Inaccessible curriculum as the disabler

Sharon Kerr and Roslyn Sackley from Macquarie University Accessibility Services, a National Accessibility Service used by The University of Western Australia will be visiting  on Tuesday 21st April, 2009:

Background to Presentation  

The AVCC Guidelines 2006 for students with a disability make it very clear the steps that teaching staff should take when developing their curricula for delivery in the Higher Education Sector.  Sadly however,  few are aware of these guidelines, nor of their personal responsibility to cater for the needs of students with disabilities at the time of developing their teaching program and curriculum.  MQAS has taken the twofold approach of:
1)Providing a just in time conversion service for students.
2)Working with teaching staff at the point of curriculum review to ensure that accessible practices are adopted.

MQAS has the overriding aim of facilitating equity of access to Education for all students.  As long as there remains the need for intervention prior to a student having access to information and knowledge, students do not have equity of access to their learning materials.  Inaccessible curriculum in effect becomes the disabler. 

Sharon and Roslyn will:
• promote the principles of accessible curriculum design
• demonstrate new assistive technologies that have the potential to enhance learning outcomes for all students, and
• answer questions and brainstorm access solutions.

Details:

Date: Tuesday 21st April
Time: 2pm
Location: Room G11, Engineering-Civil & Mechanical
RSVP: Katie.ellis@uwa.edu.au