Unite! tools for an accessible alliance
These two guidelines will help the Unite! community to work using accessible contents and events
2022/11/11
Diversity is a key guiding value. Unite! is convinced that shared differences are an essential component of international and democratic cooperation and further, are a fundamental accelerator of social change and innovation. Therefore, the alliance strive to ensure and maintain an environment that not only celebrates and welcomes diversity, but also offers opportunities and chances for personal growth and fulfilment regardless of individual differences.
This involves overcoming any barriers that might occur for students or staff full participation. Everyone has the right to fair and equal access to digital and physical services such as learning resources, information and online systems as well as buildings, services and equipment.
Unite! assumes that this responsibility lies with each of its members and that each of them can contribute to strengthening the vision of an alliance based on the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. In this sense, there are two resources to be used by the Unite community: Guidelines to Produce Accessible Content (opens in new tab) and Checklist to Accessible Events (opens in new tab).
The Guidelines help to create a truly accessible virtual campus for all. To create documents and other resources with accessibility in mind is a way to ensure that all content can be read and understood by as wide an audience as possible. Making a document accessible is easiest to do when you first create it.
The Checklist helps to organise accessible events, benefits not only individuals with visible or known disabilities, but also helps to ensure that all participants, attendees, including individuals with non-obvious disabilities or chronic health conditions, and people of all ages and body types, are able to fully engage in the initiatives of our alliance.
Unite!/mho
The European Universities Initiative
The European Universities Initiative was launched in 2019 to push for the establishment of a European Education Area by 2025. European Universities are transnational alliances of higher education institutions from across the EU that share a long-term strategy, promoting European values and identity. The initiative is designed to significantly strengthen student and staff mobility and to foster the quality, inclusion and competitiveness of European higher education.
In response to a first call of the Erasmus+ Programme in 2019, the first 17 alliances were selected for a 3-year pilot phase to lay the foundations for future European universities. Unite! has been among these first 17. Another 24 alliances followed in the 2nd call in 2020.
Unite!’s new funding starting end of 2022 falls into the calls of the further roll out of the European Universities Initiative. It plans to increase the number of European Universities to 60 with more than 500 universities by mid-2024, supported under Erasmus+ with an indicative budget of EUR 1.1 billion for the period 2021-2027. The aim is to develop and share a common long-term structural, sustainable and systemic cooperation on education, research and innovation, creating European inter-university campuses where students, staff and researchers from all parts of Europe can enjoy seamless mobility and create new knowledge together, across countries and disciplines.”
