The Digital Accessibility Office created a comprehensive accessibility compliance plan that everyone on campus can use to meet a major federal deadline.
In April 2024, the Department of Justice signed a final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to ensure digital content and mobile applications are accessible for people with disabilities. Under the new rule, all digital content at UNC must be accessible by April 2026.
Digital content is defined as the information and experiences available on the web, like text, images, audio, videos and documents and the webpages and platforms that house them. The Department of Justice rule also requires mobile apps to be accessible.
Creating guidance that works for everyone
Ultimately, everyone ensures the digital content they create or maintain for University business is accessible. And because the Digital Accessibility Office (DAO) is a team of four who supports the entire University, it was a challenge to create resources that would work for every Tar Heel.
“This is the first time we’re trying to put together something that really touches all of campus,” said Sherose Badruddin, digital accessibility consultant. Badruddin spearheaded the project to create the compliance plan and shape campus guidance.
“We couldn’t just do training, we couldn’t just put links to tools on a website and we cannot possibly access 50,000 people and the way they learn,” Badruddin said.
The team needed a comprehensive compliance plan that could speak to a department of one, a faculty member, a student employee and a department with thousands of documents to remediate.
Three steps to accessible content
The plan ultimately simplifies compliance into three steps. The plan’s structure uses short headings to ensure that even if the bulk of the content isn’t absorbed, those three steps are actionable and scalable. Keeping the list short helps with keeping things manageable, Badruddin noted. “Accessibility is a process, but it has to include tangible, finite steps.”
Learn it
Step one is to learn it. The DAO strongly recommends that everyone on campus take Digital Accessibility Awareness training to understand digital accessibility compliance expectations in daily work.
The DAO also offers specialized training so users can dig into relevant tools and media they use in their roles. And for learners who are leaders, the DAO has resources for understanding the scope of digital content management, assessing organizational maturity, developing or revising policy, evaluating risk and more.
Audit
Step two is to audit. The DAO recommends creating an inventory of digital content, including websites, online course content, digital documents, video, audio, social media, newsletters and third-party digital materials. The inventory will help prioritize efforts and build perspective on the work ahead.
Improve it
Step three is to improve it. This step outlines strategies to address both immediate remediation needs and establish long-term accessibility-first workflows. With this step, the DAO guides users to allocate resources, make accessibility part of everyday work, set realistic timelines and regularly monitor new and existing content for accessibility concerns.
What the compliance plan doesn’t include — by design — is project management. This means the plan “can be implemented in a way that works best for the team,” Badruddin said. “That’s not us telling you what to do. That’s us guiding you where you may have questions.”
Flexible, adaptable, empowering
Central to the DAO’s approach is the recognition that making content accessible is going to look a little different across campus. The compliance plan needed to be scalable, flexible and actionable.
“We had to consider if users are low on human resources or low on financial resources. We also had to consider whether they were grant-funded and don’t know what their resources will be,” Badruddin said. “But what we can tell you is, if you are looking to just do your work, the compliance plan should be able to speak to you. And, if your department tasked you to figure this out for everyone, the compliance plan will work for you, too.”
The DAO aims to empower users in the process. “I felt that it was important instead to give the parameters of the expectation, and let the departments figure out for themselves what works. We can hope that there will be creative problem solving and collaborative solutions with different departments,” Badruddin said.
Ultimately, everyone will have something they can contribute to creating accessible content. This work is happening at other institutions across the country, so units may find direction from colleagues at other universities as well.
This new ruling will give universities, including UNC, more power with vendors. Even though University policy already required that service contracts that affected a large number of people had to have language for accessibility, “we, as well as the rest of the universities across the country, are now going to be demanding accessibility,” Badruddin said. “It’s a magnificent model.”
Continuous improvement
As the campus community begins to implement the new compliance plan, the DAO is committed to continuous improvement and adaptation.
As campus uses the plan, the Digital Accessibility Office will be better able to understand the needs of different departments at different levels. The DAO will use feedback to inform the next steps and find the balance between getting started and meeting the deadline.
For everyone, no matter where they are on the accessibility journey, there was one big takeaway. “You are already doing the work,” Badruddin said. “It’s not more things to do. It’s either completing what you’re doing right or doing things in a different way, where a project isn’t finished until it’s accessible.”