Request of financial support to cover the additional costs that researchers/staff members with disabilities face due to the increased costs of their mobility and/or to ensure necessary assistance by third persons or for adapting their work environment.

Web Accessibility Initiative – Communities of Practice (WAI-CooP) provides a unique model to support implementation of the international standards for digital accessibility, including the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the EN 301 549. WAI-CooP objectives are to: • Establish vendor-neutral overview on available training, tools, and resources internationally • Analyse technological advancements and coordinate with relevant research and development • Provide opportunities for key stakeholders to share resources and to exchange best practices WAI-CooP achieves this by building on the existing wealth of authoritative guidance available from the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), to provide a one-stop shop for the broad spectrum of key stakeholders involved in the implementation of digital accessibility, including public bodies and private entities; organisations representing people with disabilities; product, service and training providers; researchers; and policy makers. WAI-CooP is uniquely positioned to establish necessary dialogs with key stakeholders to help exchange best practices in the community, provide technical clarification and guidance, and refine the authoritative guidance from W3C. WAI-CooP is also uniquely positioned and qualified to help ensure coordination and harmonisation of accessibility standards and practices, raise awareness and build technical capacities in Europe and internationally. WAI-CooP maximises its impact by utilising transparent and open processes of the W3C to invite all key stakeholders, and by integrating project results into relevant W3C standardisation and EDF networks, to ensure longer-term sustainability beyond the project. WAI-CooP provides direct support for European Union (EU) public bodies in the process of implementing the Web Accessibility Directive (WAD), while using a non-exclusive approach that benefits organisations and governments internationally wanting to implement digital accessibility.

Accessibility and Design for All are the base for the independent living and full participation of persons with disabilities in society and its all domains such as education, work, politics, administration, culture, leisure/sports, entertainment. To achieve that - Accessibility and Design for All must become an integral part of mainstream curricula of Higher Education (HE) to educate professionals at all levels and in all areas like IT, Design and Arts, Architecture, Civil Engineering, Audiovisual, Teacher Education, Care and Social Sciences, Politics, Administration, Business, Economics and Management. Those professionals must be aware of and have knowledge of guidelines, standards, techniques and tools in Accessibility and Design for All and can design, implement, procure, set-up, integrate, use and maintain accessible services and accessible products in order to benefit individuals with disabilities, their communities and society as a whole. The ATHENA project we will develop a set of recommendations on how to integrate Accessibility and Design for All into the Higher Education curricula. This will be a huge step forward in promoting equal opportunities and social inclusion of persons with disabilities. The partnership of European Disability Forum representing over 100 million persons with disability in Europe, 4 universities having expertise in accessibility and EURASHE, one of the key stakeholders in the European Higher Education Area will create the recommendations through exchange and development of new practices and methods. The last year of the project will be dedicated to reaching out to HE institutions and influencing them to take on the guidelines developed in the project.With ATHENA we want to transform the HE sector and to offer students education that will include the knowledge on accessibility. This will lead to new approaches in a variety of professions what will build more inclusive society.

DARE will train a new generation of disability scholars and policy specialists. It sets out an ambitious research programme, providing interdisciplinary, intersectoral training which will equip the ESRs to have a real impact on law and policy reform and on the real lives of persons with disabilities. The goal of DARE is to give legitimacy, through research, to the lived experience of persons with disabilities, as a basis for law reform. This is not just a desirable policy goal - it is legally required by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities which is binding in the EU alongside its Member States. DARE innovates intersectorally by bringing non-academic partners into the very heart of the research and training programme as co-supervisors of the ESRs. It innovates intersectionally by emphasising how various identities (such as gender and age) interact to create layers of discrimination against persons with disabilities. It innovates by training the ESRs in emancipatory and participatory research methods to ensure that the voices of persons with disabilities take centre stage in the research process. It will require the ESRs to adopt a lifecourse perspective in developing an evidence base for law and policy reform. Through a carefully tailored secondment strategy in the advocacy community, DARE will expose the ESRs to organisations outside academia and at the epicentre of reform. DARE will draw on a panel of international policy & disability experts to enable the ESRs to continually refine their research to ensure it has societal impact. DARE will make Europe a highly attractive educational space for research on the implementation of the UN Convention. It will give the ESRs a decisive advantage in seeking new employment roles in processes of reform at the international level, before Governments and in advocacy groups. Its graduates will be seen not merely as traditional ‘knowledge providers’ but also as ‘policy entrepreneurs.’