Although digitalisation is entering all parts of our lives in steadily faster and more diverse ways, and we are all affected by it, some groups of people do not have equal opportunities for digital participation. Basically, forms of social inequality related to age, level of impairment/disability/chronic illness, or origin/language, also determine the degree of social exclusion in the context of digitalisation. The ADORE project (Accessibility in Digital Communication Higher Education Curricula) addresses this issue.
 

Improved accessibility

The main aim of the project is to increase awareness of this issue among university teachers in the field of communication science, to help them to provide additional training offers to meet needs, and thus to improve accessibility in communication science teaching.
In detail, the project will

• ask teachers, students, and internet users, for whom diverse online content or presentation forms are sometimes challenging due to the forms of inequality described above, to describe their specific needs, knowledge gaps, etc.;
• develop continuing education measures for teachers based on this feedback and provide these in the form of a digital accessibility toolkit;
• compile the findings in a digital accessibility policy paper and to offer corresponding digital accessibility workshops; and
• identify degree programmes and courses in Europe in which digital accessibility can be thematically integrated and actively promote this integration.
   

The ADORE project empowers communication science teachers, encouraging them to teach in accessible ways and to create and publish accessible content. Communication science students should be supported optimally during their studies, and this support should be adapted to meet their individual needs. They should also be made more aware of the topic of digital accessibility, and not only so that they can be prepared to fulfil the steadily evolving requirements of the labour market (e.g. due to future EU directives on digital accessibility).

The university partners Paris Lodron University Salzburg (Austria), University of Tallinn (Estonia), and University of Maribor (Slovenia), as well as the institutes FUNKA NU AB (Sweden) and INUK (Slovenia) are cooperating in this Erasmus+ project.