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

A line drawing of a computer monitor depicting a person reading out loud text, meant to visually represent the use of a screen reader.

A circle split in half. Half is empty, and half has been filled in black but leaves a white line around it. This icon is meant to represent color contrast.

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A line drawing of a video with a box in the middle that says "CC", meant to represent closed captioning.

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 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 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

Phase 1: January 2026 through Spring Break

Phase 1 will tackle:

  1. 85 Sites identified as top priority, and;
  2. Support units with dedicated unit-Webmasters while they complete their own remediations

We will be making contact with all of the colleges, divisions, and units with Sites in Phase 1 through the end of the fall 2025 semester and into January, with the goal of beginning work on the first batch of Sites in January.  We will work with Sites in two batches, meaning about half will begin work in approximately mid-February.  Our goal is to complete the remediations on all of the Phase 1 sites by Spring Break.

What does “top priority” mean?  How did you decide that?

Our goal was to identify Sites that are at the intersection of high use by our community (internal and external) and most in need of assistance.

Our criterion included:

  • Student- or employee-facing
  • Large number of pages on Sites
  • High volume of Site traffic (consistently high number of visits per day)
  • External-facing Labs, Centers, Institutes (etc)
  • Low Silktide Accessibility scores

Phase 1 Sites

  • Alex. Brown Center For Entrepreneurship and Innovation, entrepreneurship.umbc.edu
  • College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, cahss.umbc.edu
  • Department of Africana Studies, africanastudies.umbc.edu
  • Department of American Studies, amst.umbc.edu
  • Department of Asian Studies, asianstudies.umbc.edu
  • Department of Economics, economics.umbc.edu
  • Department of Emergency and Disaster Health Systems, edhs.umbc.edu
  • Department of Education, education.umbc.edu
  • Department of English, english.umbc.edu
  • Department of Geography & Environmental Systems, ges.umbc.edu
  • Department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, gwst.umbc.edu
  • Department of History, history.umbc.edu
  • Department of Media & Communication Studies, mcs.umbc.edu
  • Department of Modern Languages, Linguistics & Intercultural Communication, mlli.umbc.edu
  • Department of Music, music.umbc.edu
  • Department of Political Science, politicalscience.umbc.edu
  • Department of Psychology, psychology.umbc.edu
  • Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health, saph.umbc.edu
  • Department of Theatre, theatre.umbc.edu
  • Department of Visual Arts, art.umbc.edu
  • Humanities Scholars Program, humanitiesscholars.umbc.edu
  • Intermedia and Digital Arts Master’s Program, imda.umbc.edu
  • Linehan Artist Scholars Program, linehan.umbc.edu
  • Language Literacy & Culture Doctoral Program, llc.umbc.edu
  • School of Public Policy, publicpolicy.umbc.edu
  • Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars, sondheim.umbc.edu
  • College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, cnms.umbc.edu
  • College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences Academic Advising, cnmsadvising.umbc.edu
  • Department of Biological Sciences, biology.umbc.edu
  • Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, chemistry.umbc.edu
  • Department of Marine Biotechnology, marinebiotechnology.umbc.edu
  • Department of Mathematics and Statistics, mathstat.umbc.edu
  • Department of Physics, physics.umbc.edu
  • Manil Suri, manilsuri.umbc.edu
  • Summer Undergraduate Research Fest, surf.umbc.edu
  • COEIT Undergraduate Student Services, advising.coeit.umbc.edu
  • Department of Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering, cbee.umbc.edu
  • College of Engineering and Information Technology, coeit.umbc.edu
  • Computing Minor, computingminor.umbc.edu
  • Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, csee.umbc.edu
  • Center for Women in Technology, cwit.umbc.edu
  • iHARP, iharp.umbc.edu
  • Department of Information Systems, informationsystems.umbc.edu
  • Department of Mechanical Engineering, me.umbc.edu
  • COEIT Shared Services Center, services-center.coeit.umbc.edu
Admin & Finance
  • Business Services, businesservices.umbc.edu
  • Contract & Grant Accounting, cga.umbc.edu
  • Financial Services, financialservices.umbc.edu
  • Human Resources & Strategic Talent Management, hr.umbc.edu
  • Retriever Card Center & Mail Services, campuscard.umbc.edu
  • Student Business Services, sbs.umbc.edu
Athletics
  • Recreation and Physical Education, recreation.umbc.edu
Center for Global Engagement (CGE)
  • Center for Global Engagement, cge.umbc.edu
  • Education Abroad, studyabroad.umbc.edu
  • English Language Institute, eli.umbc.edu
  • Office of International Students and Scholars, isss.umbc.edu
Division of Information Technology
  • Analytics, analytics.umbc.edu
  • REX, rex.umbc.edu
Division of Institutional Equity
  • Office of Equity and Civil Rights, ecr.umbc.edu
  • Student Disability Services, sds.umbc.edu
  • Women’s, Gender and Equity Center, womenscenter.umbc.edu
Division of Research and Creative Achievement
  • Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research (GESTAR) II, gestar2.umbc.edu
  • Institutional Research, Analysis and Decision Support, irads.umbc.edu
Division of Student Affairs
  • Career Center, careers.umbc.edu
  • Graduate Student Association, gsa.umbc.edu
  • Student Engagement and Belonging, campuslife.umbc.edu
  • Student Government Association, sga.umbc.edu
Division of Professional Studies
  • Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), tesol.umbc.edu
Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs
  • General Education, gened.umbc.edu
  • Honors College, honors.umbc.edu
  • McNair Scholars Program, mcnair.umbc.edu
Enrollment Management
  • Enrollment Management, em.umbc.edu
  • Office for Academic and Pre-Professional Advising, advising.umbc.edu
  • PreMedical & PreDental Advising Office, premed.umbc.edu
  • Registrar’s Office, registrar.umbc.edu
  • UMBC Orientation, orientation.umbc.edu
Erickson School of Aging
  • Erickson School of Aging, erickson.umbc.edu
Graduate School
  • Graduate School, gradschool.umbc.edu
Office of the Provost
  • Faculty Development Center, calt.umbc.edu
  • Faculty Diversity, facultyaffairs.umbc.edu
  • Office of the Provost, provost.umbc.edu
  • The George & Betsy Sherman Center, sherman.umbc.edu
Shared Governance
  • Undergraduate Council, ugc.umbc.edu
School of Social Work
  • School of Social Work, socialwork.umbc.edu

Phase 2

Phase 2 Sites will be announced in early 2026.  If you are concerned about accessibility and remediations on your website, or want to get a head start on remediations, more information and resources on how to do so are below:

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.