Welcome to the Infoportal Barrier-Free Teaching of the University of Paderborn!
On these pages, information for teachers on basic principles of barrier-free teaching, types of impairments and their impact on learning and examination opportunities, compensation for disadvantages, and the concrete design of materials is provided and continuously expanded.
Students at German universities are becoming increasingly heterogeneous. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities has been legally binding since 2009; since then at the latest, the central task has been to enable all people to participate in society by removing barriers. This applies in particular to the right of access to (lifelong) education. Universities are therefore called upon to structurally remove barriers. This also applies to the accessibility of information on the Internet. Formally, this was regulated by the Accessibility Act (WZG or WCAG 2.0) in 2016. This obliges all public institutions to make all information accessible without barriers. In addition to websites, this also affects learning platforms and, as a consequence, the teaching and learning materials provided there.
Essential are accessibility measures for the student group studying with impairments. A nationwide survey showed that at least 11% of students study with an impairment. In purely statistical terms, therefore, there are at least three students with an impairment in an average-sized seminar. Barriers vary from individual to individual; however, overall, all groups benefit from well-designed and accessible (online, if necessary) teaching. For example, students with family obligations can work out facts more flexibly in self-study by means of completely written materials; international students have the opportunity to avoid language disadvantages by means of additional information channels.
The goal of teaching that is as barrier-free as possible is therefore that the requirements of students with impairments are automatically taken into account when designing the course or examination and, of course, structures or specifications are adapted accordingly. Impairments are individually different; especially in their effects on learning and being examined. Strict attendance requirements, a lack of accessible teaching materials or the fear of prejudice, for example, then complicate the course of study.
Therefore, we would like to support you in providing adapted materials as well as in the barrier-free design of, among other things, examination situations or questions regarding diagnosis-specific background knowledge.
