Tip of the Day

Include captions when using audio or video clips and materials.

Printer Friendly |  -A  A  A+ 

About ACCESS-ed

The ACCESS-ed Project is a model demonstration project. It is one of about two dozen Demonstration Projects to Ensure a Quality Higher Education for Students with Disabilities that are funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Postsecondary Education.

The purpose of the project is to develop and test a process for delivering low-cost universal design of instructional, information media, and physical environments to higher education campuses. The project is directed by Dr. Roger O. Smith and includes a broad interdisciplinary team based in the Rehabilitation Research Design & Disability (R2D2) Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The ACCESS-ed Project has developed and presents products and resources for the implementation of universal design on post-secondary campuses. In addition to our own products, ACCESS-ed compiles and indexes a database of universal design resources from other available sources to incorporate a comprehensive set of information and resources.

A key emphasis of the project is the dissemination of information. ACCESS-ed dissemination activities include this website and campus networks of DARCs (Departmental Accessibility Resource Coordinators).

One of the focus areas of the R2D2 Center where the ACCESS-ed Project is based is its attention to assessment. The R2D2 Center philosophy states that good assessments help identity and clarify needs, diagnosis exact problems and set the stage for better design and improvement. Thus, evaluation tools become important change agents and encouraging their use serves as a core intervention strategy. As can be seen by perusing this website, ACCESS-ed is developing evaluation tools and devotes much attention to measurement of campus accessibility as a strategy to improve the education of students with disabilities.

The ACCESS-ed Project is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Education's office of Post-secondary Education, PR/Award #P33A050090. The ACCESS-ed documents contained in this website are those of the grantee and do not necessarily reflect directly on the U.S. Department of Education.

It took me several years of struggling with the heavy door to my building, sometimes having to wait until a person stronger came along, to realize that the door was an accessibility problem, not only for me, but for others as well. And I did not notice, until one of my students pointed it out, that the lack of signs that could be read from a distance at my university forced people with mobility impairments to expend a lot of energy unnecessarily, searching for rooms and offices. Although I have encountered this difficulty myself on days when walking was exhausting to me, I interpreted it, automatically, as a problem arising from my illness (as I did with the door), rather than as a problem arising from the built environment having been created for too narrow a range of people and situations.

Susan Wendell, author of
The Rejected Body: Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability