Advancing the State of IT Accessibility in Higher Education

Higher education institutions have legal and ethical responsibilities for ensuring their IT (including websites, multimedia, software, and hardware) is accessible to students and employees with disabilities. Accessibility can be addressed internally by adopting policies and developing in-house expertise. However, institutions are unable to create accessible learning environments unless vendors provide accessible products. California State University's Accessible Technology Initiative and vendor collaborations coordinated at the University of Illinois are two examples of efforts that have had positive outcomes. In this presentation, we will discuss these efforts as well as next steps identified by the EDUCAUSE IT Accessibility Constituent Group.