Digital Accessibility

Digital Accessibility

This site will be continually updated as new guidelines and best practices are established. We will also use this page to track our progress in becoming compliant.

Ensuring our digital content is accessible to everyone is a top priority at Central. It is the responsibility of everyone who creates, posts, or distributes any digital content to ensure the information they share complies the university's standards for creating accessible content.

What is Happening

The Department of Justice issued a rule requiring universities and colleges that fall under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to follow specific requirements for web and mobile accessibility by April 24, 2026.

All faculty and staff who create digital content for websites, student services, or university communications must ensure compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA at minimum.

Guidelines for Accessibility

These guidelines help ensure the university’s digital and instructional materials are accessible to all users, including individuals with disabilities. They apply to faculty, staff, and anyone creating or sharing content on behalf of the university.

The university provides a variety of teaching, learning, and accessibility tools including Blackboard Ally (within Blackboard) and Siteimprove (for university web properties). When instructors or departments choose to use alternative electronic resources or third-party platforms, the content owner is responsible for ensuring  an accessible version is available that aligns with applicable federal and State of Connecticut accessibility requirements (generally interpreted through WCAG 2.1 AA or successor standards).

We also encourage members of the university community to periodically review digital content (courses, PDFs, newsletters, videos, web pages) and determine whether materials should be updated, remediated, or archived.

Core Accessibility Practices

  • Documents, Presentations, Etc

    Accessible documents are designed so that everyone, including people with disabilities, can easily understand and use them. This means incorporating features like proper headings, alternative text for images, logical reading order, sufficient color contrast, and keyboard navigation. Creating accessible documents ensures inclusivity and broadens your audience.

    Key Considerations

    • Use built-in heading styles (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) rather than manually formatting text to “look like” headings.
    • Ensure tables have simple structure and include headers where appropriate.
    • Avoid using color alone to convey meaning (e.g., “items in red are required”).
    • Use readable fonts, consistent spacing, and logical content order.
    • Export to documents as PDF whenever possible.

    Creating Compliant Documents 

  • PDFs

    • Prefer exporting PDFs from accessible source files (Word/PowerPoint) rather than scanning.
    • If scanning is unavoidable, ensure the PDF is:
      • OCR-processed (selectable/searchable text).
      • Properly tagged/structured when possible.
    • Avoid posting image-only PDFs

    Testing PDFs for Accessibility

  • Images, Charts, and Visuals

    • Provide alternative text (alt text) that conveys the purpose of the image.
    • For complex visuals (charts/graphs/infographics), include a short alt text plus a longer text description nearby (in the document, slide notes, or accompanying page).
    • Ensure any text embedded inside images is also available as real text somewhere else.

  • Video and Audio Content

    Accessible video and audio incorporates features like captions or transcripts for those who can't hear, audio descriptions for those who can't see, and keyboard navigation for all controls. Making your video accessible unlocks it for a wider audience and ensures everyone can experience your content fully.

    Key Considerations

    • Provide captions for video content.
      • For recorded sessions: Captions are required before distribution
      • For live sessions: Captions are created within a reasonable time frame after recording
    • Provide a transcript for audio-only materials and recommended for video when feasible.
    • For recorded meetings or lectures that will be shared beyond the live session, confirm captions/transcripts are available before distributing broadly.

  • Third-Party Tools and External Content

    • Public entities are liable for the accessibility of any third-party tools, platforms, or content they use to deliver services.
    • Third-party tools that must be accessible include parking payment apps, emergency alert systems, online forms, and social media plugins, etc.
    • Government agencies should incorporate accessibility requirements into vendor contracts and RFPs to ensure compliance from the start. Before adopting a tool (OER, publisher platform, web app, simulation), confirm there is an accessible experience (or an accessible alternative).
    • If a third-party tool cannot meet accessibility requirements, provide an equivalent accessible option for students/participants.

    • Exceptions

      Content posted by a third party on a public entity's platform, such as social media comments or forums, may not need to be accessible, but the platform itself must be.

  • Website Content

    All content on a university website must comply with the WCAG 2.1 Level AA standards. Your webmaster will ensure content on the main Central website complies with the standard and will assist with any questions regarding creating compliant web pages.

    Faculty and staff who have additional websites off of the main Central website are responsible for ensuring their site meets and maintains compliance with the federal mandate. Your webmaster can assist in the migration of a website into the Central platform and templates should that be necessary. 

Creating Compliant Content

Five Quick Questions to Check Compliance

Use these as a quick self-check before you publish or distribute content:

  1. Did I run an accessibility checker (e.g., Blackboard Ally, Microsoft, Adobe Acrobat Pro, etc.) and address the issues it identified?
  2. If the content includes video or audio, do I have captions and/or a transcript available (and is it easy to find)?
  3. Is my content readable without relying on color (and is the color contrast strong; e.g., dark text on a light background)?
  4. Do images, charts, and graphs include alt text or a text description that communicates the same information?
  5. Can someone navigate and understand this content using only a keyboard and/or a screen reader (logical headings, clear links, simple structure)?

Remediation Methods for Existing Documents/Content

Remediating accessibility issues does not always mean editing a document. To save time and resources, prioritize your efforts using the following strategy, ranging from elimination to direct editing:

  1. Remove

    Does the document need to exist online any longer? Older documents can be deleted or kept on department servers (Sharepoint) instead of public websites.

  2. Archive

    Is the document older and/or not being used any longer? Documents that need to be publicly accessible can remain so, as long as they meet the criteria outlined in the Archived Documents section below.

  3. Recreate/Re-export 

    Often, it is easiest to edit a working file (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc) and re-export as a PDF. Recreating a document from scratch with accessibility in mind is often easier than fixing a document that has issues.

  4. Convert (to html)

    Should the document actually be a webpage? Simple webpages are much easier to make compliant than PDF documents.

  5. Remediate

    If all other options are not possible, a document can be remediated with tools like Adobe Acrobat.