This publish was authored by Lynn Bloomer, Director, Business Operations, Cisco Networking Academy.
Cisco Networking Academy is among the world’s largest and longest-standing purpose-driven IT skills-to-jobs applications, impacting the lives of greater than 4.7 million learners yearly (24.2 million since inception) in 191 international locations.
As the world celebrates the 2025 Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), Cisco took a major step in the direction of championing incapacity inclusion by partnering with Teach Access, a nonprofit group devoted to enhancing accessibility training. Teach Access envisions a completely accessible future by which college students enter the workforce with information of the wants of individuals with disabilities and expertise to create know-how that’s born accessible. Together, we have now launched a group of finest practices for Cisco Networking Academy educators, designed to empower instructors in educating all learners. Our collaboration underscores Cisco’s dedication to fostering an inclusive digital future by integrating accessibility ideas into know-how training.
This new educating useful resource, the Accessibility Playlist, helps educators in educating digital accessibility. The playlist is tailor-made for Cisco Networking Academy instructors and makes use of Teach Access’s free assets, together with accessibility self-paced programs and curricular objects within the Teach Access Curriculum Repository. These supplies cowl a spread of subjects, together with incapacity consciousness, accessible design, and inclusive educating practices throughout numerous disciplines comparable to laptop science, UX design, and net improvement. By utilizing these assets, instructors will achieve invaluable insights into finest practices in at present’s technological panorama and can construct their confidence in educating for a extra inclusive viewers.
At the guts of the Cisco Networking Academy program is a constant dedication to equip and empower communities and college students of all backgrounds by way of training. Since we started gathering this information in 2019, over 232,000 college students with declared disabilities have participated.1 And we proceed to assist incapacity and neurodivergent communities by placing accessibility on the entrance of what we do. For instance, we just lately expanded our Advisory Board to incorporate organizations that champion accessibility worldwide, such because the Open University (United Kingdom), the Cisco Academy for the Vision Impaired (CAVI) (Australia), NSITE (United States), and Bridge to Opportunity (United States). We additionally actively have interaction with college students and instructors to determine new accessibility options to reinforce our studying platform expertise for better inclusivity.
“While teaching Cybersecurity Essentials, we discovered that the cybersecurity Virtual Machines (VMs) software used in the lab activities no longer had the screen reader. This meant our visually impaired learners were unable to launch and complete the lab activities. I reached out to the Cisco Networking Academy team, who were able to quickly resolve this and add an accommodation to allow use with screen readers. Hands-on learning is so critical for all learners regardless of their experience and physical capabilities.” – Karen Woodard, Cisco Networking Academy teacher
Cisco’s ongoing dedication to this work, led by our Office of Accessibility, and holding ourselves accountable for our progress is necessary for learners with disabilities; furthermore, it’s necessary to all of us. We are higher collectively. In retaining with our Purpose to Power an Inclusive Future for All, we wish to make the know-how and providers we offer to our clients, companions, suppliers, and workers accessible to all. We are making progress, and there may be nonetheless extra work to do.
Learn extra at netacad.com/accessibility.
Sources:
- Optional self-reporting by learners from July 2019, once we began gathering this info, to the top of FY2024.
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