Practical learning. Meaningful change.
Ready to build knowledge, strengthen your workforce, or turn inclusive practices into everyday action? The Institute on Disability (IOD) brings decades of disability expertise, research, and lived experience into practical learning experiences designed for the real world. Whether you're looking for professional development, organizational training, or support for a larger initiative, we'll help you build the knowledge and skills to move your work forward.
IOD trainings are developed collaboratively by faculty, staff, advocates, partners, and subject-matter experts. Our approach brings together current research, promising practices, and lived experience to address real needs across the workforce, communities, and systems of care.
We partner with state agencies, community organizations, schools, and service systems to understand their goals and challenges, then develop tailored solutions or connect them with existing training programs.
Looking for training for your organization or community?
Training built for real-world impact
We create learning experiences that help people put knowledge into action. Our training opportunities include:
- Professional development and workforce training
- Certification and credentialing programs
- Credit-bearing courses
- Leadership development
- Community education and learning series
- Customized training and technical assistance
Across our work, we share a common goal: building stronger communities where people with disabilities can participate fully, accessibility is woven into everyday practice, and people and organizations have the tools to create meaningful change.
What makes IOD training different?
Accessible from the start
We design learning experiences with accessibility in mind from the beginning, using Universal Design for Learning (UDL), multiple learning formats, and flexible ways to participate.
Practical and action-oriented
Our trainings connect knowledge to real-world practice so participants leave with tools, strategies, and ideas they can put to work.
Interactive and human
We learn through participation, reflection, discussion, and connection. Our trainings create opportunities to engage with both the content and one another.
Shaped by lived experience
The perspectives and lived experiences of people with disabilities and behavioral health needs help shape and inform our work. We value different experiences, perspectives, and ways of learning.
Grounded in evidence
Our training draws on current research, adult learning principles, lived experience, and promising practices across disability, education, health, and human services.
Driven by mission
For more than 40 years, the IOD has worked to advance access, belonging, and participation for people with disabilities. That mission is at the heart of every training we create.
If you're ready to learn, strengthen your practice, or make a difference in your organization or community, there's a place for you here.
We work with:
- People with lived experience of disability and behavioral health needs
- Family members and caregivers
- Direct support professionals
- Educators and school personnel
- Healthcare and behavioral health professionals
- Human service providers
- Students
- Community leaders and organizations
- Policymakers
- State and national partners
Depending on the program, IOD training may be offered through:
- Self-paced online courses
- Live virtual training
- In-person workshops
- Hybrid learning
- Cohort-based learning communities
- Interactive webinars and discussion series
Some training opportunities may also offer digital badges or UNH microcredentials, certificates of completion, continuing education contact hours, or college credit.
Training costs vary depending on the program, format, scope, and available funding. Some IOD trainings are offered at no cost, while others require a registration fee or customized training agreement.
Explore our areas of expertise
Our expertise spans a wide range of topics, including:
- Assistive technology
- Behavioral health workforce development
- Community participation and belonging
- Direct support professional training
- Disability leadership and advocacy, including self-advocacy
- Family and caregiver support
- Inclusive education and transition
- Mental health and intellectual and developmental disabilities
- Workforce and organizational development
Bring IOD training to your organization
Have a challenge you're working through? A skill you want your team to build? An idea for a training that could strengthen your organization or community?
