Free Digital Accessibility Training

Each day, more services become digitised – making us increasingly reliant on the online environment.

Think about everything you will do this week that either depends on or is made easier by being online. Now imagine if you were among the millions of people in the UK who struggle to access online services due to a disability, compounded by the lack of accessible online services.

Whether this be websites, social media, Word documents, or PDF files, it is very important that we ensure any online or digital services that we provide are as accessible as possible to everybody including people with disabilities.

Disability Information Scotland is an Edinburgh based charity which offers free training on how to make your digital and online services accessible to people with disabilities. This training can be conducted either by their experienced tutor (via Microsoft Teams or in-person) or through e-learning modules. Their instructor-led courses offer advice on specific areas of accessibility, and can be delivered at a time to suit your organisation.

• Accessibility Awareness: A self-study course offering understanding of how information is accessed by people with disabilities, and general advice about online content accessibility. The course looks at: accessibility for people with sensory/physical/learning/cognitive disabilities; and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 4 stage model for ensuring your information is as accessible as possible. Once completed, attendees will receive a certificate.

• Accessible Word Documents: A 90-minute instructor-led course detailing how to produce accessible Microsoft Word documents, considering content such as accessible fonts and paragraphs; the importance of heading styles; Alt-text; screen reader software; and more.
• Accessible Social Media: A 90-minute instructor-led course detailing how to produce accessible social media content, considering content such as language constraints; accessible colours and visuals; captions; and more.

For further information, and to contact their team, please visit the Disability Information Scotland website.