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A Year of Transition
Following last year’s hiring of a new Accessibility Coordinator, this year continued to see a number of transitory changes for the Digital Accessibility Team within the Center for Online Learning, Research & Service. One such example regards the management of the Digital Accessibility Remediation Team. Much of this year was still spent working remotely, though during the Spring the team began to ease back into in-person work. This is planned to continue into a return to a fully in-person structure in the coming year. As a result of this remote arrangement and the lessened interaction that accompanies it, new organizational processes were adopted that streamlined the apportionment of work and ordering of requests, providing the student workers a clearer view of what to work on and what is to come. Another development is shown through the data presented below, which describes a movement in the commonly requested filetypes away from Word and PowerPoint and towards video. This is elaborated upon in the Semester Breakdown.
Semester Breakdown
The clearest trend visible in this year’s data is the progression of increasing video work. While the number of .pdf requests from the library was significantly lower than prior years, the captioning of videos has been a growing proportion of our requests, in part due to our collaborations with the College of Business & Management but also due to the overall increase in videos in online courses. Word and PowerPoint remediation requests remained low throughout the year. We are observing an increase in faculty creating their own accessible materials after attending past trainings.
Collaborations
College of Business and Management
Over the summer, the Digital Accessibility Remediation Team worked with CBM to provide captions for their newly developed 8-week Academic Partnership courses. Requests from this partnership made up the majority of the files worked on over summer. This capacity, combined with the lower density of active course requests, marked the summer semester as the ideal time to work with faculty on their developing courses. Our student workers appreciated the opportunity to continue working for DART during the summer term.
library
DART continued to work with the library throughout the year to remediate the documents requested through the Course Reserves process, primarily in the fall and spring semesters. The strong partnership with the library to remediate Course Reserves allows DART to ensure the accessibility of readings for faculty who otherwise do not request remediation services through COLRS.
System Initiatives
In addition to the work of the DART, Accessibility Specialist Alana Gomoll has been involved in two system-wide developments in the realm of accessibility. The first is an increased level of accessibility testing for software purchases that affect the University of Illinois System (e.g. Chrome River, Cornerstone). After AITS completes their assessment of the software, representatives of the three universities and the System Office meet with AITS to discuss any necessary alternative access plans due to accessibility limitations of the products.
The second development is the creation of a working group consisting of Alana Gomoll as a representative from UIS, the ADA-IT coordinators from UIC and UIUC, the Executive Policy Advisor for Accessibility Vance Martin, and Joe Barnes, the newly hired Chief Digital Risk Officer. This group is developing a maturity matrix to assess the level of maturity of each campus in various digital accessibility areas. The maturity matrix will be used to identify strengths and weaknesses of each university and to provide context in deciding which areas warrant the most urgent action. Based on that work, the group will create a roadmap to guide the System towards greater compliance with the ADA and Sections 504 and 508, and present the findings to System and University leadership to aid them in determining the best course of action to minimize the risks posed by noncompliance.
COVID and Remote Work
While the country and UIS have begun to relax precautions over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to be a present force in our lives. Despite the largest peak of the pandemic overall in January (during which we were remote), we have endeavored to begin to return to in-person work. After the January wave, we moved to a hybrid approach, where the students were able to work either in-person or remotely, whichever they were more comfortable with. In the coming year, we will be preparing a new space for the student workers closer to the COLRS offices and will be moving back towards a fully in-person structure.
The Future
World-Class Teaching
COLRS will continue working with the Center for Faculty Excellence to offer training and workshop opportunities centered around preparing UIS faculty to evaluate their course accessibility and author accessible course materials.
Personal Attention
The organizational processes revised in this past year have allowed the DART to more clearly prioritize requests from faculty, resulting in a stronger ability to complete captions or remediate documents as they’re needed across multiple active courses. These processes will be continuously evaluated for areas in which they can better serve those who request our services.
Experience Engaged
DART student workers will gain experience not only with the inclusive ethos of accessibility, but also with the practical considerations of ensuring the accessibility of digital materials, preparing them to be champions of accessible design in their future endeavors.
Liberal Arts Skilled
DART supports the accessibility of online content across all colleges and academic programs, and will continue to better the learning experience of all students at UIS through the creation of accessible course materials.
Credits:
UIS Flickr; UIS Twitter; Kevin Wang