Office of Information Technology
An Unconference is a powerful way to take responsibility for your own learning (and that of others). It provides an opportunity for participants to propose conversation topics that are emerging for them in the moment. No “expert status” is necessary; to propose a topic, you need only to be willing to host a conversation on a topic that’s present for you.
The University of Minnesota held a Global Accessibility Awareness Day event to engage in conversation, thinking, and learning about access and inclusion on May 19, 2022.
The committee makes recommendations to the Accessible U site product owner about how to govern the content, design, and promotion of the site so that it is usable, accessible, current, and reflects the recommendations and shared interests of UMN accessibility community groups and units.
The committee will consist of the Accessible U site coordinator from the Office of Information Technology (OIT) and up to 12 members from across the University.
| Name | Unit | Community Group | Affiliations and Skills |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tammy Berberi | Humanities Division, Morris | Digital Accessibility Pedagogy Working Group | Faculty perspective |
| Nancy Bertino | University Relations, Twin Cities | Not applicable | Digital strategy, Folwell Design System training |
| Laura Carlson | Information Technology Systems and Services, Duluth | Not applicable | Web Design Update Newsletter and more |
| Christina Goodland | OIT User Support, Twin Cities | Not applicable | Accessible U site coordinator |
| Zoë Harvey | OIT User Support, Twin Cities | Not applicable | Accessibility Badging Program, accessible content production |
| Karen Jeannette | Information Technology Systems and Services, Duluth | Digital Accessibility Pedagogy Working Group | Instructional design |
| Luke Kudryashov | Disability Resource Center (DRC), Twin Cities | Not applicable | Accessibility Specialist for the DRC |
| Khaled Musa | OIT Academic Technologies, Twin Cities | Accessibility Ambassadors, Accessibility Community of Practice | Academic materials |
| Meredith Schneider | College of Education and Human Service Professions, Duluth | Accessible Academic Technology Team (AATT) at UMD, Accessibility Ambassadors | Documents, presentations, websites |
| Leah Villa | OIT User Support, Twin Cities | Not applicable | Accessibility Badging Program |
The Accessible U site coordinator or a delegate will:
Members will:
The committee will ideally include:
Members will ideally:
In 2021, members were recruited by word-of-mouth. We will develop a recruiting process so all who are interested can apply in the future.
This page demonstrates how some common website accessibility issues might be addressed. Compare it to the original less accessible demonstration page.
| Geographic Area | People with Disabilities | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Worldwide | 20% | World Report on Disability, 2011 (PDF) |
| United States |
19.4% undergraduate students 11.9% graduate students |
National Center for Education Statistics, 2015–16 |
| Minnesota | 10.9% | Minnesotans with Disabilities, March 2017 (PDF) |
| University of Minnesota | 4,000 registered students | 2019 |
This page demonstrates some common website accessibility issues. Can you spot them? Then see how the page could be revised to be more accessible.
How Many People Have Disabilities?
tbody tr { background-color: #fff !important; } .page td { border: 2px solid #d5d6d2 !important; }| Worldwide | 20% in 2011 |
| Minnesota | 10.9% in 2017 |
| U.S. Students | 19.4% undergraduate students in 2015–16 |
| 11.9% graduate students in 2015–16 | |
| UMN Students | 4,000 systemwide in 2019 |
The photograph for the January 28 DIY Accessibility Lunch 'N Learn has an alt tag, "picture.jpg," but it doesn't convey what is in the picture.
The "Latest Updates" and "Fast Facts" headings do not meet WCAG contrast standards.
Screenshot from the WebAIM Contrast Checker showing that the Foreground Color of #FFB71E on the background color #777677 has a contrast ration of 2.59:1 and fails WCAG standards
There are several heading errors:
There are several link errors:
The list in the sidebar has bullets in both the main and the nested list.
The table doesn't have a header row or column.
Make sure all videos you include on your website have captions and transcripts, as this one does.
However, when we first embedded videos like this one on this site, auto play was not turned off.
The University of Minnesota will again host a half-day, online event on Thursday, May 16, 2024 as part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). This year’s theme is “Built Without Barriers."
We invite passionate and knowledgeable individuals to contribute as speakers. Complete the GAAD 2024 Speaker Interest Form by February 7, 2024.
Registration information will be available in April.
See the Built Without Barriers page for details.
Automated accessibility scanning tools can only catch around 30% of accessibility issues. To fully meet accessibility standards and make sure everyone is able to use your site, manual testing with assistive technologies is required. We will
Familiarity with accessibility standards and automated accessibility tools is helpful, but not required. These methods are applicable to both Drupal and non-Drupal sites.
Luke Kudryashov is the senior digital accessibility analyst at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Disability Resource Center. He has a background in digital accessibility, user experience, disability studies, and disability culture.
Khaled Musa has been the chair of the Accessibility Ambassadors since 2019. He is an academic technologist, focused on accessibility with Academic Technology Support Services. Khaled consults with faculty and staff about technology tools, with a lens on how to create an accessible and inclusive learning environment.
Accessibility Ambassadors
Registration for this session is required. Let us know if you are attending. By default, we enable auto-captioning in the webinar. Please let us know what additional accommodations we can provide. Two weeks notice (April 11) will help us to better fulfill requests. This session will be recorded, captioned, and shared with the Google Group.
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The University of Minnesota gathered in celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day on May 19, 2022.
Senior leaders from across the University system spoke out in support of accessibility.
Visit the Global Accessibility Awareness Day website for recordings
Do you think about student success, and what we might be doing to reduce that success? Khaled Musa will introduce the topic by illustrating the different ways inaccessibility impacts academic success, and Angela Carter from MN Transform will describe how people experience disability on campus and the role of the Disability Resource Center (DRC).
Accessibility Ambassadors
Accessibility Ambassadors
This presentation will provide instructors and students with strategies to improve engagement and accessibility in college coursework. Through Universal Design for Learning, barriers to traditional instruction are broken down, and instructors build learning activities that provide multiple means of engagement, representation of content, and methods to demonstrate and assess student understanding.
Accessibility Ambassadors
How to present data in an inclusive and accessible manner has been a session request for a while. Unfortunately, it has proven difficult to find speakers with experience in this area. Thankfully, this month we are joined by Neha Bansal, senior director of application development in the Office of Information Technology, to discuss accessibility in data visualization.
Accessibility Ambassadors
Videos and teleconferencing are part of everyone’s daily life in a (nearly!) post-pandemic world. But videos by themselves often leave a large gap for those who do not rely on hearing to communicate, or who otherwise have difficulty interpreting speech. This month we welcome back accessibility ambassador Amanda Ryan, academic technologist at the Institute on Community Integration, to share her knowledge of captioning.
Accessibility Ambassadors
When discussing accessibility, digital or otherwise, there are a lot of things to consider—legal compliance, technical needs, standards, etc. However, at its very core, accessibility is about people. The reason that accessibility is important is because of the people who are affected by inaccessible content.
On April 29, we were very fortunate to have a group of University of Minnesota students who identify as people with disabilities who were willing to discuss their experiences and share how inaccessibility affects them in their lives, careers, and education.
The Accessibility Ambassadors is a is a cross-functional community of University of Minnesota employees who are passionate about digital accessibility. Our monthly events promote awareness and help the University communtiy build digital accessibility skills.
Join the Google Group for updates on what we have planned and how you can be involved!
Introduce digital accessibility concepts to your team at your next team meeting agenda. Some ideas for sharing are:
Examples include:
Choose from the following questions (or create your own)
Invite us to an upcoming meeting. Members of the Digital Accessibility community are available to give an overview of digital accessibility over Zoom. Complete the presentation request form and we'll work with you to schedule a presentation for your team or department.
The Digital Accessibility Badging Program teaches you how to create emails, slide decks, documents, and more in an accessible way, without using code. In each self-paced online workshop, you will learn skills and apply them to your everyday work. You may choose to take as many workshops as you like. You will receive a digital badge highlighting the skills you demonstrated in the final project for each training. Learn more and enroll.
Many resources are available to help you build skills in digital accessibility. Get started and help your colleagues do the same!
Visit the Accessible U Events page for more details on Accessibility groups and events.
UDOIT scans your online course content, identifies possible accessibility issues, and guides you through the process of repairing the issues.
Note that correcting accessibility issues in your Canvas course can be an iterative process. One way may be to start by correcting all the “Links should be descriptive” errors. The tool will provide you with the location of the error and a suggestion for how to fix it.
The University provides several training programs that can help you learn digital accessibility skills.
The Digital Accessibility Badging Program is a professional development program that is available to everyone in the University community. It includes courses about creating accessible content in a variety of technologies and content formats.
Participants can elect to have course completion through their Training Hub learner record or complete an optional project to earn a digital badge. Completion of all 6 courses is not required: participants can elect to complete individual courses that pertain to their teaching/learning context.
The Disability Resource Center (DRC) can provide customized training for your team. Submit a request on the DRC outreach & training form.
The University and faculty senates passed a resolution in 2019 recommending that faculty and instructors systemwide complete accessibility professional development activities. The Digital Accessibility Pedagogy Workgroup compiled resources to support the resolution, including professional development resources.
An archived version of the old Accessible U site is available from the Wayback Machine.
This content is not on the new Accessible U site. Similar content is on the Information Technology site.
This content is outdated and may be added to the Accessible U site in the future.