Sites Digital Accessibility Project

What is Digital Accessibility?

Digital accessibility ensures that everyone — including people with disabilities — can access and use digital content and tools. Building accessibility into websites, documents, and course materials from the start helps everyone. It reduces the need for last-minute fixes, improves usability across the board, and supports a wide range of users — including those with temporary or situational challenges. Accessible design is smart design.

To learn more about digital accessibility, learn about UMBC’s commitment to digital accessibility, and to view a wealth of resources for students, faculty, and staff on how to make digital content accessible, head to the Office of Accessibility and Disability Services’ Digital Accessibility website

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The UMBC Sites Digital Accessibility Remediation Project

What is this project?

Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires that state and local governments, including public universities like UMBC, make their digital content accessible. Title II also establishes a technical standard to follow; UMBC is adopting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 2.1 AA, detailed here. These efforts will be led by a Digital Accessibility Steering Committee that will guide strategy, policy, and accountability.

This specific project is to remediate Sites@UMBC hosted on WordPress for accessibility.  We currently have just over 500 Sites!

Project Team

This team sits within DoIT, and reports to Erica D’Eramo, Director of Communications & Outreach for DoIT.

Headshot of Darcie Adams, a man with short brown curly hair and blue patterned glasses wearing a purple floral shirt.Darcie Adams

Project Lead

(he/him)

Headshot of Andrew Valiansky, a man with short brown hear wearing a white and blue checkered shirt.

Andrew Valiansky

Technical Lead

(he/him)

Headshot of Jacob Singleton, a person with medium-length brown hair in a purple shirt.

Jacob Singleton

Project Liaison

(they/them)

Headshot of Satwik Nijampudi, a man with short black hair wearing a white shirt.

Satwik Nijampudi

Project Liaison (GA)

(he/him)

UMBC Sites Remediation Project Overview

First Priority

The project team will be working primarily on UMBC Sites website, defined as 1) UMBC websites using the WordPress platform for hosting and editing that 2) are using one of the predefined templated UMBC themes (examples: sites.umbc.edu, doit.umbc.edu)

This includes any digital content or media that is hosted on or linked to from a UMBC Sites website that is also owned by UMBC (e.g., videos, audio files, PDFs, Google files, images, etc)

To understand how we will remediate these Sites, head to our Project Process.

Second Priority

Any other UMBC owned website (not including websites managed by UCM, see below) will be a secondary priority for the project team. This includes UMBC websites using hosting and editing platforms other than WordPress and websites not using the predefined templated UMBC themes.

Led by University Communications & Marketing (UCM)

UCM manages specific UMBC websites for UMBC. If you have questions about accessibility or remediations of a website managed by UCM, please reach out to UCM via this form.

Led by Student Affairs Marking & Communications Team (SACM)

Student Affairs is leading their own digital accessibility remediation for their UMBC Sites, with support and guidance from the project team. DOSA site admins please click here for additional instructions from the DOSA SACM team.

Led by Instructional Technology

Instructional Technology manages digital content or media on classroom/course-related and educational UMBC platforms, such as Blackboard, Panopto/Yuja, etc. If you have questions or concerns about accessibility or remediations of course content, please reach out to Instructional Technology via this form.

Other Digital Media

Have questions or concerns about the accessibility of another type of digital media (software, social media, other types of files)? Click here to report a digital accessibility problem with another platform.

Digital content or media that is linked to from a UMBC Website that the content/media itself is not owned by UMBC is not the responsibility of UMBC to remediate. Accessibility is the responsibility of the owner of the content.

Example: An academic department links to a video owned by a private company, showcasing a piece of technology co-developed by one of their faculty members.  The private company is responsible for ensuring the video is accessible.

Remediation Project Plan

Project phases have moved to their own page!  Head here to understand what websites are in what phases.

 

Additional Information & Resources

The primary concern for site admins ahead of working with our team on your website is to complete digital accessibility training. The timeline of when your training should be completed will depend on when we begin working with your site, however we encourage site admins who are able to complete theirs in advance to do so.  If you aren’t able to complete it in advance, we ask that you at minimum ensure you have a Silktide account established.

To request a Silktide account, go to umbc.edu/request and fill out the “Silktide Accessibility Scanning,” which has a drop-down option to request a new account.

If you previously had a Monsido account, you may already have a Silktide account. You can try logging in with your UMBC credentials at login.silktide.com. If you have any problems doing so, please follow the instructions above to troubleshoot logging in to your account.

The following trainings are required on Silktide:

  • Getting Started with Silktide (20 mins)

  • The Accessibility Module (10 mins)

  • Don’t Be Afraid Of… (15 mins)

  • What in the World is WCAG? (60 mins)

  • Introduction to Web Accessibility (40 mins)

These trainings are available once you have a Silktide account in Silktide’s Academy under Courses.

Silktide is the tool we are using to identify what accessibility remediations each Site needs, and is available for you to use on your own.

The Digital Accessibility site hosted by the Office of Disability and Accessibility services has a page dedicated to website accessibility, which is comprised of tools and recommendations specifically for UMBC Sites and Word Press.

Yes, we welcome site admins who are seeking to complete their own remediations ahead of our schedule!

If you have a question on how to fix or remediate a specific accessibility problem:
If you are seeking more general assistance or support:

Attend our weekly site admin accessibility chat, hosted online most weeks.  Head to our myUMBC page to get the Webex link or calendar event for the next one!

  • This is a drop-in/drop-out open forum where folks working on Sites accessibility remediations can ask questions or just hang out and be in good company with other people who know what “it keeps deleting the title of the expander when I try to insert a paragraph” means.
  • Sites staff will be present at every call to help answer questions and offer solutions.
If you’ve tried both of the above categories and have a still-unanswered question:

Fill out the UMBC Sites Support form to request assistance from Sites staff, and select “I need help remediating my Site for accessibility.”

  • Sites staff availability and capacity to support requests will vary, and we may not be able to assist you with your question or problem immediately.
  • Questions are not guaranteed to be answered in a first-come, first-serve order.  We will prioritize what we have capacity for.
  • In some cases, we may ask you to wait until we are able to put you and your Site through the remediation process.