Digital Inclusion Champion: Making a difference and improving access to education

Andrew Normand believes inclusion “improves everybody’s quality of life”.

And true inclusion for the 11 per cent of university students who identify as having a disability is what he strives to achieve in his role as Digital Accessibility Lead at the University of Melbourne.

So it’s fitting that his work was recently recognised with the university’s Professional Excellence and Innovation Award.

The recognition was for Andrew’s “exceptional” advocacy for digital inclusion and “far-reaching impact across the university” for both staff and students with disability. He was also recognised for his support for people who use assistive technology and his advocacy for systemic change across the institution.

According to the University, his “help everyone” attitude helps create “an environment of diversity and inclusion”.

He was nominated by other staff at the university, in a demonstration of the impact his work has on people as they go about their own work.

Andrew says it’s an honour he’s deeply grateful for, and one he hopes to repay through the initiatives he works on.

Creating accessible online environments

Day to day, Andrew coordinates the University’s digital accessibility activities with a focus on IT systems and services, making sure students and staff, with and without disability, can use them when and how they need to. He also provides training for staff and works with the Disability Support team to introduce students to the assistive technologies available to them.

He is currently in the user-testing stage on new digital wayfinding technology to help people navigate the campuses, and working with clinical neuropsychologists on linking the support needs of students with various conditions to assistive technologies.

“One of my goals is to develop a mind map that links support needs and functional requirements. In that way, we can get away from labels, such as 'neurodiverse', and specific software products,” he says.

He’s quick to note that digital accessibility is “not a one-person show”.

“We have a lot of people who are involved in making our digital services accessible and one of our strengths is that people from Disability Support, Learning and Teaching, research and IT are all able to work closely together.

“As I joke with our IT Security team, the role of security is to keep people out, whereas the role of accessibility is to let people in.”

The right to digital accessibility

One of the other ways that Andrew has been able to help “let people in” is through his participation in the expert advisory group for the update to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Equal Access to Digital Goods and Services Guidelines.

He became involved in this update thanks to his previous work alongside consultancy firm Intopia in developing ADCET’s Accessible IT Procurement Guide for Higher Education.

“The AHRC's consultation process afforded the opportunity to further develop important issues in higher education, such as Accessible ICT Procurement and Risk Management, with experts outside of the education sector, such as Greg Alchin from Service NSW,” he explains.

It was important work; as Andrew says, the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities grants the right to equal access, including online. The AHRC Guidelines focus on how to enable this equal access.

“The Guidelines provide very sensible and practical advice to organisations on how to ensure that their digital environment is accessible. Whilst the Guidelines aren't full of catchy social media quotes, they are an invaluable resource for those looking to move from talking about accessible ICT do doing accessible ICT,” he says.

The Equal Access to Digital Goods and Services Guidelines are a good starting point for those working in disability inclusion or accessibility in higher education, because they link to other existing standards and content, he adds. 

For practitioners who want to make sure they are creating fully accessible online environments for their students and staff, he also recommends the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0, which covers accessible content generation through learning management or content management systems.

But they go further than simply stating that a person with disability must be able to create accessible content.

“ATAG also states that authoring tools should support authors in publishing accessible content. So if you upload an image, the LMS or CMS should prompt you to add alt text. Or if you export a document as PDF, it should check if that PDF is accessible. There is no use having an accessible learning management system if it integrates a whole lot of other learning tools that are inaccessible,” Andrew says.

And while guidelines are useful in showing practitioners how to create an accessible product that removes barriers for most people, he says reasonable adjustments will always be needed to tailor products and processes to individual needs.

Motivated by people

In fact, his biggest piece of advice for disability practitioners isn’t about guidelines; it’s about people.

“Involve users with disabilities in the testing of ICT services,” he urges.

“Education is one of the few sectors in which all of our customers and staff physically come together on a regular basis. We should be taking advantage of that by involving users with disabilities in planning and delivering IT services.

“During my time at the University I have employed over 60 students with disabilities to undertake user testing and to share their lived experience of disability via resources such as our Guides for Academics,  written by students with disabilities.

“I can write a 50-page report and people just fall asleep. But if I show them a three-minute video of students struggling to use a service, they will say, 'We need to fix that. Today.'”

Fixing problems is what keeps Andrew motivated in his role.

“I love it when I can introduce people to something that they haven't seen before or to resolve something that has been holding them back. I also love it when someone shows me a problem or a way of using technology that I have never seen before. Whilst working in accessibility is sometimes a bit of a slow burn, occasionally we get the chance to really help someone out. There aren't many jobs like that,” he says.

(June 2025)