IT Accessibility Team
IT Accessibility Team
674 PDF Documents Remediated
ITAT staff offers free remediation of UW PDF documents that are highly-visible, high-impact, multiple use, and/or strategic. In 2020, ITAT staff remediated 674 documents totalling 6102 pages, positively affecting thousands of students, faculty, staff, and visitors as they access public-facing documents. Examples of high-impact documents remediated include UW Medicine Informed Consent forms, the 2020 Commencement program, and Fast Facts Pride Points 2020 from the Office of Planning & Budget. For additional information about document accessibility, see uw.edu/accessibility/documents.
237 Videos Captioned
ITAT staff provided free captioning of UW videos that are highly-visible, high-impact, multiple use, and/or strategic. In 2020, ITAT staff captioned 237 videos with over 68 hours of run time, estimated to impact over 137,000 viewers. Examples of high impact videos captioned include videos for UW Medicine related to the COVID-19 response and videos for departments’ graduations. ITAT staff also helped UW video owners add audio description to their videos, a standard technique that makes highly visual video content accessible to individuals who are unable to see the video. For additional information about video accessibility, including ITAT’s free captioning service, see uw.edu/accessibility/videos.
30 Vendor Partnerships
ITAT staff work collaboratively with many of the technology vendors with whom the UW does business, in order to help them design and develop more accessible products and services. Key partnerships in 2020 included Canvas, Google, H5P, Interfolio, Manifold, Microsoft, Panopto, PollEverywhere, Pressbooks, ServiceNow, WorkDay, and Zoom.
100+ Presentations and Events
ITAT staff host monthly activities such as Accessible Technology Office Hours and the UW Web Accessibility/Usability Meetup. They also provide three half-day trainings per year to their network of IT Accessibility Liaisons and deliver customized trainings on request to campus units and departments. In 2020, ITAT also coordinated the IT Accessibility Challenge, a six-month period in which participants were taught, supported, and encouraged to take up to 20 simple actions to improve their IT accessibility; and organized an IT Accessibility Capacity Building Institute for Washington state postsecondary institutions. ITAT Staff are globally recognized for their expertise on IT accessibility, and in 2020 they gave presentations at various national conferences, including the CSUN Assistive Technology Conference, AHEAD, EDUCAUSE, HighEdWeb, and Accessing Higher Ground.
Collaborator Spotlights
Integrated Social Sciences
Faculty and staff in the Integrated Social Sciences unit in the College of Arts and Sciences reported significant efforts as part of the IT Accessibility Challenge 2020, engaging many members in their unit in improving the accessibility of their core courses. They also organized an accessibility training for the campus-wide Online Advising Group; worked proactively to ensure their department’s virtual graduation event was accessible; and actively promoted accessibility best practices among the organizers of decentralized graduation events throughout the university.
College of Education
The College of Education made significant proactive efforts to train faculty in the accessible/universal design of online courses as they quickly converted on-site courses to online formats. Instructors were offered web-based professional development that covered topics for making their courses accessible and how to use accessibility checkers, including those used in the creation and remediating of documents and presentation slides as well as the Ally tool, which is integrated within UW’s Canvas learning management system.
ITAT 2020 Highlights
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