Faculty and staff across UNMC have been working to make digital materials accessible since a federal deadline of today, April 24, was announced two years ago.
While federal enforcement of the accessibility standard has been delayed by a year, it remains University of Nebraska policy and UNMC’s expectation that digital content be accessible to all users, compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 level AA. That standard is the basis of the Americans with Disabilities Act Title II accessibility requirements.
“Thank you to everyone who has been working diligently to ensure that the vital information we share through websites, classroom teaching materials and other digital communications is available to everyone,” said UNMC Interim Chancellor H. Dele Davies, MD. “Now is not the time to let our efforts drop. We are all responsible for making accessibility a priority in our digital information.”
The university policy, authorized in January by University of Nebraska President Jeffrey P. Gold, MD, applies to such content as websites, curriculum materials, presentations, digital documents like PDFs, videos, and computer and mobile applications.
“Although the work remains a shared responsibility across the institution,” said Jane Meza, PhD, interim vice chancellor for academic affairs, “we want to explore new ways to make the best use of time by our talented faculty and staff.
“We will take advantage of the year before federal enforcement begins to consider advances in our tools and other technology that will make accessibility less of a manual task,” she said.
For example, the university system recently implemented a service that automatically converts PDFs on our public websites to accessible HTML. The service, DocAccess, also will provide remediation guidance for its content managers with log-in access. Training will be scheduled for this aspect of DocAccess.
Other tools and services are listed in a previous UNMC Today story and are available at:
- Americans with Disabilities Act Title II Guidance is available at this UNMC website.
- NU Executive Memorandum No. 47, the Information and Communication Technology Accessibility Policy, is available in this document.