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ADCET Podcast: All about ADCET
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This ADCET podcast is the audio version of our webinar: All about ADCET. For over two decades ADCET has been Australia's premier national resource promoting equity for tertiary students with disability. Hosted by the University of Tasmania and funded by the Department of Education, ADCET partners with disability practitioners, educators, students, and policymakers across the higher education and VET sectors. This webinar highlighted how ADCET provides support through our free comprehensive resources, professional development opportunities, community building initiatives, and direct consultation services. It also discussed how ADCET is working across all levels of the sector to improve accessibility and inclusion.
We hope you find this presentation interesting and engaging and you can find additional information and resources supporting this webinar on the ADCET website.
(January 2026)
DARREN BRITTEN: Hello everyone and welcome to this ADCET podcast. This episode is an audio recap of a recent ADCET webinar titled “All about ADCET”. Presented by Rebecca Morris, ADCET’s Manager; and Darren Britten, ADCET’s National Assistive Technology Officer; along with a number of special guest speakers.
This webinar highlighted how ADCET provides support through free comprehensive resources, professional development opportunities, community building initiatives, and direct consultation services. It also discussed how ADCET is working across all levels of the sector to improve accessibility and inclusion. We hope you find this presentation interesting and engaging and you can find additional information to support this podcast on the ADCET website. Over to you Rebecca.
REBECCA MORRIS: So let's start with a quick overview of today's webinar. So I'll be running you through a very brief summary of ADCET's history, our current impact, our core purpose and target audience. Then we're going to jump into the practical ways ADCET can support you, our services, activities and resources.
We're going to talk about the projects we've been working on and our future hopes and dreams for ADCET. And most importantly, how you can get involved and make the most of what we do.
For those who may be new to our work, ADCET is a national resource dedicated to promoting equity of opportunity, access, experience and outcomes for Australian tertiary education students with disability. We've been serving the sector for 23 years, hosted by the University of Tasmania, and currently funded by the Department of Education. Throughout our history we've received additional funding from various government bodies for targeted project and resource development all aimed at promoting accessible and inclusive education.
The info graph on the screen now shows some statistics we compiled late last year, and it gives you an idea about ADCET's current impact. As you can see, more than 1.2 million website engagements annually; at least 8,350 interactions with our webinars annually; on average, 855 podcasts listened each year; 19,000 downloads of our various guidelines; more than 143,000 views on resources targeted at students. And as you can see, the list goes on. You get the idea.
So our core purpose is straight forward. We provide practical guidance, leadership and advice on disability higher education and VET. We enable, improve and accelerate institutional support for students with disability, and we foster a build it once, use it many times approach to disability support.
Our overarching motto for everything we do is simple but powerful, supporting you, supporting students. We believe that accessibility is everybody's business and we serve four key audiences: disability practitioners across higher education and VET institutions; educators, academics and professional staff seeking inclusive teaching practices; we support students with disability and their families, carers and advocates; and we also support education leaders and policy makers seeking insight into what's happening on the ground.
That's more than enough from me right now. So I'm going to hand over to Darren.
DARREN BRITTEN: Excellent. Thank you, Bec. As a National Clearinghouse supporting inclusive education for students with disability in higher education and VET, ADCET has a wide range of practical resources, tools and information for disability practitioners, educators and students.
On our website you'll find a range of online resources, including guides and guidelines, fact sheets, assistive technology information, videos, news updates, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on.
There is also our regular newsletter which highlights current sector news, new resources and upcoming events which you can subscribe to and share with your colleagues. As Bec mentioned earlier, we've got 5,000+ current subscribers to that list and to our newsletter.
Wherever possible, ADCET promotes good practice from providing real examples from across the sector. Case studies and Disability Practice in the Spotlight profiles showcase how different institutions are improving accessibility and supporting students so that you can see what works in real practice in the real word and adapt those ideas to your own context.
I'm now lucky as well to talk with some of the people that we work with, and I'll pass over to Danielle Kutchel who is an award winning journalist who we're lucky enough to have develop and write our Disability Practice in the Spotlight articles who is going to give you a brief insight into how we highlight great practice across the sector. So I'll throw to you, Danielle.
DANIELLE KUTCHEL: Thanks, Darren. I'm Danielle. I'm a journalist. I've been with ADCET for you know, it would be coming up to a decade now, I think. So, yes, basically my job is to help write these spotlight pieces that then go up on our website. It really is, honestly, a privilege to talk to you all and see what you're all doing in your little spaces and how we can get the word out a little bit more and let other people know what you're doing, how they can be inspired by you, and how they can potentially replicate that content.
So what a spotlight piece is, or what it involves is, basically, I do a bit of an interview with you. That interview can be over the phone, it can be over email, it can be over Zoom whatever your jam is, whatever makes you feel more comfortable and I just ask you a few questions about what it is you're doing, how it's helping students, what makes it interesting or innovative, what's inspired you to kick this off.
I put it together into a draft. You get full editing and review rights. You get to have a look at it, add anything in that you think we've missed, or change any words. Then it goes up on our website and we share it around on our socials and let people know what you're doing.
It's a very easy process. And I know it can be quite nerve wracking when you haven't spoken to a journalist before or you're feeling people get a little bit shy. And that's okay. We're here to put your mind at ease and help you feel comfortable. We try and make it as easy a process as possible.
We've covered a lot over the past 10 years. We've covered, gosh, programs in Vietnam, we've covered new programs for neurodiverse students. That's come up a lot in the past few years. As a neurodiverse person myself, that was actually one of my favourites because it made me realise what I missed when I was at university.
So honestly, we're open to anything interesting and innovative that we can put into a spotlight piece. Whether it's a staff member who has won an award for something they're doing, or a new program you're kicking off. It's really a very open brief.
As I said, if you have any questions or you have a program or something you think is good that you can that you think is worth a spotlight, let us know and, yeah, we'll see what we can do, see what we can put together. And I'll throw back to Darren.
DARREN: Excellent. Thank you, Danielle. And, look, again sometimes we forget what we're doing might be innovative to somebody else. We just think it's business as usual and something that we're doing. One thing that's always struck me with some of the practitioners in the spotlight, while some people might think what we do is what everybody does, that's not necessarily the case. So having that opportunity to see practice and where possible we try not to say "best practice" but "good practice", because there's always room to improve across the board.
So, yeah, you might be surprised. Some of the things you're doing would be of wonderful news and information to the sector. So have a think, is there something you're doing, something colleagues are doing that we need to shout out to the sector because we're always looking for those articles and they're wonderful to read what's happening across the sector.
Thank you very much, Danielle. We need to give you a lifetime achievement award for sticking with us for so long, and fantastic pieces that you write. Really appreciate that.
One of the other things that we offer through the ADCET website, of course, is our professional development opportunities, which is a big focus for ADCET. We offer live and recorded webinars, and other learning activities that you can access on demand. These cover topics such as inclusive teaching, reasonable adjustments, supporting particular disability cohorts, and through other various articles, et cetera, and news stories that we do in focus. We have a range of podcasts, some new ones and also audio versions of popular webinars that we convert across to audio for ease of listening, through to interviews with key educational thinkers in the sector and current events.
Our latest series, ILOTA Things, which is Inclusive Learning Opportunities Through AI, is with myself, Elizabeth Hitches and Joe Houghton, and it's a series that investigates the convergence of universal design for learning, accessibility and artificial intelligence. Very topical for the moment. We've had some fantastic discussions on those topics, on emerging technologies and their impact on education. We've spoken to some experts from around the world, which is what we get to do, which is fantastic, about how much AI and technology is really truly transforming this educational space and support for students and staff with disabilities.
Some of our wonderful guests have included UDL guru, Thomas Tobin, which many of you may be aware of from our UDL Symposium and from other articles that he's done and books. Michelle Soriano and Bryan Dean from CAST, which is the home of UDL, universal design for learning. And we had a fantastic discussion recently with Samo Varsik and Lydia Vosberg from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), who recently released a paper about the potential impact of artificial intelligence on education and inclusion in education from a global perspective.
We're not alone in this transformation that's happening, and it's hard to sometimes keep on top of those things, so we offer a variety of channels for people to engage.
Finally, ADCET coordinates a suite of eLearning programs from our popular Disability Awareness Program that's been running for many years, to our newest program on UDL 3.0, which is available on our recently released ADCET Academy website. These online programs give staff structured opportunities to deepen their understanding of disability, universal design for learning and inclusive practice, and they can be used for individual development or built into existing staff training programs.
Overall, ADCET is here to support you with information, examples and learning opportunities to help create more inclusive and accessible educational environments.
Our work also includes key annual events. Two major ones that we do help bring the sector together. Firstly, the ADCET Accessibility in Action Awards which are held each year in conjunction with Global Accessibility Awareness Day. These awards celebrate individual teams and projects and demonstrate innovation, leadership and good practice in accessibility.
Each year we continue to be amazed and pleased to recognise the depth and breadth of work undertaken across the sector to make a difference in improving access and inclusion in our institutions. So thinking hats on to start thinking about nominations for this year's award which will open in the not too distant future.
Another major spotlight on our calendar, which has previously been mentioned, is our Universal Design for Learning Symposium that's our UDL Symposium which showcases practical strategies and research for making learning more inclusive across the tertiary education sector.
This event connects educators, disability practitioners and researchers who are interested in embedding UDL in their teaching and into their institutional practices. Now, one such person who has been involved in that is Trina Bianchini, who is a wonderful friend of ADCET, and someone who has been engaged in the UDL space and ADCET for as long as I can remember, Trina, who is going to tell us about her involvement with ADCET, UDL from a VET practitioner perspective. So I'll pass over to you, Trina. Thank you.
TRINA BIANCHINI: Thank you, Darren. Yes, as Darren said, my name is Trina Bianchini. I'm a white female in my early 60s, and I use the pronouns she/her.
I work at TAFE SA as a teaching and learning specialist in academic development, and I have a portfolio lead role in accessibility and inclusive education. And today I'm joining you from the lands of the Kaurna people, which is the lands of the Adelaide Plains.
So as Darren mentioned, I've worked with ADCET for a while or for a long time in various capacities. So today I'll talk about my involvement with the UDL Symposium and really recommend that you have a look at what you can do to fit that into your calendar this year. It's a fabulous event. But also, just generally, how I work with ADCET and basically tap into their resources, including Darren's amazing resource, very consistently.
So with the Symposium, I've been involved in different levels. I've attended, and I've presented, and I've also been involved in the organising committee. So it really is a great coming together of like-minded people.
Everyone is at different stages. So those still wrangling with the idea of what universal design for learning is and how they may go about implementing that in their own practice, right through to how do you drive it, how do you implement it across the board within your organisation.
So there are those that are completely at ease with it in their practices and those really starting to kick goals in their organisation. So it is for people at every level in their adoption of universal design for learning practices. So don't be concerned if you don't know a lot about it. You will learn a lot. So I would challenge anybody to attend the Symposium and not come away with some amazing ideas, but also just the simple concept that we talk about a lot, which is plus one, just learn one little new practice and engage that in everything that you do.
So I highly recommend that and would love to meet you at this year's Symposium.
How does ADCET work with the VET sector more generally? Well, for me, and the role that I have, they help me a lot with their everyday implementation and advice of how to go about things. They do provide incredible resources for both higher ed and VET, but I think the clincher for VET is their understanding of the differences and the different challenges that the VET sector faces, from research and funding approaches, that higher ed is a little easier probably in that space, through to the direct absolute black and white training requirements in the VET sector and how do we go about applying UDL, and looking to remove barriers and reduce the need for reasonable adjustments. So I think that's something that would resonate with most of you in the VET sector.
In my experience, or in my position in VET, I'm a very much jack of all trades at TAFE SA, probably master of none, but very much use ADCET to support me in those areas that I don't know about. We don't have teams of people in managing all the different aspects of accessibility and inclusive education, so I get drawn into lots of different things, particularly technology, IT requirements, procurement requirements, policies and procedures. And no matter what the question is, big or little, I can always seek advice from ADCET.
I use the ADCET Assist service regularly. Darren will probably talk a little bit more about that. But you can just go on, book an appointment, and then bring whatever questions you have. And so I highly recommend that. Particularly around the tech and accessibility. When we get new technology, we have to write guidelines about how to make them accessible, and I always seek Darren's assistance and then, you know, use his advice in talking about we're trying to do best practice sometimes, so that I can present the way that we're going to do things to the educators knowing that I've got the best practice advice.
This week I've been working particularly with a couple of educators who will be supporting a student undertaking a music qualification, a Certificate IV who is visually impaired. We've been able to share the ADCET video of the tech the student actually uses. The name of it is escaping me at the minute. It is a Google note device, I think is the correct term for it, but it's just a three minute video that ADCET had that showed somebody using that device. We were able to get the educators to see how the student was going to be accessing their materials, so then we can take the step back and look at how we're providing everything. So it's right down to those little things that you can share with other people in your organisation.
So back to you, Darren.
DARREN: Excellent. Thank you, Trina. And we didn't pay Trina for those lovely comments. No. As Trina said, please do reach out if you've got questions. We've got services designed for those things. But it's fantastic to have the VET sector involvement and, again, as you pointed out, the challenges can be quite different. Even though there are some similarities they can be very different. That's there. So it is a wide ranging community of practitioners and professional staff, and we learn from everybody just as much as, hopefully, you learn from us.
So alongside our annual events ADCET also supports a number of communities of practices or CoPs, as we call them just without using the theme song; copyright royalty concerns but these CoPs provide regular opportunities for people with shared interest to connect, share resources and identify, ideally, solutions to common issues collectively.
We currently host CoPs for disability managers in education, for colleagues working on universal design, for staff supporting neurodivergent students, and for those focused on, specifically, assistive technology.
These events and communities help build these networks and help us to share expertise and keep inclusive practice moving forward across the sector.
I might now ask for Rebecca to give a brief overview of the disability managers CoP and what that's all about.
REBECCA: Thank you, Darren. It's Rebecca again. And I'm going to be putting on my other hat, my other professional hat, which is the Disability Manager at the University of Canberra, because I can speak about involvement in my capacity of actually having benefitted from this community of practice.
So ADCET facilitates the disability managers or it's for student services at university, so higher education. It brings together all of the managers across the sector, across Australia, to collaborate. ADCET facilitates bimonthly meetings generally, and provides information and connections with the Department of Education, with the National Student Ombudsman, with current research, with reporting issues around the DSF a whole range of pertinent topics to discuss amongst the managers.
Personally, I found it just brilliant in terms of that networking and collaborating, sharing ideas, looking at how services are being managed and administered in different universities, in different settings, and really strengthening those connections to build best practice as Darren said, good practice. We're constantly evolving, benchmarking what we're doing constantly, and making sure what we're doing is fit for purpose. So, yes. Darren, back to you.
DARREN: Excellent. Thank you, Rebecca. And now I'll go on to our universal design for learning community of practice and I might throw to Justin. I think you've been there since the start of the UDL CoP.
JUSTIN WYLIE: Yeah. Thank you very much, Darren. And hello to everyone here today who is with us in person and for those people watching or listening to the video later.
Yes, I have been involved for I was trying to work it out maybe '21, '22 can't remember the exact date.
But my name is Justin Wylie. I'm from Central QLD University. I'm a balding, bearded, middle aged man wearing dark rimmed glasses and a dark shirt today.
I'm a Project and Training Officer in the Accessibility and Equity Team at CQ Uni and have a background in education and learning design.
The ADCET UDL CoP has been critical as a part of my professional UDL journey. As I said, I think I first got involved around 2022 with ADCET CoP, but I'd attended some ADCET sessions prior to that, and equity and inclusion in education is critical for my practice.
So the opportunity to network, work together and hear about how other institutions across Australia, New Zealand and internationally are researching UDL, implementing it, has always been really valuable to my position, and also to our institution's UDL and inclusion journey.
The fact that we've got members from both VET and higher education, as Trina was talking about before, is also a really key benefit for us as CQ University is a dual sector institution. And even though there are very many common practices about reducing barriers to teaching and learning in UDL, there are also some differences in the context, so it's great to have the opportunity to hear from both VET, or vocational education, and higher education.
The guest speakers and topics that we have are always incredibly relevant, and if not directly relevant at the time, they're always something that you come back to in the future. I have copious quantities of notes, and often something rings a bell when I go searching back and find a link to a video or some information which helps me with a particular issue or topic.
It's all about inclusive practice, no matter what, and reflecting on how to reduce those barriers.
The ADCET UDL Symposium is an offshoot from the CoP and Trina spoke about that before. It gives us a great chance to hear from amazing researchers and educators from across the globe. So allowing us to build our skills and understanding and to develop and increase our UDL toolkits.
I've been fortunate to be involved in organising and running the Symposium over the last two years, and have found it amazing, both in terms of meeting the people who are attending but also seeing the different presenters, et cetera, that come along. There's great topics all the time.
So I just wanted to quote from Aussie icon Molly Meldrum to say, "Do yourself a favour", and come along and join the conversation. It's an amazing, supportive community and I'd highly recommend becoming a member of the CoP. Whether you're new to UDL or you're already a practitioner, there's always something in there for everyone. Thanks, Darren.
DARREN: Thank you, Justin, and thank you for doing us a favour. Yes. Good to quote Molly. I suppose that might go with the middle aged balding. We need Molly's hat. I think I can agree with you there. But thank you very much.
As Justin said, all of our CoPs aren't necessarily for advanced users or expert users, or all of those things. Come along, ask some questions, get involved. Even if you're just new and thinking about universal design and how does this fit with what I'm doing. It's not just for educators. There's a lot of professional staff as well which can benefit a lot from the universal design for learning principles and getting to know what's happening in teaching and learning, et cetera. So thank you very much, Justin.
Katy is next on my list and she's going to tell us all about the neurodiversity CoP.
KATY LAMBERT: Hi everyone. Thanks, Darren. I'm Katy. I'm from the University of Newcastle. I'm a white, very late 40s woman with blonde and pink curly hair. I am the Neurodivergent Engagement and Support Coordinator here at UoN, and I've been in that particular role since, sort of, mid last year. And coming into that role I was thinking about how all our different institutions, we're all trying to support neurodivergent students better, and wouldn't it be great if we had a space where we could share different ideas and resources and make the most of what we have available so we're not kind of all reinventing the wheel over and over on our own.
So put it out on the AustEd list to see if anyone was interested in being a part of the community of practice around this. Thankfully, Rebecca stepped up and said she would be happy to help me run that through ADCET, which has been amazing and extremely helpful. I don't know how I would have managed without her. So thank you to Rebecca and ADCET for that.
So we have bimonthly meetings where we'll have particular topics that we're discussing, have people from different institutions sharing what they're doing and then opportunities for people to discuss and, I guess, learn from our colleagues across the sector.
It's open to people in VET and university, and we have people from a range of different roles as well. From academics, librarians, counsellors, as well as within the disability services within those institutions.
We're also in the process of setting up a couple of Padlets so there's space to share resources online with the group, as well as have some discussion boards where people can, I guess, communicate and talk through different ideas and get some support and feedback from the group. Yeah.
So that's kind of what it's about. And, yeah, we've got quite a largish group now, and it's still open to more members if people are interested.
DARREN: Fantastic. Thank you very much, Katy. And there's links on the website and that information which Kylie is posting into chat of how you can get involved into the various communities of practice. But thanks, Katy.
KATY: Thanks, Darren.
DARREN: Lastly, we'll just bring up the Assistive Technology Community of Practice. Unlike the other communities of practice, this is an invite only community of practice. It's for people working directly with assistive technology. So that's really a knowledge share and networking opportunity for those people that are kind of on the frontline with assistive technology, whose roles involve assistive technology directly.
We currently have members, I can say, from 45 different institutions, or something like that, and a couple of representatives from each that have been nominated. And one of those is Amy. So I'll throw to Amy who will tell us all about the Assistive Technology Community of Practice.
AMY WEBSTER: Thank you, Darren. I'm Amy Webster. I'm a Senior Disability Adviser at QLD University of Technology, or QUT, based in Brisbane. I'm a white, 35 year old female with shoulder length red hair. I would say I'm a proud ginger. I'm wearing blue rimmed glasses and a dark shirt, and I'm also sporting my proud to wear the sunflower lanyard, as QUT has, fairly recently, adopted the hidden disability supporter network as well, which is a great piece of work that we're very proud of.
I joined the ATCoP as a fresh faced disability adviser back in 2021. One of the first things I did was I enthusiastically put my hand up to take on responsibility for looking after assistive tech here at QUT within our disability and accessibility services area. And I did that despite having little to no assistive tech experience. So my enthusiasm got the better of me there. But part of that role or that responsibility was to organise licences, train students and really field any queries that came through from our cohorts about what assistive tech is available, working with students with different learning needs and different disabilities, and working with them to figure out how we could enhance their learning experience.
So a big part of that opportunity was to represent QUT at the Assistive Tech Community of Practice, and that's been invaluable. Darren has told me I have to keep this short and sweet because I could talk about this for a long time. But this has been invaluable in not only my own learning, stepping into that area, but also just informing the direction QUT has gone in terms of our assistive tech offerings, future proofing for our students, and really leaning into that UDL approach, that universal design for learning.
So the way I would describe our ATCoP is it's a great place to share knowledge and experience amongst friends. And I say that because it's a really collaborative team. We all take our work very seriously but we don't take ourselves seriously. I've really valued the casual collegiate conversation that we have that allows people to come in and feel comfortable to ask any questions about assistive tech. Nothing feels like a question that's too big or too small or too silly, and we really just use each other as a sounding board, and there's vast experience across the ATCoP which has broadened my experience leaps and bounds, and also given me that safety net to feel comfortable to say to my students, "I don't actually know the answer to that but I can contact my colleagues, my friends in the ATCoP to say what do you suggest", and draw on other people's experience.
So the email list that comes as part of the ATCoP has been great. So outside of those semi regular conversations we can reach out via the email list and get really good responses from across the sector, which is really valuable. As Darren said, it is designed for those who work in AT specific roles.
I was doing a lot of that office out of my desk, which was a great value to have that as a resource. We're now in a great position at QUT that we have a designated accessibility officer position and the ATCoP has really allowed us to seamlessly integrate that position into our team and draw on the existing support and resources that are available without having to start from scratch with that position and reinvent the wheel.
So, yeah, can't speak highly enough of ADCET as someone coming into the sector from a non-tertiary ed background. ADCET generally has been just a manual for our team, really, and the ATCoP has been, and continues to be, a great resource.
So thank you, Darren. He didn't pay me either but I find it to be an excellent resource for our service.
DARREN: Excellent. Thank you. We'll just sort this time difference with daylight saving at some point and we'll all be good for our QLD colleagues. Thank you, Amy. Thank you to everybody that is part of all of our communities of practice. We benefit from the knowledge of the sector as well, and we operate, as Bec said early on, responsively to the needs of the sector and those kinds of things. So by hearing from people regularly, by hearing from people on the ground what's actually happening, what they need, we can help respond, where we can, to that, or at least connect them with somebody that can. And the ATCoP, and a lot of the communities of practice, have been like that, of connecting people across. "Oh, they're doing that over at QUT", or "This is happening over at Sydney Uni, this is happening at RMIT and here are some people to speak to that are on the ground", you know, speak to like-minded individuals because it's wide and vast and there's a lot of knowledge out there as well, and expecting somebody to have all of the answers we certainly don't. We learn from the communities as well. So please get involved in communities of practice. We'd love to have you onboard.
Let me just quickly jump to the next slide.
Two of our other services that we have as well, which are bookable services online, are our drop in services. They are the UDL Studio and the ADCET Assist, which you've heard mentioned. These services provide opportunities for individual practitioners and small group discussions to come and talk about issues and find solutions to improving inclusive practices.
I'll talk briefly about the ADCET Assist in a moment but I'll throw over to Elizabeth who is going to talk more about how the UDL Studio works as a bookable resource and how you can get involved.
ELIZABETH HITCHES: Thanks so much, Darren. Hi everyone. I'm Elizabeth Hitches. My pronouns are she/her. I have shoulder length brown hair and, on this rather warm day, a short sleeved shirt with black and white stripes.
Welcome to those of you who are joining us live and those watching the recording.
I'm a teacher of inclusive education at Griffith University and a research methods at the University of Queensland. And excitingly, as well, a member of CAST national faculty, the organisation that created UDL.
Now, I get the really fun role and great privilege of co facilitating the ILOTA Things podcast that Darren has mentioned. I also get to co facilitate the UDL Studio.
Now, if you haven't come across UDL before, universal design for learning, this is about proactively designing to ensure access for everybody and more inclusive experiences for the diverse range of individuals who might be either students at our institutions or in our communities, or staff members or associated with those.
Now, when we first start applying UDL, it can be really helpful to think aloud about our ideas, to ask questions and get advice and learn from others. But we don't always have a space to do that. We don't always have that sounding board or those people to be on that journey with us.
So the UDL Studio is a really informal, friendly, creative and exploratory space where you can join with me, with Darren Britten and with Rebecca and bring along a barrier that you might have encountered, a challenge, or a problem you wish to solve. Maybe you have a resource that you think might be really accessible and inclusive but you'd like to strengthen it further, or maybe you just want to come along and work, learn and share.
So in this studio we've had various different individuals from the VET and higher education sector join with us to present resources like PowerPoint slides, to ask questions about particular guidelines that they're not really sure about how it would apply in their context, or just to get to know how do we even get started in this space?
So whether you are just beginning to learn about UDL or you want to deepen your practice and you want a sounding board or a group of people to do that with you, the UDL Studio will be the place to go.
So from my perspective, I look at UDL and also inclusion. Darren Britten has extensive experience in accessibility, and also through that UDL lens. And Rebecca also brings with her a really deep set of experiences around the student accommodation process and disability support. So you have three different individual perspectives to help you in thinking through different challenges and also just to share in the joy of bringing UDL to our higher education and VET sector.
So please join us, whether it's you, you and a friend, or a whole group, book a session with us. We would love to have deep thinking conversations and a bit of fun with UDL with you. So we hope to see you there.
DARREN: Excellent. Thank you, Elizabeth. And can I just reinforce we try and always make sure there's a bit of joy as one of the UDL principles, that there's always joy at these sessions. We often have people and it's quite fine as you said, just come along, just lurk and learn in the background. "I'm not quite sure, I really don't have a question, but I just want to hear what some others are doing." And that's quite fine. And we welcome that participation as well, and we often get people who are just there lurking who end up getting engaged in the conversation, which is always lovely to hear again what people are doing from a practical standpoint and the barriers that are getting faced, because they're all different across the sector for different reasons, et cetera. Thank you very much, Elizabeth, for that.
The other one of our individualised support services that I mentioned is ADCET Assist, which is a support service where staff can book a one on one session with myself, or Rebecca can attend, or other guests if needed, or a small group session for specific questions targeted around accessibility, disability, reasonable adjustments, inclusive teaching or assistive technology.
They're half hour bookable sessions, and with me I think there's six or seven bookable spots per week that are there.
Please do take advantage of those if you've got some questions to ask. And if we don't have the information or answers, we can definitely point you in the right direction. So we're all about trying to solve problems if we can or point you in the right direction.
Now, more, I hear you say. Can ADCET not do anymore? Well, yes we can, and we do. So now I'm going to pass back to Bec, because that's enough from me, to hear about how we engage in other ways across the sector.
REBECCA: Thank you, Darren. And thank you to all our wonderful guests and collaborators. It's been such a privilege working with you all over the last year.
But, yes, to continue, we do do more. ADCET liaises with government and peak bodies through roundtables, various advisory committees, regular consultations on key national topics to influence policy that positively impacts the inclusion of people with disability in tertiary education.
I have a lot of examples. There's been a lot of work going on, especially in the last 12 months well, more than the last 12 months, but I've seen over the last 12 months. But one recent example of this work just this year already is the joint submission of ADCET and CYDA, or Children and Young People with Disability Australia group, to the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee's Inquiry and Report on the Universities Accord Bill, really focusing on how that legislation can be strengthened to support students with disability.
One thing I especially love, one extra thing I especially love about ADCET is how responsive we are to what is happening in the sector, as Darren was mentioning earlier, and at all levels. So the government policy level, research, what's happening in research, institutionally and on the ground with practitioners and students.
The team work very hard. We're a very small team and we work very hard to translate all of this into practical information and resources. And we are forever evolving. Lots of upcoming projects and resources in the pipeline and in our dream list as well.
So in the next few months, we hope, we're planning to launch an inclusive and accessible work integrated eLearning program on ADCET Academy. This has been long in the making. It comes from a number of different research papers that have come out over the last few years, but specifically to do with Amani Bell and her ACSES Equity Fellowship Research output and we've been working again across the sector with an advisory group to put together a really strong eLearning program targeted at WIL coordinators and the industry supervisors to help build that capacity for students undertaking WIL.
We're about to publish guidelines for developing Disability Inclusion Action Plans. And we're about to commence work, sponsored by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, to update existing and develop new VET resources that will reflect the revised RTO standards from last year and will support providers to support their students with disability. So keep a look out for those things. Please subscribe to our newsletter and you will be updated with all things.
We certainly don't do things alone, as you've seen. We collaborate with people with lived experience, researchers, with students, professionals working in this space.
One of the wonderful people we have the privilege to work with is Ebe Ganon, who I hope has joined, and who many of you will be familiar with because of Ebe's extensive contribution to the sector. Ebe, I'll now pass over to you to give us an update on the work you've been doing with ADCET and what we can expect in that space.
EBE GANON: Thanks Rebecca. Ebe speaking. Hi everyone, I'm joining from Ngunnawal and Ngambri country today. There is a little debate over the value of visual descriptions at the moment, so I'll leave mine at just sweaty, very warm, and I've just joined from teaching a class over in the city, a gym class that is.
I'm a PhD student at the University of Canberra, and I work at the intersection of disability and public policy in my research. I also have experience as a VET student and have a Cert IV in training and assessment. So I have experienced both study and, I suppose, the disability advocacy issues from both higher ed and a vocational ed perspective.
I'm autistic, have ADHD, epilepsy, and experience chronic illness. And I also have a background in disability advocacy, governance and higher ed policy.
I found ADCET initially through a webinar back when I was working as an Equity Practitioner at ANU, probably back around 2021, and it was really refreshing to find a place that was having really solid and confident conversations about disability, because at the time it wasn't something that I was seeing happening anywhere else.
These days I engage with ADCET in a couple of different ways, often providing a student perspective. I sometimes see myself as Clicky, the little paper clip that featured in Microsoft many years ago, kind of popping up unexpectedly to remind practitioners and professionals about what it's really like to be a student with disability navigating the systems that we are stewards of which can be quite different in reality to what we imagine. And we all work really, really hard, I know, constantly developing our knowledge and skills, but sometimes what students get on the other end is not exactly what we would expect.
Recently I gave a webinar about the neurodiversity paradigm in tertiary education. So I encourage you to go onto the ADCET website and review that one. And I've done a little bit of website content refreshing, but most excitingly, recently I've been working on refreshing an existing National Disability Coordination Office resource from back in 2015 about transitioning to tertiary education for autistic students. Obviously, our understanding of autistic experiences and neurodivergent experience, more broadly, has shifted a lot over the last couple of years. So it's been a real privilege to update that resource and make it really responsive to what education looks like now, but also making it neuro affirming and designed directly by autistic students.
I've collaborated with a couple of other autistic students to make this something that's really practical. There will be an online web based version, as well as downloadable Word and PDF versions for everyone's preferences, whether they want to read online, search in short grabs, print and scribble, or type and engage in that way. So really exciting to be able to be doing that kind of multiple formats UDL approach to support all sorts of different learning preferences.
And really, the purpose of this resource is to demystify some of the experiences around transitioning to further education. Autistic people, we really love detail. We love knowing what to expect. And we love being able to find those things in one reliable place.
This resource fills, I suppose, a little bit of a gap in what universities are able to provide to autistic students at the moment, in terms of tailored support, particularly around parts of university that disability practitioners don't always see, the parts outside of the classroom, the cultures that we operate in, and the resource also includes a range of different worksheets, guide books to help students really prepare to make the most out of their learning experience. So very excited by that. I'm sure Rebecca will be able to update on the timeline for when that will be coming out, so keep an eye out. But it's been, yeah, a real privilege to be able to work on that and certainly looking forward to developing some supplementary materials and also some content that looks at the broader range of neurotypes under the neurodiversity umbrella as well.
Yeah. Back to you, Rebecca. Thanks for that.
REBECCA: Thank you, Ebe, and thank you again for sharing your knowledge with us. Just in regards to that timeline, we're so close. Website under construction. So stay tuned, everyone. Hopefully ASAP it will be out.
And what a valuable resource it is. I've continued to learn so much from Ebe. And so any of you who are unfamiliar with Ebe's work, please do look up the previous webinars, and also Ebe's Higher Hopes Podcast and blog. Always so enlightening and really valuable. I really recommend people to engage with Ebe's work. Amazing.
Moving on, in regards to our future dreams sorry, this was me putting bits and pieces together here at the end I'm not sure how much time I'd have left but with regards to our future dreams, over the past 12 months we've been working very closely with the Department of Education and the University of Tasmania and the brilliant Professor Sally Kift to determine an expanded and sustainable ADCET. All is looking very positive. Again, we're starting to build on those ideas on what we can achieve and how we can continue to bring the sector together and really enhance our reach.
The team has endless great ideas for expanding this scope. I cheekily included in my list here facilitating a lived experience student leadership and advisory group as this is number one on my wish list, and I've been in early discussions with our students from Student Voice Australasia and the National Union of Students, and looking at how we can collaborate and facilitate a group that can provide that feedback and guidance and be brought in for co designing across the sector. Very exciting. But, again, that was number 1 on my wish list. There's plenty more in the pipeline.
Again, we're looking to expand the ADCET Academy training programs in a number of ways. And as Darren was mentioning, very responsive to the sector and seeing, you know, what that need is and where it goes, and even with last year the review of the Disability Discrimination Act and the Disability Standards for Education responding to any changes or advice received on those reviews. So always here ready to help. Darren, over to you.
DARREN: Excellent. Thank you, Rebecca. Just with the little time we've got left, to sum up, how can you get involved with ADCET and with the community more broadly? Firstly, you can join a community of practice, as we mentioned, subscribe to our newsletter. Join the AustEd emailing list that's there. Book an ADCET Assist session. Bookmark ADCET. Things often change on our website. There's almost weekly, if not daily, sometimes, updates that are happening there.
Undertake an eLearning program, as was mentioned, through the ADCET Academy. Get yourself a digital badge which you can highlight on LinkedIn and other platforms, et cetera, that's there.
Come to the UDL Symposium. Book that. Hopefully there will still be offerings for online attendance as well. So we try and do things the best we can from UDL approach and make a fully hybrid event for people.
Nominate a colleague for an Accessibility in Action Award, and details for those will be coming out shortly as well for this year's nominations.
Attend a webinar. We do regular webinars, at least more often than not, two a month. Join the UDL Studio. Come and lurk and learn, if you just want to find out or book an ADCET Assist question if you've got specific questions. If not, you can always contact us via email, et cetera. All of those are in the links to the web pages that Kylie has put back into chat there.
So let me just wrap up and say thank you, everybody, for coming along and listening and finding out a bit more all about ADCET. Sometimes we forget what we offer because there's so many bits and pieces. So we wanted to have this opportunity to say, look, there's more than just one side of ADCET. There's lots of different things that we do. We often forget that and people engage with us in different ways. And a special thank you to our special guests today, to Trina, Danielle, Ebe, Justin, Amy, Elizabeth and Katy for your contribution and showing us how we connect into the sector because without people's involvement, ADCET wouldn't exist. We rely on, as we've said, that that's there. It's a full circle. Sounds like a love fest in here. It is a bit. We love the community, we love what we do, and we love the people that are doing the work so we just want to hear more about that.
I'll throw back to you Rebecca, but thank you everybody for joining us.
REBECCA: Yes, thank you everyone. And thank you again to our special speakers. Have a great afternoon.
DARREN: Thanks for listening to this ADCET podcast. We hope that you learnt something new about making tertiary education more inclusive and accessible for students with disability. You can keep up to date with our future webinars and podcasts by signing up for our fortnightly newsletter at our website adcet.edu.au/newsletter. Thanks again for listening to this podcast from the Australian Disability Clearinghouse on Education and Training - supporting you supporting students.