Why and How to Build Accessibility Planning into Your Health Education Training Workflow

Designing accessible health education training content has wide-ranging individual and organizational-level benefits. These include compliance with funder and legal requirements, reaching a broader learning audience, creating a better user experience, and shifting from an individual accommodation-based framework to designing for all learners. Unfortunately, accessibility planning is often an afterthought in our workforce development efforts. It is a quick final review to confirm we have video captions or transcripts. It is an item to be checked off before our training or course launches.

In contrast, accessibility should be integrated starting on the first day of training planning and design. Integration is not only the best practice, but also essential for applying principles of cultural humility, inclusion, and diversity, which are key competencies for health education specialists. Using an e-learning course example, this session will describe strategies to integrate accessibility planning from start to finish in your training project workflows. 

We will discuss needs analysis, choosing your project tools, creating accessible templates, auditing your work, and the importance of user testing. Participants will be able to state the multi-level benefits of creating accessible training. They will also be able to describe clear action steps and examples to improve the accessibility of their own training workflows and learning products.

At the end of this webinar, participants will be able to:

1. State the multi-level benefits of creating accessible training
2. Discuss how accessibility planning should be integrated into every step of training design, development, and evaluation
3. Describe clear action steps to improve accessibility within their team or organizational-level training workflows

Competencies that will be covered include: 

8.1.1 Apply professional codes of ethics and ethical principles throughout assessment, planning, implementation, evaluation and research, communication, consulting, and advocacy processes

8.1.6 Apply principles of cultural humility, inclusion, and diversity in all aspects of practice (e.g., Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) standards and culturally responsive pedagogy).

Sponsored by the Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE), a designated provider of continuing education contact hours (CECH) in health education by the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing, Inc. This program is designated for Certified Health Education Specialists (CHES®) and/or Master Certified Health Education Specialists (MCHES®) to receive up to 1.0 total Category I contact education contact hours.

SOPHE is a provider of Certified in Public Health (CPH) Renewal Credits. A total of 1.0 CPH Renewal credits are provided on behalf of the National Board of Public Health Examiners.