Dear Colleagues,
My spring quarter update focuses on digital accessibility. If you have been monitoring your inbox, you have undoubtedly received the weekly newsletters informing us about the many ways we can improve the accessibility of the digital content we produce. This is not only good for our students, colleagues, and community members, but it is also required by federal law and UC policy.
Our collective work to implement these changes to our digital interaction is a long-term project – a marathon, not a sprint. It’s important that each of us can identify progress in our own areas of responsibility that collectively demonstrate UCR’s institutional commitment to meeting these new standards.
I recently received a memo from the Academic Senate UCR UC Adaptation to Disruption (UCR-UCAD) committee asking several questions about how we are educating the campus about the new digital accessibility requirements and supporting faculty and staff who must do this work. I asked the Digital Accessibility Advisory Committee to respond to these questions. Rather than sending their responses only to UCR-UCAD, I am sharing the questions (paraphrased) and responses with the campus for everyone’s benefit.
What are the key issues?
The key issues were summarized in the January 29, 2026, campus message from Chancellor Hu and me. The federal government has established new requirements to ensure that digital content produced by public agencies is sufficiently accessible to all potential users. The UC system has responded by revising its digital accessibility policy. These accessibility goals also align with the University’s commitment to inclusivity.
Because digital content is produced and managed broadly across the university, almost all of us at UCR will need to change our work habits. The January 29 message goes into additional detail, including a section for instructors who use Canvas.
What supportive resources are being provided, especially for instructors?
Information, resources, and access to training is available on the Digital Accessibility website. Everyone should review the sections titled “Does This Apply to Me?” and “Where Do I Start?”, which includes a link to a training module titled “Accessibility for Everyone.” Further down the page, under “What Do I Need To Do?”, resources are organized by task: for example, writing and formatting, audio and video, websites, and courses. Some important resources include:
● SiteImprove: helps website managers identify and resolve accessibility issues with their webpages.
● UDOIT: integrated with Canvas, helps instructors identify and resolve accessibility issues with their Canvas courses.
● Accessibility Guidance for Faculty: provided by XCITE, includes links to workshops and trainings, FAQs, and other resources for specific use cases.
● Course remediation support: funded by the Provost’s Office and provided by XCITE, this service prioritizes upcoming courses but will be offered for an entire year.
● UCR website archive: many UCR websites have been archived by ITS, making it easier for site owners to delete content instead of remediating it (with the option to retrieve it from the archive and remediate later, if needed).
● Slack channel: ITS has organized a “digital accessibility community of practice” on Slack that now includes 90+ members to help answer questions. New members are welcome to join.
● Department meetings: members from the Advisory Committee have contacted all department chairs and offered to attend faculty meetings to provide an overview of the digital accessibility requirements and answer questions.
● Webmaster & content owner meetings: hosted by ITS, these recurring sessions provide a collaborative space for organizational liaisons and other stakeholders. Topics have included: digital accessibility strategy and policy, performance tracking, deep dives into new tools, technical support channels, available training, and critical program updates.
What is the timeframe for compliance? How do I prioritize?
You may hear that the Department of Justice earlier this week extended its compliance deadline for regulations under the ADA (pushing it back a year to April 26, 2027). However, public institutions like UCR are also subject to regulation under a different law (Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act) which has a compliance deadline of May 11, 2026. Though the timelines vary for different aspects of federal law, UCR continues to focus on remediation and compliance for Spring 2026 (May 11, 2026).
Remediation efforts should be prioritized based on these criteria:
● Public-facing and/or high traffic content
● Content required to access UC services (including instruction and research)
● Content with known users with disabilities
● Content including critical features with known accessibility defects
● Content provided by a third party without an accessibility standard in the contract
● Content undergoing material alteration
Is there a central body that can receive and answer questions?
The Digital Accessibility Advisory Committee includes faculty members nominated by the Academic Senate, the ADA/504 Coordinator, and representatives from Legal Affairs, Procurement, SDRC, Disability Management, Communications, and XCITE. Questions may be emailed to the members of the Advisory Committee or submitted to the Slack channel.
How can faculty receive guidance on particularly challenging issues, including the use of images, graphs, and other visual materials in STEM fields? What if the guidance requires input from different types of experts?
Questions may be submitted to the Advisory Committee or the Slack Channel. However, UCR is just one of many universities striving to comply with the new regulations and best practices are still being developed. Questions that are specific to an academic discipline may be best answered by members of that discipline, such as leaders of an affiliated professional association.
How are the SDRC and University Library involved?
The SDRC director is a member of the Digital Accessibility Advisory Committee. The Library has established its own accessibility team that is focusing on the Library’s web resources and engaging with the California Digital Library. The team hosted a town hall meeting and the team chair joined the Slack channel to help answer questions. The Library is also collaborating with SDRC, ITS, and XCITE to develop best practices and assisting faculty with identifying accessible versions of journals and other course content.
My thanks to the Advisory Committee for all their work and to everyone at UCR for all your work to help make our campus more accessible. If you have not yet reviewed the resources and trainings or read the weekly newsletters, I recommend that you review them on the announcements page of the accessibility website and begin putting these practices to work.