Abstract:

Action line No.4 of the Council of Europe Disability Action Plan 2006-2015 aimed at ensuring "that all persons, irrespective of the nature and degree of their impairment, have equal access to education". Although there have been some steps in the right direction since the Disability Action Plan was published, there is much left to do. The COVID-19 pandemic and the enforced switch from presence courses to full online teaching exacerbated an already problematic situation.

In higher education, lecturers struggled with the sudden transfer of contents to a digital format, while students often had technical problems and/or accessibility issues. When referring to accessibility, the first thought is usually of people in wheelchairs, followed by blind people, as they are identifiable; however, there are many more who need accommodation although their disabilities or chronic illnesses are not visible at first glance. As the information and counselling centre for studies and disability of the "Deutsches Studentenwerk" noted in 2020, COVID-19 changed teaching, learning and examining at higher education institutions – and they need to make provisions for accessible digital teaching and examining.

The project "Inclusive University Digital Education" (InclUDE; 2021-2022) intends to facilitate the process of making digital education as accessible as possible. Co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, under the Digital Education Readiness call released in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and global lockdown, InclUDE aims to identify tools and best practice for higher education lecturers to make their online teaching more accessible and inclusive to a wide range of students. Within the framework of the project, the four partners, from Austria, Belgium, France and the UK, will identify problems both of a technical and a social nature and propose respective solutions.

In Phase 1 of the project, a survey was distributed to 170 higher education staff, mainly in Austria (54%), France (31%) and the UK (9%), to identify baseline familiarity with accessibility tools and gaps in knowledge or provision. Findings from Phase 1 indicate that over half of the participants were not using any online accessibility tools, with around a third of them citing limited knowledge of how to use such tools as a barrier. This problem will be addressed by InclUDE's Online Repository, where interested parties can look up free accessibility tools.

In the current Phase 2, additional surveys are being distributed to higher education staff, students, and policy makers, and being followed by focus groups and interviews. The Phase 2 surveys focus on two topics. First, best practice in and barriers to accessible online teaching, from a technical perspective. Second, how the student experience during online teaching can be affected by a range of non-technical aspects, such as unsuitable workspaces, isolation or commitments outside of study.

In Phase 3, the results of the Phase 2 surveys will lead to recommendations for improved digital inclusion, in the form of two sets of guidelines, with the same focus as the Phase 2 surveys.

Keywords:

Research project, Erasmus plus, inclusion, accessibility, higher education, digital education.