1. Education and training for accessible web design Jonathan Willson Jenny Craven and Richard Eskins Manchester Metropolitan University

2. Who we are Department of Information and Communications, MMU Jonathan lectures in web design, and technology and the law Richard lectures in web design, and organising information Jenny is a research fellow in CERLIM – Centre for Research in Library and Information Management

3. Our take on things technology department in a Humanities Faculty usability and accessibility are core to achieving web design that is fit for purpose ‘traditional’ expertise in information retrieval and storage – e.g. cat & class, card sorting, librarianship, information management, community profiling

4. There is a problem At yesterday’s workshop … Chris Power exclaimed “Baffling!” “What’s going on?” “Web developers are not being trained.” Helen Petrie later said, “Guidelines are necessary but not sufficient.”

5. Empirical evidence there is a lack of progress in improving the accessibility of web sites per se progress has stalled in the public sector – Riga Declaration – Cabinet Office eAccessibility study – MeAC Report – EC e-Inclusion campaign

6. web_access 2-year multilateral project funded by EC Lifelong Learning Programme – Erasmus sub-programme under the Action ‘Curriculum development: Development of European modules’ main outcome is the ‘development of a distance learning module with regard to national diversity at a European level in the field of accessible web design’

7. Project Partners Austria – Coordinators Germany Hungary Ireland Spain UK interest already expressed in Czech Republic and Switzerland

8. Deliverables State of the Art Curriculum Content and learning materials Accredited courses eLearning tool including authoring Dissemination

9. State of the Art What have we found? A lot of ‘stuff’ … TechDIS packs, Netskills training materials, AbilityNet courses, EASI Accredited provision … a drop in the ocean… EASI and the University of Southern Maine, Design for All survey Accredited degrees … ?? Linz

10. Curriculum 6 content areas, 19 (-ish) courses Fundamentals of accessibility (3) Guidelines and legal requirements (2) Design and usability (2) Assistive technologies (3) Special knowledge on accessibility (7) Project development (2) (or 6 ?)

11. Our wishes Distance Masters in Accessible Web Design at MMU credit-bearing modules short courses a quiet life