ATU Digital Accessibility - Atlantic Technological University

ATU Teaching and Learning Centre and the Library have collaborated on a number of initiatives to promote digital accessibility. From November 2025 to March 2026, the team will deliver a ‘Lunch and Learn’ series and information roadshow across ATU Campuses.

To register for the on-site, hybrid, or online events, visit here to sign up.

ATU Digital Accessibility Online Course + Digital Badge

AREA Competency Framework and Discovery Tool

The AREA framework was a national deliverable under the N-TUTORR Transforming Learning Programme under the Student Empowerment work stream led by Dr Carina Ginty (ATU) and Dr Moira Maguire (DKIT). AREA stands for AREA stands for Awareness, Responsibility, Empowerment and Action see Figure 1).

This student competency framework highlights key digital and sustainability competences which can be embedded into programme modules, transforming awareness into action and guiding students towards lifelong success in an evolving world.

Informed primarily by the UNESCO (2019) framework for Education for Sustainable Development and the GreenComp European Sustainability Competence framework, the green Sustainability component outlines three main competences:

Being Green

Thinking Green

Acting Green

Graphic showing the AREA Student Competency Framework — To complement the competency framework, two new AREA Discovery Digital Open Badges (see Figure 2) were developed by the ATU Teaching and Learning Centre team in collaboration with the ATU Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Academy. The AREA Discovery online self-assessment tool takes 20 minutes to complete and covers digital skills assessment including Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy and a green competency based assessment tool, that is aligned to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The AREA Discovery Tool is available to access nationally at https://MyDigitalBackpack.ie and locally on ATU’s https://CPDLearnOnline.ie. It is free to access for all students and staff and a national digital badge is awarded on completion.

A graphic showing the AREA discovery tools selection interface for staff and students. — The AREA competency framework was designed in collaboration with the Student Empowerment sector leads, the Student Empowerment research team, the N-TUTORR Student Empowerment Co-ordinators across 5 technological universities and 2 institutes of technology, and the N-TUTORR student and academic champions and academic developers from across the technological university sector.

PATH 4 Digital Accessibility Project – Library Open Textbook Publishing Platform

As part of this PATH 4 Digital Accessibility initiative, the Library will be introducing a new open textbook publishing platform to support the creation and adoption of high-quality and accessible learning materials. This platform will enable lecturers to develop, customise and share interactive digital textbooks, as well as adopt and adapt open resources created by others.

With integrated accessibility features, multimedia capabilities and support for open licensing, it will expand access to course materials and eliminate textbook costs for students. The introduction of this platform marks a significant step toward strengthening digital accessibility and advancing open educational practices across the institution.

Digital Accessibility Library Resources

The Library has a range of scholarly resources to support further reading in the area of Digital Accessibility. Have a look at the ebooks and articles HERE :://atlantictu.libguides.com/accessibility/resources

The Digital Accessibility project team includes: Dr Carina Ginty, Dr Johanna Archbold, Dr Sean Daffy and Sharon Mortimer