Training

Current status

The 12 recommendations were written to guide concrete decisions: what the institution has to guarantee, what the teacher does when preparing a lesson, how a resource is designed, described and made available. Taking those decisions into practice asks for more than reading the text — it asks for exercises, discussion of real cases, and feedback on the material each person already produces. That is what training does and what a reference page cannot do on its own.

No course has been designed or delivered so far. This page announces no cohorts, dates or registration: it declares the four planned lines of training and the method that will govern them, so that the proposal can be discussed, criticised and built with other people before it exists.

In the meantime, the content that would underpin any of them is already available and public: the 12 recommendations can be read in full in the Recommendations section, and the Assistant page offers an immediate route to application — a prompt that installs the recommendations in any artificial intelligence tool so it can assess a specific piece of material.

The planned courses

The first three lines follow the same division of responsibilities as Table 8, the canonical source of the recommendations: some recommendations address the institution (01 and 02), some the teacher (03 to 07), and some the educational resource (08 to 12). Each audience is trained on what falls under its responsibility — and on how its part connects with the others, because none of them settles accessibility on its own.

The fourth line is not an audience but a format: the script that lets anyone run the training without the project team present. The descriptions below set out what each course will cover, who it will be for, and which recommendations underpin it.

Teacher training

For those who prepare and deliver lessons: how to plan material from the outset with students with visual impairments in mind, rather than adapting it hastily afterwards. It will cover preparing the task, communicating with the student across the term, and the routine of feedback on what worked — the recommendations that describe teaching work itself, not the infrastructure around it.

The practical part will start from material each participant already uses. A slide, an exercise brief, a scanned text: the exercise will be to review it in the light of the recommendations and remake it, with attention to the design of the resource, the description of images, and how far in advance the material reaches the people who need it adapted.

Chiefly intended for: higher education teachers, in any field, with or without prior experience of accessibility.

Recommendations that underpin it: Recommendations 03 to 07, supported by 09 and 10

Institutional training

For those with decision-making and organisational power: programme coordinators, accessibility offices, libraries, technical teams and management. It will address what no teacher can settle alone — the process by which the institution learns of each student’s needs, the deadlines and the people responsible for producing adapted material, and continuing professional development for those who teach.

It will also cover setting up an accessibility tutoring programme: who trains, who follows up, and how it is sustained over time — the point at which Recommendation 02 stops being a guideline and becomes a structure with a budget, people and continuity.

Chiefly intended for: coordinators, accessibility offices, libraries, technical teams and HEI management.

Recommendations that underpin it: Recommendations 01 and 02

Training for students and tutors

The research records that accessibility is built with the student, not for them: nobody knows their own reading strategies, the resources they use and what actually works better than they do. The training will prepare students with visual impairments to state those needs and negotiate them with teachers and the institution — and will prepare tutors, teaching assistants and classmates to support without displacing the autonomy of the people they support.

It is the counterpart of the teacher training: both deal with the same relationship, each from its own side. Where one discusses how to ask, the other discusses how to answer — and both start from the principle that communication has to begin before the problem appears.

Chiefly intended for: students with visual impairments, tutors, teaching assistants and participants in tutoring programmes.

Recommendations that underpin it: Recommendations 02 and 04, supported by 05

Self-guided track

A complete script so that anyone can run the training on their own: agenda, slides, exercises with sample material, assessment criteria and guidance for whoever delivers it. A distant institution, an accessibility office with no travel budget, or a study group will be able to run the training without depending on the project team’s calendar.

The script will be published in the same accessible formats planned for the other materials — the flexibility of choice of Recommendation 08 applied to the training itself — and will carry the same canonical content as the pages of this site, under the same headings and in the same order, in line with Recommendation 11.

Chiefly intended for: institutions, research groups and anyone who wishes to run the training independently.

Recommendations that underpin it: Recommendations 08 and 11

Table of courses

The table summarises the four lines described above. The Status column reads "Not started" for all of them — with no expected date, because there is no date to give. When a course exists, this is where it will be announced.

While no course exists, the content that would underpin it is available in full in the Recommendations section, and the Assistant page already makes it possible to assess a specific piece of material.

How the courses will be made

No course will be delivered before it passes the same verification applied to this site and planned for the materials: reading the script and the slides with a screen reader, checking the description of every image used, and reviewing the support material for the design of the resource — type size, contrast, spacing and hierarchy, in line with Recommendation 09.

Training about accessibility delivered with inaccessible material contradicts its own content in the first slide projected. It is the same reason this site is built the way it is: the consistency between what is said and what is delivered is part of the argument.

The verification of the research itself was carried out with eleven specialists — teachers, students with visual impairments, technical staff and industry professionals — not by the authors alone. The courses will follow the same principle: they will be designed and reviewed with people from the audiences they address, necessarily including people with visual impairments.

All four lines will start from the same canonical content as the pages of this site, with the same numbering, the same titles and the same wording of the recommendations. Anyone who takes part in a course and then consults the site will find the same text, not a parallel version.

Collaborate

The design of these courses is open to collaboration. We welcome help drawing up the agenda and the exercises, producing the support material, reviewing the accessibility of slides and scripts, the experience of those who already deliver accessibility training and — centrally — the participation of students and professionals with visual impairments in defining what needs to be taught.

Institutions that would like to host, test or adapt one of the courses to their own context can also come forward here: the first delivery of each line will be, in practice, its verification.

Collaborate with the project

The form asks for a name, an email and a description of the proposal, and lists "Designing and delivering training" among the ways of collaborating. Every message is read by the project team and answered at the email address given.