Harvard to Launch Online Hub for Accessible Teaching Resources

Harvard is preparing to launch a centralized online hub for faculty and instructional staff seeking resources to make their courses more accessible to students with disabilities.

The initiative — dubbed “Accessible Teaching at Harvard” — aims to create a “comprehensive hub” where faculty can access resources to make their courses more accessible, according to Kate Higgins, associate director of University Disability Resources, who spearheaded the initiative.

Affiliates will be able to access the resource hub through the University Disability Resources website beginning later this summer.

“This hub is designed to function as a single, trusted point of access for information about accessible teaching, which will promote a high and consistent standard of access and inclusion for all students across the University,” Higgins wrote in a statement.

The initiative comes as more Harvard students are seeking disability accommodations. According to data published annually by the National Center for Education Statistics, the share of Harvard undergraduates receiving accommodations rose from roughly 3 percent in 2014 to 21 percent in 2024, bringing Harvard in line with the national average.

The initiative is funded through the Harvard President’s Administrative Innovation Fund, an annual grant awarded to University-affiliated individuals and teams. Grants typically range from $5,000 to $15,000, with select projects receiving support of up to $25,000.

The fund supported three other projects this year: the Headshot Hub, an initiative to improve communications at the Graduate School of Education, and mentoring circles at the Longwood campus.

The initiative is primarily intended to make it easier for Harvard faculty to find and utilize existing campus resources, said Erich Manser, a member of Harvard University Information Technology’s Digital Accessibility Services team who worked on the project.

Among the resources currently available to faculty that they will now be able to access through the website are Harvard’s policies for disability accommodations, web-based training modules on increasing course accessibility, and information about local disability coordinators for each school.

“This is an attempt to consolidate resources, but also clarify when you might turn to one resource versus another,” Manser said.

According to a one-page outline of the initiative, part of the design process included creating new resources to fill existing gaps — though Manser did not identify any specific new offerings that would be included in the hub when it is launched.

The initiative is a University-wide effort, with a design team that includes staff from the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Kennedy School, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Division of Continuing Education, and central University administrators.

It was initially conceived by the Student Accessibility Advisory Group, a group of students from across Harvard’s schools whose input informs the work of the University Accessibility Committee, which works to improve the experience of students with disabilities.

“It actually tells a little bit of a compelling story about how this is actually a University-wide effort, as well, to increase not only the awareness around accessible teaching but to make accessible teaching more accessible to Harvard educators and to students, as well,” said Nick Wilson, director of learning innovation at the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching.

According to Wilson, the initiative partly aims to ensure that resources currently available on a school-by-school basis can be accessed by anyone at the University. Though the site is designed for Harvard faculty and instructional staff, it will be available to the general public.

“What the Accessible Teaching Hub really intends to do is create that space where it is curating all of those important resources from across the University, and bringing them into one place to really, again, provide a University-wide resource that is accessible to everybody, and not buried underneath one school or one program,” he said.

While the initiative has yet to officially launch, some affiliates have already been given a preview of the resources available, according to Higgins.

“The early response has been positive and encouraging,” she wrote. “We are collecting and incorporating feedback from these initial users to ensure that the hub is responsive to the needs of our community and that it meaningfully supports accessible, inclusive teaching across the University.”

Harvard has increased its efforts to promote disability accessibility and awareness in recent years, including convening the first University Accessibility Committee in 2017 and launching an annual disability pride celebration in 2022.

—Staff writer Sebastian B. Connolly can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at sbc.23. Follow him on X @SebastianC4784.

—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at [email protected] or on Signal at ser.85. Follow her on X @summerellenrose.