Building an institutional program, not just fixing individual courses

THE SITUATION

Accessibility work in higher education often happens reactively — a complaint surfaces, a course gets patched, and the underlying problem remains. When I took on accessibility leadership across CAPE, ISI, and DEE, the gap between where courses were and where they needed to be under WCAG 2.1 AA was significant, and there was no systematic way to know where to start.

WHAT I DID

I built the program from the ground up rather than course by course. That started with using Anthology Ally’s institutional reporting to map accessibility gaps against enrollment data — so remediation effort could be directed where it would have the most impact on actual students. I developed training materials and video documentation for staff and faculty, making the process replicable rather than dependent on my direct involvement. For math content — one of the hardest accessibility problems in online education — I learned LaTeX and MathPIX specifically to develop a remediation path, then documented and shared that approach with colleagues at CETL, Extension, and the Math department. I also implemented Anthology Ally platform-wide during my time as interim Technical Product Manager, giving instructors visibility into their own course accessibility for the first time.

WHAT CHANGED

Remediation across high-enrollment courses including [Math 1123, 1143, 1170, Physics 1112, PSYC 1101, and others] moved from backlog to completion. Colleagues across multiple departments gained tools and techniques they could apply independently. The math remediation approach in particular addressed a gap that had no previous solution in the institution — and the documentation I created meant the knowledge didn’t stay with one person.

CONDENSED ACCESSIBILITY TRAINING (11 MIN)

ACCESSIBILITY KNOWLEDGE-BASE ARTICLE

Provides condensed training materials on wide range of accessibility topics.

microsoft word Tutorial Sample

STEP 1) Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker

1. Within your Microsoft Word document, under the Review tab, click Check Accessibility.
2. Review the list of issues in the Accessibility panel on the right.
3. These are some of the items that need to be modified to make your document accessible to all users.

STEP 2) Image “ALT” Text

1. Select each image, then select the Picture Format tab.
2. Click Alt Text.
3. Enter descriptive text of the image in the panel on the right for users who may not be able to see the image.

STEP 3) Header Navigation

Keyboard users and screen readers use a PDFs Document Outline to navigate the document. Document Outlines can be created using Microsoft Word’s Header Style feature.

1. Under the Home tab, click on each header item that you want represented in the navigation.
2. Select your desired Heading under the Styles drop down.

STEP 4) Format for Tabbing

Replace paragraphs of text with headers and bulleted lists to improve the tabbing ability throughout your document.

STEP 5) Descriptive URLs

Rather than supplying only a URL link, augment URLs with text that describes the link’s destination.

STEP 6) Table Caution

Consider using a bulleted list with headers as an alternative to tables. They take a bit more space, but lists won’t cause horizontal scrolling issues on mobile devices, and can easily be tabbed through by screen reader users.

STEP 7) Color Caution

Users with vision challenges may not see information that is conveyed with color. For example, in the screenshot below, the first highlighted line attempts to convey “importance” by making the text red. Instead, use bold text with an “ATTENTION” phrase to convey importance.

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