National and Kapodistrian University of Athens – Athens, Greece
The Accessibility Unit has been actively engaged in various activities to promote equal access, inclusion, and diversity for students with disabilities. These activities include:
- Support and counselling for students and university staff,
- Lectures, workshops, seminars for students, faculty, and non-teaching staff,
- Training courses for peer educators,
- Public promotion (e.g. production of media content such as podcasts),
- Fundraising events,
- Improving physical accessibility,
- Improving digital accessibility,
- Assistive Technology
The program management finds that Digital Accessibility and Computer-based Assistive Technology had the greatest impact because they are the most necessary to students.
In addition to activities to support inclusion, the program implements binding policy (legislation), strategy/action plan and recommendations/guidelines to counter exclusionary and discriminatory practices at the university.
The most innovative practice implemented in the program was Accessibility Support Voluntary Service (ASVS). The ASVS aims to coordinate the systematic, discrete and safe support of students with disabilities of the University in matters related to their studies by properly trained volunteer-students. This coordination involves a network of compassionate students who voluntarily assist their peers within a formal collaboration framework based on the peer-to-peer model.
IDEA-net: Expanding the network of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA) practitioners in higher education through institutional capacity building
Project ref: 2022-1-NL01-KA220-HED-000089789
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This website reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.