Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the uptake of online and blended learning methodologies has been greatly accelerated. As we move past the pandemic, it is apparent that these ‘newer’ teaching methodologies are here to stay. While these methods hold many new opportunities, they also have the potential to pose new barriers to the realisation of inclusive education and their increased use has highlighted the inaccessibility of many digital teaching and learning methodologies.

In 2020, lecturers were required to transfer their teaching materials online as quickly as possible, leading them to focus on developing online teaching materials that could be accessed by the majority of their students, but not all. In many cases, lecturers are willing to apply accessibility features or tools, but lack knowledge of what is available and how to apply it. With this in mind, the Include project aims to provide lecturers with the tools and information to be able to increase the inclusivity and accessibility of their classes to more students.

One way in which the project will support lecturers, is by developing a set of step-by-step guidelines that provide technical instructions, for lecturers to add accessibility options and tools into their online teaching sessions.

To support the development of these guidelines the InclUDE project is asking lecturers, higher education professionals, students and education support services to give their feedback on:

• Technical and accessibility challenges they face while running online teaching or events.
• The areas in online teaching that respondents would like to know more about.
• Best practice and what worked well with online teaching.

To complete the survey in English, click here. To complete it in German, click here or here to complete it in French.

Deadline for responses is 22^nd April.

For any questions regarding the survey please contact rachel.vaughan(at)easpd.eu

Note to editors

Funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, the Inclusive University Digital Education (InclUDE) project aims to build on the lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide lecturers, higher education professionals, students as well as support service providers with the knowledge and awareness of current online accessibility tools and inclusive practices.

The project is coordinated by the University of Wolverhampton (UK) with  Universität Klagenfurt (Austria), Université Rennes II (France) and the European Association of Service providers for Persons with Disabilities (Belgium) as partners.

To find out more about the project, and its deliverables, visit the project webpage here.

Funding agreement 2020-1-UK01-KA226-HE-094428