ADA Title II & Digital Accessibility

RaLynn McGuire & Vanessa Garza

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

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.

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.)
Websites (main and subsidiary sites) and web-based processes (e.g., student registration portals, online application forms, learning management system).
Mobile applications, vendor, and publisher content used by UTSA as part of programs and services.
Library content
Digital tools: Apps, kiosks, software, etc.

Set specific guidelines for web and digital accessibility (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA)
Shift from a reactive (accommodation model) approach to accessibility to a proactive approach
Set a specific deadline for compliance: April 2026 for UTSA

Increased Awareness: The Digital Accessibility Team will continue offering informational meetings on the new Title II accessibility requirements across departments and colleges.
Partner with Champions: Each department will identify accessibility advocates to collaborate with our team.
Share Updates: Our team will provide accessibility insights specific to each college and department.
Accessibility Training: Our team will continue to provide accessibility trainings on a regular basis.

We need accessibility advocates: Email us at DigitalAccessibility@utsa.edu if you would like to partner with us to represent your department. We need at least 1 person to be our Course Content representative and 1 person for Document Accessibility representative from each department.
Help us identify possible roadblocks: We will be seeking your feedback for what roadblocks you encounter and areas of research to improve course accessibility and UDL.
Expect Emails: We have broken this work in to different working groups across campus. The 4 you are likely to hear from soon are: Course Content Accessibility, Document Accessibility, Video Accessibility, and Web Accessibility.
Attend our trainings: We will continue to offer trainings on course and document accessibility. Please attend to learn how to start remediating you content.

Institutional data shows us accessibility issues found in all digital courses at UTSA.

52% out of 100%

College of Science as a whole has an overall Ally accessibility score of 52% for Spring 2025
Most Common Accessibility Issue: missing image descriptions
Second Most Common Accessibility Issue: color contrast issues

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

If I can't see it, can I hear it? If I can't hear it, can I see it?

American Chemical Society (ACS) Accessibility - This guide goes over general accessibility rules, but with science-based examples.
Poet Diagram Center: Image Description Guidelines - This guide goes into detail about how to describe different types of images STEM and non-STEM.
Poet Diagram Center: How to Describe - While the previous guide provides in-depth information on how to describe images, this page uses the same images and lets you practice and see the accessible alternative text with better formatting.
Writing Effective Alternative Text for Educational Content: Best Practices for Reducing Cognitive Load - While the video did not work for me, the PPT download is helpful to see how to write alternative text and examples of alternative text and long descriptions for complex images.
Penn State: Math and STEM Content - Penn State has great guidance on how to navigate making STEM content accessible.

Credits:

Created with an image by MIKITO - "星・雷・島・夜・風景・流れ星"