institutions reported that they measured the development of staff digital capabilities. This, then, leaves just-in-time training to acquire key skills at the appropriate time, such as before the launch of a new course or method of assessment. As we saw in the throes of the emergency remote teaching phase, just-in-time provision can lead to a very steep learning curve for course leaders in a very short period. This is not a recipe for sustainable learning and the embedding of digital practices for the long term.

“Access to the data empowers people at all levels, from lecturers to managers, to do something positive for accessibility”

At the University of York, we have looked to institutional change management strategies to address the accessibility of course resources for students, as part of an ongoing journey towards establishing an assistive technology-enabled culture within our institution that is truly inclusive by design. We recognise that policy changes and guidance are insufficient to effect changes in digital practice. Consequently, a strong focus has been placed on developing digital training and support provision to help colleagues develop their confidence and an awareness of accessibility issues. All staff are now required to complete our mandatory digital accessibility awareness tutorial, which addresses the rationale for digital accessibility and the key steps that need to be taken. This results in generating a personal action plan to enhance their digital practice. This training intends to show how inclusive values can be applied to day-to-day digital practice. This all contributes to a growing recognition of accessibility issues and how to address them through thoughtful design methods. This is no longer a ‘nice to have’ aspiration, but a clear direction of travel, given our institutional commitment to inclusion to ensure that all students can participate fully in learning activities and achieve their best outcomes at York.

We recognise that it is important to combine this training with practical support. We have done this by developing templated course sites that adhere to the University’s design principles, incorporating accessible and inclusive site design principles. We now have over 2500 module sites within our institutional learning management system, all delivered as templated Ultra sites. This has represented a big step forward in standardising the user experience and providing students with consistency across their modules, with module content, assessment, and other teaching and learning information placed in recognisable locations within every module site within the learning management system.

The introduction of templates presents a solid foundation for developing digital practice, but will not automatically lead to sustained improvements – it is also essential to ensure that these practices ‘stick’. In recognising this, our central Digital Education Team has carried out template adherence audits, helping us identify areas where adjustments need to be made to the template or staff guidance to improve consistency further. Another measure we have taken is to provide all teaching departments with automated Ally reports to help them meet the baseline standards they had set for themselves and continually improve the accessibility figures for their online course resources each year. Access to the data empowers people at all levels, from lecturers to managers, to do something positive for accessibility. This combined set of measures is intended to lay down foundations so that core values and practices in accessibility can be upheld and sustained as the digital landscape evolves. But there’s always more still to do. Looking to the future our focus will be directed to continuous improvement measures as well as new initiatives, such as clearer guidance for the accessible procurement of digital products and services, so that members of staff can design accessible learning environments for their students, who can make use of learning tools and resources without encountering barriers to access.