Awards and Achievements

Awarded for work on “Amplifying Digital Accessibility in Education at McMaster University.”

Project description:

The amplifying digital accessibility in education initiative was created by members of the Faculty of Science and the Equity and Inclusion Office at McMaster University in response to the shift to remote learning and work due to the pandemic. As many individuals faced increased barriers due to a completely digital environment, knowledge translation efforts were increased to improve digital accessibility in education and work at McMaster. With a goal to make accessible content creation accessible to all, this initiative leveraged existing technologies on campus to disseminate information to faculty, staff, and students through the Microsoft Office 365 Suite, Kaltura, and eCampus Pressbooks. Training included hosting over 50 synchronous sessions for a combined 1000+ attendees since the start of the pandemic. We have also received over 900 visitors and 2000 page views to training materials in 2022 so far, and over 1200 visitors and 2000 page views in 2021 to our asynchronous resource, which has been recently migrated to eCampus’ Pressbooks to allow for open access to its contents. Titled the “Accessible Digital Content Training,” it was created through collaboration with multiple units across faculties who are involved in accessibility initiatives at McMaster University and has been shared to other institutions in Ontario. 

“The CUCCIO Community Award recognizes an individual, group or institution whose efforts exemplify CUCCIO’s desire to build, support and enrich the higher education IT community. Unlike the innovation and collaboration awards, this award will honour a member institution, individual or group who has demonstrated a passion for CUCCIO’s principles of information-sharing, collaboration and knowledge creation throughout the CUCCIO community. “