Accessibility refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people who experience disabilities.

The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i.e. unassisted) and "indirect access" meaning compatibility with a person's assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers).

 

Source: wikipedia

Making Technology Usable & Inclusive

Establishes the expectations of state agencies to comply with accessible standards. 

 

A goal of the CIO to implement this across all WA State agencies.

UW is one of the largest in the state, and is already well on the right track

Office of the CIO's Initiative

Expected coverage under Policy 188

• Websites (design and code)
• Video (captioning)
• eLearning (Canvas sites, course materials, ebooks)
• Documents (all internal and public documents including newsletters, word documents, and PDFs)
• Software (internal and public software, including Workday)
• Multimedia
• Programmable Interfaces

Accessible Technology

UW IT, in an effort to align us with the State's Policy, created an accessibility initiative to help the University come into compliance w/ the new standards.

 

A group (aka Task Force) called the Accessibility Liaisons was created, lead by DO-IT and UW IT.

 

All units and departments will be expected to comply or request extensions to convert their materials

How we're impacted

The web is in good shape and we're always improving.

 

Our PDFs, documents, newsletters, and designs need to be evaluated for accessibility. A process should be put in place to make sure they all are moving forward. Captions need to be added to all videos.

 

There are educational opportunities online and on campus that the team should familiarize themselves with.

 

We may need to update older videos, documents, and PDFs to be accessible. (WA state expects us to)

www.washington.edu/accessibility - UW IT's always up-to-date information on what's expected of all units and resources.
 

Free Accessible PDF Training Online (santioned by UW IT) http://www.washington.edu/doit/free-accessible-online-pdf-training
 

UW Accessible IT Capacity Building Institute 2017 - https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/lylac/325352
An accessible tech workshop covering all the information on what units need to acquire and maintain accessible tech