Scaling Accessibility Education: A Fellowship Program Driving Curricular and Institutional Transformation
General description of the project
The Teach Access Fellowship Program is a year-long, cohort-based professional development initiative designed to address a root cause of inaccessible technology: the lack of accessibility education in higher education. Launched in 2023, the program equips faculty and academic staff across all disciplines with the knowledge and tools to embed accessibility concepts and practices into their courses, programs, and departments.
The Fellowship combines synchronous online sessions, asynchronous learning resources, mentorship, and applied project work. Fellows begin by developing a shared foundation in disability, disability justice, and inclusive practices. From there, they learn accessible design principles, standards, and teaching strategies, and apply this learning by creating, implementing, and scaling accessibility-focused curricular materials within their own institutional contexts.
The Teach Access Fellowship Program is making a real difference. To date, it has engaged 60 higher education professionals across diverse disciplines in the United States and Puerto Rico, fostering a community committed to accessibility education. Fellows have created more than 100 free teaching materials now available in the Teach Access Curriculum Repository. Instead of building expensive new programs, the Fellowship helps schools add accessibility lessons to courses they already teach. As a result, faculty feel more confident teaching accessibility, and schools are better prepared to include it in their programs.
The Fellowship is highly cost-effective, relying on widely available tools such as Zoom, Google Workspace, and LinkedIn, along with open educational resources and peer mentorship, rather than costly proprietary solutions. Its impact is driven by the Fellows themselves through a train-the-trainer model: Fellows apply what they learn in their own teaching and actively engage colleagues and students, extending accessibility education well beyond the cohort. For example, Fellows in the 2025 cohort collectively reached approximately 911 students and 1,175 faculty members. By embedding accessibility into existing courses, rather than creating new programs, the Fellowship enables Fellows to drive sustainable institutional change and inform decision-making at both the program and departmental levels.
Key lessons learned include the importance of grounding accessibility education in disability perspectives, meeting educators where they are, and focusing on small, sustainable curricular changes rather than large-scale overhauls.
Technologies
The Teach Access Fellowship Program uses an integrated set of widely available technologies, such as Zoom, Google Workspace, Instructure Canvas, and LinkedIn, to support learning, collaboration, and impact while remaining cost-effective.
Zoom hosts live sessions, breakout groups, and peer learning. Google Workspace enables collaborative drafting, feedback, and shared work through cloud-based documents and folders. Instructure Canvas serves as the home for the Teach Access Curriculum Repository, providing a centralized, accessible platform for organizing and sustaining Fellowship-developed teaching materials. Finally, LinkedIn offers a space for networking and ongoing communication.
Across all platforms, accessibility best practices are intentionally modeled, such as captioned sessions, accessible documents, and use of plain language, reinforcing the principles Fellows learn to teach and apply in their own courses.
Explain project results
The Fellowship’s impact reaches far beyond individual participants. By equipping educators to teach accessibility within their disciplines, the program drives improvements in multiple areas. Student learning outcomes improve as students gain foundational accessibility knowledge and inclusive design skills relevant to their future careers. Institutions benefit by embedding accessibility into existing curricula rather than relying on costly retroactive fixes or compliance-only approaches, strengthening overall effectiveness. Workforce readiness increases as graduates enter the job market with skills employers increasingly expect. This change is scalable and sustainable: institutions achieve faculty/staff-led transformation without significant new infrastructure or budget allocations.
Why it should be considered best practice?
The Teach Access Fellowship Program represents a best practice because it:
– Addresses the accessibility skills gap through education
– Integrates disability perspectives first, before introducing technical standards
– Leverages low-cost, widely available technologies to achieve high-impact outcomes
– Drives sustainable change through faculty/staff empowerment and peer learning
– Meets participants where they are
– Produces openly licensed resources that benefit the broader education community
The model is highly replicable. Institutions can adapt the Fellowship’s structure, curriculum, and resources to fit their own contexts, disciplines, or professional development programs, making accessibility education scalable and sustainable.
Highlights of your proposed presentation
This session will:
– Walk participants through the Fellowship’s structure, curriculum, and implementation
– Share concrete examples of faculty projects and curricular materials
– Highlight evidence of impact on teaching, learning, and institutional practices
– Discuss lessons learned, including challenges, adaptations, and scalability
– Offer practical guidance for replicating or adapting the model in other institutions
Attendees will leave with actionable insights and a clear framework for implementing similar initiatives within their own institutions.
Some key lessons learned include:
– Accessibility education is most effective when grounded in disability perspectives
– Small, intentional curricular changes lead to sustainable impact
– Cross-sector collaboration strengthens outcomes
– Modeling accessibility in professional development reinforces learning and adoption
The Evaluation Committee will evaluate submitted proposals based on the following criteria. Each area will be rated on a scale from 1 to 5 (1= non-satisfactory; 5 =outstanding), for a maximum of 45 points.