Behind the Scenes: Digital Accessibility at SUNY Empire
Empire State University’s mission of meeting students where they are with flexible, affordable, high-quality education means making the experience of every student accessible from start to finish. One critical aspect for any university – especially an online university like SUNY Empire – is ensuring digital accessibility across a variety of platforms.
Join us for a behind the scenes look into digital accessibility at SUNY Empire with Digital Accessibility Coordinator Lindsay Infantino.
Q: What is digital accessibility?
A: Digital accessibility, or Electronic Information Technology Accessibility (EITA), involves making sure everyone can fully access digital information such as documents, websites, software, images, videos, and course materials. In particular, it means making sure disabled individuals can fully engage with any digital information, resource, or technology.
Q: Why is it important?
A: When something is inaccessible, there is real impact to disabled individuals. It may mean that someone cannot navigate a website, understand what is being said in a video, decipher an image, fill out a form, or read a document. When there are accessibility barriers in digital spaces, disabled people may miss out on important information and may not be able to fully participate in a course, activity, or other task. It is important to make things digitally accessible not only because it is a legal requirement, but because it is simply the right thing to do.
Q: How do we make things accessible?
A: I encourage people who are new to digital accessibility to start by learning about and developing good accessibility practices, with the understanding that it will take time to implement all of them. A good approach is to strive to make something more accessible rather than perfectly accessible right away, because some digital accessibility skills are easier to learn and commit to using than others.
Q: How does it help us serve a wider range of student needs?
A: Sometimes people think about digital accessibility only in terms of whether information is accessible to someone who is Blind or has low vision, or to someone who is Deaf or Hard of Hearing. But digital accessibility is also important for neurodivergent individuals, people with various learning disabilities, and people with certain physical or mobility disabilities. For example, making a document accessible so that it works with a screen reader may help someone who is Blind or has low vision, but it may also help someone who uses a screen reader to support their ADHD or Dyslexia. When we proactively make digital information accessible, it undoubtedly helps us reach more students.
Q: How do you collaborate with other departments across the university to ensure that digital accessibility standards are being met?
A: Digital Accessibility is part of Empire Online, so we closely collaborate with a team of instructional designers and instructional technologists to ensure courses are being developed and revised to not only meet required accessibility standards but also best practices. We also collaborate with Accessibility Resources and Services each term to conduct priority accessibility reviews of courses. In addition, we work closely with Procurement and ITS to ensure software and other digital tools are reviewed and/or tested for accessibility. We also collaborate with Communications, Student Support, CAARES, and many other departments. We are everywhere! Often Digital Accessibility is reaching out to departments, but increasingly departments are reaching out to us first to seek out accessibility resources or request training or review, which we love to see and always welcome.
Q: What does inclusive design mean to you, and how does it go beyond compliance?
A: Inclusive design, as it relates to accessibility, means designing with disabled individuals in mind. It means considering that disabled people are going to be part of your audience and making things as accessible as possible from the onset, rather than having to remediate a tool or resource after the fact when someone discloses disability. Compliance is important, but there is a difference between running through a checklist to make sure something complies with accessibility standards, vs. designing with care and consideration for your audience, which will include disabled people.
Q: What does the future of digital accessibility at SUNY Empire look like?
A: I’m noticing more departments reaching out to connect with our team and improve digital accessibility within their unit. This is wonderful and I hope to continue to see more of this. I think people at our university really want to further develop their digital accessibility skills. Our Digital Accessibility Liaison program, which we launched last year, has around 30 members, so it has been really well received both by professionals and instructors. We discuss different accessibility topics every month; sometimes the sessions are more theory based (like learning about disability models) and sometimes they are more tech based (such as learning remediation or basic accessibility testing). Throughout the next year, we want to expand our training to include digital accessibility office hours and more live training opportunities.
Learn more about EITA at Empire State University.