Engaging ignored stakeholders of higher education accessibility practice: analysing the experiences of an international network of practitioners and researchers

The purpose of this paper is to examine and critique current approaches of higher education (HE) community concerning stakeholder engagement in the development of information and communications technology (ICT) related accessibility practice.

The approach taken to this examination is to draw on presentations, panel discussions and World Café reflections from an international symposium held in Montreal where researchers and practitioners debated two key questions as follows: have all the relevant stakeholders really been identified? Are there some stakeholders that the HE community has ignored? And what factors influence successfully distributed ownership of the accessibility mission within HE institutions?

A number of “new” internal and external stakeholders are identified and it is argued that if they are to be successfully engaged, effort needs to be invested in addressing power imbalances and developing opportunities for successful strategic silo-crossing.

The value of this paper is in critiquing the argument that all stakeholders in the development of accessible ICT in HE need to be involved, identifying a gap in the argument with respect to whether all relevant stakeholders have actually been engaged and offering insights into this omission might be rectified.