Registration for Strategic Digital Accessibility Training

Open Oregon Educational Resources, WebAIM, a leading accessibility nonprofit, and ORAHEAD, the Oregon Association of Higher Education and Disability, are cohosting professional learning cohorts to advance digital accessibility in public colleges and universities this year.

Institutional teams can join a professional learning cohort in Spring 2023 to work with an expert digital accessibility trainer and create digital accessibility action plans that benefit their campus open education programs and beyond.

To join the Spring 2023 learning cohort, please ask one team member to complete the Registration for Strategic Digital Accessibility Training Google form on behalf of the team. Please note that you will be asked to share the names, position titles, and email addresses of all team members. Registration deadline is Monday, March 6, 2023.

Want to learn more?

• Register for a Q&A Session via Zoom with Rob and Veronica: 11-11:30am PST Tuesday February 14th 2023.
• Review WebAIM’s Strategic Digital Accessibility Training Outline!
• You can also watch the recording from our previous Q&A session below.

With a digital accessibility action plan, institutional teams will be able to:

• Explore the importance of institutional vision and leadership commitment to accessibility using evidence-based performance indicators 
• Identify actionable and achievable tasks that participants can address in the near term
• Create a realistic plan for implementing accessibility goals with campus stakeholders over time
• Draw on expert resources and support to assess and report on progress

Oregon’s institutional OER point people can invite up to four campus stakeholders to form an institutional team (find your OER point person!). Campus stakeholders may include colleagues from disability services, teaching and learning centers, online education centers, provost offices, web/marketing, information technology, and diversity, equity, and inclusion offices. Institutional team members will be: 

1. invested in improving accessibility and open education on your campus;
2. in a position to guide or advise on department or unit-level decision-making;
3. able to commit to 8 hours of workshop attendance via Zoom and 2-5 hours of independent work to create a digital accessibility action plan during the term that you participate in the cohort.

Each term, WebAIM will host four 2-hour synchronous cohort sessions via Zoom in addition to individual Zoom consultations as needed. The goal is to support each team in creating digital accessibility action plans tailored to their campus needs. Action plans will focus on things that participant teams can do directly to move accessibility forward within the campus community. Activities in the action plans may include taking steps to create a campus-wide digital accessibility team, for example. Teams are asked to attend all four cohort sessions in order to create their digital accessibility action plan. For more information on each of the four sessions, please review the Open Oregon Educational Resources Workshop Outline.

This professional development opportunity is supported by funding from the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER).