Accessibility Policies and Practices

Main Nav

As EDUCAUSE members work to ensure that institutional technology environments advance higher education accessibility for students with disabilities, they develop and maintain a wide range of policies and practices to support that end. For example, some institutions have created checklists and testing processes to ensure accessibility considerations are appropriately reflected in the selection of technologies and applications used at the institution. As another example, institutions have also established accessibility guidelines for the development and implementation of online and blended courses.

Accessible Web Design

EDUCAUSE Accessibility Guidelines This guide is a working draft developed by the IT Accessibility Constituent Group at the request of EDUCAUSE staff. It is designed to provide guidance to authors, reviewers, and publishers associated with EDUCAUSE Quarterly (EQ), and to the larger EDUCAUSE community, on how to ensure that web content is accessible to all users, including those with disabilities.

Institutional Examples

North Carolina State University IT Accessibility The Office of Information Technology at North Carolina State University maintains this site as a primary source for the accessibility services and resources it offers. It provides links to relevant legislation and policies (institutional, state, and federal), web accessibility standards, and tools for web accessibility testing. The site also identifies the areas in which IT accessibility consultation services are available to the university community.

University of Washington Information Technology Accessibility This site offers a variety of resources on technology accessibility, including policies and standards (institutional, state, federal, and international), guidelines for producing accessible web pages, information and recommendations on procuring accessible IT, and links to tools and resource sites for addressing IT and web accessibility needs. Of particular note, the site hosts a list of higher education IT and web accessibility policies from nearly a dozen colleges and universities.

WebAIM A program of the Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University, WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) supports a comprehensive array of accessibility information, tools, application reviews, and training services. Institutions seeking to reevaluate and renew their approach to web accessibility can take advantage of WebAIM’s web accessibility implementation model. The program also provides free access to a tool for assessing the accessibility of any web content, WAVE, and the WebAIM blog includes reviews of assistive technologies for web access.

Library Items on this Topic

View All

EDUCAUSE Library Items for Accessibility Policies and Practices

Showing 1 - 10 of 22 Results

Sort by:

Relevancy | Title | Date

Accessibility Policies and Practices: Accessibility Policies and Practices True As EDUCAUSE mem…
FCC Telecom Service Provider Accessibility Certification Rules: April 22, 2013

Our friends at ACUTA (the higher education telecommunications administrators association) have posted an alert to colleges and universities that "charge students, tenants, or others for …
NFB Proposes Bill on Accessibility Standards for Digital Instructional Materials: March 12, 2013

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has released a fact sheet for proposed national legislation to enact a key recommendation of the Postsecondary Accessible Instructional Ma…
Online Learning with Students, Staff, and Faculty with Disabilities: Knowing the Legal Landscape of Web Accessibility: December 10, 2012

Join Malcolm Brown, EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative director, and Veronica Diaz, ELI associate director, as they moderate this webinar with Cyndi Rowland. Institutions of higher education want to us…
Successes in Implementing IT Accessibility in Higher Education: March 19, 2013 | A session at the Midwest Regional Conference
Join this important session to hear key success stories for improving the accessibility of instructional resources to people with disabilities. The panel will include information on crowd sourcin…
ARL Report: A Great Overview of Print Accessibility: December 14, 2012

Comprehensive overviews of accessibility issues that one can still read relatively quickly don’t often appear. However, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has produced just that in its…
The Role of Campus Leadership in Ensuring IT Accessibility: November 29, 2012

“Everyone should have an opportunity to participate in higher education.” With those words, Michael K. Young, President of the University of Washington, opens a new video from his inst…
Penn State's Progress on its NFB Agreement (EDUCAUSE 2012): November 14, 2012

At last year's EDUCAUSE annual conference, EDUCAUSE Policy hosted a panel discussion on technology accessibility for persons with disabilities in higher education. During that session, D…
View "IT Accessibility: What Campus Leaders Have to Say": November 13, 2012

Just prior to the EDUCAUSE 2012 Annual Conference , I noted that the AccessComputing project at the University of Washington would premier a video at the conference on technology accessibi…
Scalable Solutions for Implementing Accessible Technology in Postsecondary Institutions: November 8, 2012 | A session at the EDUCAUSE 2012 Annual Conference
The CSU has established an effective, replicable approach for implementing an Accessible Technology Initiative in postsecondary institutions. This panel of diverse stakeholders will present the ess…

Main Nav

Publications

Research

Major Conferences

Online Events

Special Topic Events

Events for all Levels and Interests

Career Center

Leadership and Management Programs

Fellowships and Awards

Getting Involved

Jump Start Your Career Growth

Latest Topics

EDUCAUSE organizes its efforts around three IT Focus Areas

Join These Programs If Your Focus Is

From the Blogs

Find Others

Share Ideas

Get on the Higher Ed IT Map

2013 Strategic Priorities

Membership

Who We Are

Stay Informed

Uncommon Thinking for the Common Good™

< EDUCAUSE Library

Accessibility Policies and Practices

Subscribe

Browse this Topic

Expand Topic...

Your Selections Under:

Filter by type

Filter by Publications

Filter by Presentations

Filter by Library Taxonomy