The national nonprofit’s Teach Access Grants supports college instructors in creating and delivering college curricula that introduce concepts and skills of accessibility into their courses.
EATON RAPIDS, Mich., March 21, 2024 (Newswire.com)
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College faculty members can now apply for $2,000 grants from the Teach Access Grants program to develop academic course materials to teach about accessible design and development.
Teach Access is a national nonprofit that works to close the accessibility skills gap. Through collaboration with colleges, industries, government, and advocacy groups, Teach Access helps build curricula that will teach the future workforce about digital accessibility and universal design.
The Call for Proposals for the sixth round of Teach Access Grants for the 2024-2025 school year is now open. Grant applications should be submitted by 11 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 31, 2024. Information and applications for the grants program are available at https://teachaccess.org/2024/03/teach-access-grants/.
The Teach Access Grants program is supported by foundation grants and the nonprofit’s sponsors, including Verizon, Salesforce, Google, Meta, Yahoo!, and other leading companies in technology, consulting, and healthcare.
“Teach Access Grants is our flagship program, beginning in 2018, and thanks to our sponsors, we’ve been able to award more than $350,000 to faculty in higher education,” said Kate Sonka, executive director of Teach Access. “The program also helps us grow our open educational resource, the Teach Access Curriculum Repository, which is a primary bridge to help teach students about disability and accessibility.”
Teach Access grants are intended to support educators in developing ways to incorporate teaching about accessibility into their existing courses rather than requesting the creation of a new course. For the 2023-2024 academic year, Teach Access awarded grants to 19 recipients to support creating and delivering accessibility-infused college curricula.
“My Teach Access grant gave me the opportunity to include a greater emphasis on accessibility in my Human-Computer Interaction course. It also inspired me to think more carefully about how to best teach accessibility through more interactive and engaging techniques,” said Rachel Adler, associate professor in the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a 2020 Teach Access grant recipient.
To be eligible for a Teach Access grant, an applicant must be an instructor of an existing course in any field or discipline that can incorporate curricula designed to impact a student’s knowledge of fundamental accessibility concepts and skills and their ability to implement the principles of accessibility. The instructor must plan to teach the course in the 2024-2025 academic year and be employed at a two-year or four-year university or college in the United States or a U.S. territory.
Teach Access is committed to equity and strongly encourages applications from faculty at Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) such as Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI), Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Community Colleges (CC), and Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU).
In service of the Teach Access mission of expanding accessibility curricula through collaboration, grant recipients are required to present their work at their institutions and contribute to the Teach Access Curriculum Repository (TACR).
The TACR is a free collection of open education resources developed by faculty to support teaching accessibility to students. It contains various teaching tools, including syllabi, slide decks, assignment prompts, discussion questions, and quizzes. The materials span disciplines including computer science, human-computer interaction, web design & development, user experience (UX) design, visual and graphic design, game & interactive media design, instructional technology, technical writing, and more.
Teach Access Grant recipients say the awards aid them in professional development while also advancing the cause of accessibility education.
“Meeting other Teach Access grantees helped me build connections that have led to successful collaborations and greater career success. Most importantly, the grant helped further the goal of accessible design for all,” Adler said.
To apply for a Teach Access Grant, please visit https://teachaccess.org/initiatives/grants/.
To make a donation to support Teach Access programs and resources, please visit https://teachaccess.org/donate/.
About Teach Access
Teach Access is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization collaborating with education, industry, government and disability advocacy organizations to address the critical need to enhance students’ understanding of digital accessibility as they learn to design, develop, and build new technologies with the needs of people with disabilities in mind. Teach Access envisions a fully accessible future in which students enter the workforce with knowledge of the needs of people with disabilities and skills in the principles of accessible design and development, such that technology products and services are born accessible.
Source: Teach Access
