Getting Started with ADA Title II & Digital Accessibility

New ADA Title II Rule

In April of 2024, the new rule was signed into law. This is one of the most significant shifts in accessibility compliance in decades.

Who This Impacts

  • Faculty and Staff in Public Institutions: UTSA is directly impacted by the new rules, with a focus on everyone ensuring that all digital content is directly accessible to align with compliance standards.
  • UTSA Students and Community Members: These efforts enhance everyone’s access to education and services.
  • Vendors, Contractors, and Publishers: Digital tools, applications, content, and services purchased, licensed, or used by UTSA through an agreement with a third party as part of UTSA’s programs and services must align with accessibility standards.

What Do the New Rules Cover?

Legally, digital content is required to be proactively accessible if accessed by students, staff, faculty, and the public. Including:

  • Text, images, sound, videos, and files (e.g., digital content within courses). When selecting external content, it should be vetted for accessibility or collaborate with the Digital Accessibility Team and Student Disability Services to determine what alternatives exist.
  • Digital course content (Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, handwritten notes, videos, PDFs, etc.)

How We Can Help You

  • Consultations
  • Trainings/Workshops - targeted training, general training, department trainings, and university training!
  • Course Reviews

Content Remediation Services

  • Captioning Services
  • Document Remediation Guidance - Share your document and we will talk you through how to improve it!

Where You Can Start

Accessibility Basecamp: Awareness & Orientation (Level 1)

Goal: Recognize that design impacts access.

Actions:

  • Locate and review your Course Accessibility Report using Ally in Canvas.
  • Notice which content types are most commonly inaccessible.
  • Utilize accessibility checkers when available such as the accessibility checkers in Microsoft Office products.
  • Ensure you are using high quality images, audio, and video.
  • Begin addressing color contrast issues within Canvas pages.

A Wide and Shaded Path: Take Time To Clear The Way (Level 2)

Goal: Understand that even non-published content in Canvas impacts your course accessibility score

Actions:

  • Review your course(s) before a course copy to remove as many items as you can that are outdated, not meant for students, or that you do not plan to publish in the next iteration of your course.
  • Use the broken link tool within Canvas to verify that links are working

Gentle Slope: Small Changes That Makes A Positive Impact (Level 3)

Goal: Recognize the benefit of descriptive links and "easy to fix" items in Ally

Action(s):

  • Begin to replace URLs with descriptive link text in Canvas, documents, and presentations (e.g. https://www.utsa.edu with UTSA Homepage).
  • Set a goal to fix 1-5 "easy to fix" items in Ally regularly or schedule a "Power Hour".
  • Review video content for accurate captions (if they say ASR or auto-generated they very likely do not meet the requirement for accurate captioning. If you plan to reuse these videos in the future, please email the Digital Accessibility Team to request proactive captioning.
  • Canvas Commons - "Favorite" the UTSA Canvas Accessibility Guide.

Scenic Overlook: The View Matters (Level 4)

Goal: Understand how color contrast impacts readability and the need for alt text

Action(s):

  • Use Ally to identify and address remaining color contrast issues.
  • Download or bookmark tools to help you check color contrast for documents and presentations.
  • Add short alt text (a textual representation of a visual image) to images in Canvas, documents, and presentations.
  • Mark purely decorative images as decorative but please use caution.

Wooded Trail: Structure & Navigation (Level 5)

Goal: Recognize how document / page structure and organization impact navigation.

Action(s):

  • Apply heading styles in Word, PDFs, and Canvas (e.g. H1-Title, H2 Major Topics, H3 Subtopics within major topics...).
  • Use the list feature to create bulleted or numbered lists.
  • Check on your Ally Score - have you reached 85% or above?

At this point in your journey you should be noticing your Ally score improving! If you have gotten your score to an 85% or above and are stuck, reach out to the Digital Accessibility Team!

Resources

Contact Us!

Email us at DigitalAccessibility@utsa.edu

Credits:

Created with images by KBL Sungkid - "A flat vector illustration of a forest landscape with mountains in the background, minimalistic design, vector art, grey and green color palette" • Printdesign 123 - "Landscape mountains waterfall hiking to boating in a lush environment Ecotourism Customizable Flat Illustration"