July digital accessibility task force update

A letter from Provost Jesse Perez Mendez and Vice President Thomas Lane.

Monday, July 7, 2025

Dear colleagues,

We write to you today with updates and progress gained as the university continues to navigate its digital accessibility journey. This summer, the digital accessibility task force and implementation working groups remain hard at work driving the necessary steps forward that will continue to set our faculty, staff and students up for success.

Policy review and development working group

  • This team has been drafting proposed updates to existing policy that concern digital accessibility and is identifying gaps where additional policy may be required. These recommendations will be shared with governance bodies in the fall.
  • This policy work will truly serve as the bedrock for our compliance moving toward the April 24, 2026 deadline and beyond. As we know, the technical standard will continue to evolve over time — but this institution will be prepared for success.

Onboarding of resources and remediation tools working group

  • We are excited to share that integrations and technical onboarding are now underway for two remediation tools:
  • These tools will offer highly integrated and in many cases, automated solutions to aid individuals in their remediation work this fall.
  • Pursuant to our implementation timeline, these tools will be made available to faculty and staff beginning in August 2025.
  • The resources and remediation tools team is also looking at additional tools and resources to support some specialized needs and bolster one-time remediation support. More will be shared on those efforts as they come to fruition.

Academic content/materials remediation training/support team

  • This team has built a draft training schedule and methodology that they will be sharing with academic college leadership for feedback and input this month.
  • Once that schedule is finalized, you can expect to learn more about the training workshops that they will stand up for fall 2025.

Web content/materials remediation training/support team

  • This team has supported the work of the Division of Communications and Marketing’s Web Services team by spotlighting the web accessibility meeting they held in May, which was quickly followed last month by the introduction of their web accessibility training module available to all Content Management System, or CMS, users.
  • CMS users have been asked to complete the training by September 26, 2025.
  • Additionally, work continues on remediating CMS system-level code and design to ensure our templates and components are fully compliant by fall 2025, leaving only user-generated content for individual remediation.
  • A next step for this team will be looking at staff trainings and resources to address compliance for other common digital mediums, including email marketing and social media.

Staffing and structures team

  • Finally, our staffing and structures team has taken a deep dive looking at how other universities structure their digital accessibility support and compliance with the goal of recommending a structure for permanent oversight and support.
  • The team is currently drafting its proposal for administrative review.

As you can tell, these are dedicated teams doing everything they can to make this lift as simplified and supported as possible for all faculty and staff. We thank them for their continued efforts and look forward to their continued progress and the official launch of our first set of remediation tools in fall 2025.

In the meantime, please remember that the Center for Academic Innovation is hosting a variety of digital accessibility trainings this summer to educate and prepare faculty and staff for the work to come.

Go 'Cats!

Jesse Perez Mendez smiles for a portrait.Jesse Perez Mendez
Provost and executive vice president

Thomas Lane smiles for a portrait.Thomas Lane
Vice president for academic success and student affairs and dean of students