Higher education as a sector is increasingly required to incorporate accessibility and universal design in its curricula to facilitate the development of ‘proactive approaches to accommodations’ (Nieminen 2022), but there is a long way to go in achieving this. The Erasmus+ ATHENA project consortium, led by the European Disability Forum and comprised of the Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Masarykova Univerzi,ta (Muni Teiresias), European University Cyprus, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and EURASHE, aims to develop a set of recommendations on how to broadly integrate Accessibility and Universal Design into higher education curricula. To do so, the project first sought to examine how and to what extent accessibility and universal design are incorporated into higher education curricula in four European countries: Spain, Austria, Cyprus, and Czechia. The study was conducted by applying  two methodological approaches: corpus linguistics and thematic analysis of university curricula and syllabi. The main research questions guiding this were: (a) Is the Accessibility and Universal Design approach included in the sample of HE curricula in the selected domains? (b) How is the Accessibility and Universal Design approach applied in the sample of HE curricula in the selected domains, in terms of construction and conceptualisation and curricula aim? This paper presents the findings of this task for one of the four countries, Cyprus.

In the context of this study, accessibility is defined as a fundamental principle that ensures equal access for all individuals, particularly those with disabilities (UN, 2007). To attain full inclusion, communities need to tackle multiple barriers that prevent individuals with disabilities from accessing facilities, goods, and services. These challenges encompass physical barriers such as stairs, information presented in non-universal formats, and services that aren't easily understandable for those with disabilities. It embraces the core values of human diversity, social inclusion, and equality, fostering an environment where everyone, regardless of age, ability, or background, can engage with and benefit from the designed solutions. Although certain accessibility initiatives might come with high expenses, affordable, immediate remedies exist that can still have a considerable impact. Accessibility is about developing solutions to achieve universal design. Universal Design (UD) is conceptualized as a comprehensive approach to design that seeks to create products, environments, and systems that can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability (Centre for Excellence in Universal Design, 2023). Universal Design for Learning is an inclusive and non-discriminatory approach aimed at introducing curricula, teaching and assessment methods that foster accessible and engaging learning environments to accommodate students’ diverse needs and modalities of learning.  ( Dell et al. 2015).  Even though this approach provides conceptual and pragmatic tools to implement educational differentiation of curricula and pedagogical interventions, the application of the latter is limited in Higher Education (Turner et al 2017).

Notwithstanding the importance of UD in creating accessible learning environments, a mono-dimensional focuson accessibility silences issues of difference and inequality to empower disenfranchised students. As pointed out by Knoll (2009: 124), ‘To apply only universal design or individual accommodation would either leave gaping holes in access to academia and courses by not seeing and addressing the intersecting dilemmas of privilege and oppression within the disability experience ‘. Hence, the necessity of developing universally designed curricula that problematize and destabilize power asymmetries and discourses of normality, such as eurocentric knowledge to create inclusive spaces in HE (Mole, 2012)

The main findings of this research endeavor revealed that accessibility and universal design do not appear frequently in university programs of study in Cyprus, and neither do they appear consistently in terms of frequency and conceptualization across domains.

A two-step methodological approach to data analysis was followed for the aims of this study across the 4 partner countries, including Cyprus. The first stage included the selection and analysis of the sample of texts (program curricula and syllabi for different university study programs) via a corpus linguistics analysis. covering seven areas of knowledge from the ISCED fields of education and training 2013 (ISCED-F 2013): Education; Arts and Humanities; Social Sciences, Journalism and Information; Business, Administration and Law; Information and Communication Technologies; Engineering, Manufacturing and Construction; and Health and Welfare;. Based on the criteria decided by the consortium, a sample of at least twenty-one (21) undergraduate (Bachelor) and postgraduate (Master) program study curricula and syllabi were selected in each participating country: Spain, Austria, Cyprus, and Czechia. For Cyprus in particular, which is a small country compared to the other three, the search covered the websites of all nine public and private universities yielding a total of 175 texts of which 21 were eventually selected through the corpus linguistics analysis. Hence, following the determination of the selection criteria, a set of keywords related to accessibility, design for all, disability and inclusion were retrieved and analysed in the corpus in terms of absolute frequency, relative frequency and dispersion. The selected study programs needed to include at least one of the keywords determined by the consortium. The first stage of analysis, using corpus linguistics analysis with the help of a suitable software (Sketch engine), resulted into two final datasets (corpora) for Cyprus, in Greek and English. Each corpora was comprised of program curricula and syllabi for each study program selected. For seven of the study programs the official language of instruction is Greek and fourteen are offered in English (14). The twenty-one study programs pertained to the seven domains selected by the consortium plus the Services domain which was deemed pertinent only to Cyprus. The corpus linguistics analysis allowed for the empirical discerning of the curricula and syllabi that incorporate accessibility and universal design and the fields under which these occur in the learning outcomes, content, university policy, etc. As a second step, thematic analysis using a qualitative analysis software (Atlas.ti) was applied onto the sample of texts identified through the corpus linguistics analysis. The aim of the thematic analysis was to look deeper into how accessibility was conceptualized in the texts.

frequently in university programs of study in Cyprus. And when they do appear, the thematic analysis has shown that accessibility appears with different frequency and conceptualizations across domains. These findings are relatively consistent across the consortium partners (Austria, Czechia, and Spain). In specific, out of the 175 curricula originally sampled in the case of Cyprus, we were able to locate through linguistics corpus analysis relevant keywords in only 23 study programs, of which 21 were eventually selected for thematic analysis. This constitutes a rather small fraction of them at only 12%. When zooming in on these program curricula and syllabi, our thematic analysis revealed differences in terms of how, where and how often accessibility and universal design manifested in the various programs of study across all domains. In Cyprus, generally references to accessibility and universal design were more frequent in undergraduate study programs and in mandatory courses, across all domains. These issues were mostly identified in the course content description, in course titles, and in the objectives and outcomes of the courses. In terms of domains in which accessibility and universal design appeared most, pertinent discourse emerges primarily in the domain of Education, which contained almost half of the courses in which such references were found in their syllabi. Arts and Humanities came in second, with topics related to user-centred design appearing mostly in mandatory courses. Regarding the construction of accessibility and disability in relation to the main models of disability, this was mostly related to the human rights approach and the social model of disability. Few references to the medical model were also identified mainly in the health and medical studies programs. Overall, results from Cyprus suggest that accessibility and universal design appear in programs of study rather indirectly, and usually under overarching topics like diversity and human rights.

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