The Ontario Summit for Students with Disabilities produced their findings from their one-day online conference in February 2024. The report shares the stories and lived experiences of over 100 students attending post-secondary institutions in Ontario with lived experience with disability.
The Teaching Innovation Incubator is seeking support from University of Waterloo faculty, staff, and students who have an interest in providing feedback and enhancing their knowledge about accessible education by participating in an Accessible Education User Testing Group.
The website for the Disability Inclusion Steering Committee (DISCo), the committee of senior University leaders who are leading UW's approach to meeting the 185 AODA recommendations, is now live. The Accessible Education project is just one example of how DISCo has identified an approach to meeting its accessibility goals. Read more about the broad work of DISCo.
The Centre for Teaching Excellence has developed a new resource identifying the existing accessibility initiatives at the University of Waterloo.
Over the next few years, the Instructional Programs and Practices project team will explore how to create alternate program pathways, ensure accessible experiential learning opportunities exist, develop accessibility standards for teaching and learning, and crucially, identify a process to establish bona fide and essential academic requirements for programs and courses.
The Instructional Programs and Practices project team, led by co-leads Diana Skrzydlo (Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Mathematics) and Donna Ellis (Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence), will have a broad mix of representation from across the campus and is currently seeking expressions of interest from faculty members from all faculties.
The three Accessible Education project teams - Policy & Guidelines, Instructional Programs & Practices, and Learning Tools & Materials - are set to begin work this fall. Faculty, instructors, and staff from across campus have been identified and invited to serve on these project teams as either team members or collaborators.
Over the course of the fall term, work will be done to plan how each team will address the AODA recommendations that they are being tasked with addressing.