A major one-day conference in London organised by Middlesex University and sponsored by the British Computer Society (BCS) which aims to highlight some of the challenges in digital accessibility

Disabled students are often unable to utilise their IT skills because they’re either not able to use ‘conventional’ classroom facilities or because the online learning tools haven’t been designed or implemented correctly.

This major one-day conference in London sponsored by the British Computer Society (BCS) in April aims to highlight some of the challenges and engage students, IT professionals and academics in providing recommendations and solutions.

Gill Whitney, Associate Professor at Middlesex University and convenor of the conference, explains: “Too often the individual support for disabled students at college or university is likely to be a jigsaw of fragmented pieces.”

Digital accessibility aims to match the needs of people with various disabilities to online teaching resources provided in a suitable form. The objective of the conference is to give guidance to enable current computing and IT students to make sure materials are properly designed for students with disabilities so they may reach their full potential.

Sometimes, a minor change in a piece of software can make the difference between disabled students being unable to use it at all to them utilising the computer program to complete a piece of coursework unaided.

A range of experienced keynote speakers will set the scene and give their experience in creating inclusive educational environments.

Conference delegates will also pool thoughts on how to support students with disabilities to achieve their full potential.

The focus will be on computing and information science and technology within higher and further education, although the problems encountered by students with disabilities are endemic across education.