Agree shared accessibility ownership in education

Create a working agreement across teaching, technology, student support, and leadership.

Starter draft for review. Use as a conversation or planning aid.

Start with one educational outcome

Choose a course, school, department, or student service. State what learners or families need to accomplish. Invite the teams that control the handoffs and people who experience the barriers.

Complete a shared ownership agreement

Purpose and scope: Outcome; learners and other participants; courses, systems, materials, and support channels included.
Executive or academic sponsor: A role authorized to resolve priorities and resource decisions across teams.
Accountable owner: The role responsible for coordinating this course or service outcome, including vendor handoffs.
Delivery partners: Teachers or faculty, curriculum or instructional design, IT, library, procurement, communications, and student support roles relevant to the task.
Support commitment: Preparation time, accessible templates, specialist review, remediation capacity, and funding.
Escalation: Who receives a blocking issue, who can authorize action, and when the sponsor reviews unresolved barriers.
Review point: Before release, during delivery, and at the next course or service update.

Keep responsibilities attached to decisions

Disability services and special education partners contribute expertise and individual support. Course authors, platform owners, purchasing teams, and leaders also have responsibilities for the environments they control. Name those responsibilities rather than sending every barrier to a single office.

Context prompts

K–12: coordinate district and school ownership, curriculum adoption, family communication, and classroom materials.
Higher education: coordinate academic leadership, faculty autonomy, instructional design, library licensing, and centralized technology.

Take one decision away

Record the barrier, affected task, decision, owner, support agreed, due date, and evidence to review. Ask who would keep the practice going if the usual champion were absent.

ACLT connection: leadership makes access sustainable by connecting purpose, authority, capability, and recurring practice.

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