ADCET - Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training

ADCET was delighted to announce the 2024 winners of our annual Accessibility in Action Awards. These awards recognise passion, innovation, good practice and leadership in accessibility, and are held in recognition of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). This event brought together colleagues from across the tertiary education sector, allowing them to connect and share innovative examples from their own work. 

Registrations are now open for the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Symposium 2024 on June 12 at RMIT, Melbourne (in-person or online). Join us for this event featuring keynote speaker Dr Thomas Tobin. Here you can connect with like-minded educators, experts, and advocates to deepen your understanding of UDL principles and strategies and be part of a community dedicated to creating inclusive and engaging learning environments for all.

By working with students, academics and the university, the Access and Disability Service at ACU are empowering students to take on every opportunity through the provision of appropriate reasonable adjustments. It is with these provisions that one of their students, Brielle Riza, was able to engage in a Study Experience in Fiji. Brielle, who is hard of hearing, shares her amazing experience.

In this ADCET webinar Patricia McCarthy and Mary Quirke from Ireland, sought to explore the professional role of the Disability Officer and consider how universal design transforms not just the world of the student, but also the world of the Disability Officer. It is evident that this role is changing and, therefore, they could be seen as inclusion experts who are well placed to advise and lead on UDL initiatives not just for students with disabilities but for all on campus.

ADCET was excited to welcome back Dr Thomas Tobin for this interactive webinar session, where actual classroom materials from colleagues in mathematics, business, chemistry, and carpentry were used in order to teach micro-lessons in the usual way and then in a more universally-designed fashion. Thomas demonstrated specific techniques that can be adopted quickly and easily to help lower access barriers. 

This ADCET webinar will presented the findings of Dr Alison Nuske’s PhD research exploring the experiences of autistic students during their transition to, and first year of university in Australia. Alison explored the individual and systemic factors that impact on autistic student’s transition experiences and provided recommendations for developing a holistic approach to supporting autistic students during this critical time.