Dear Colleagues,
Wright State University takes great pride in its commitment to providing accessible educational opportunities for all students, including those with disabilities.
We are dedicated to meeting the established accessibility standards set forth by various governing bodies, including:
- The Americans with Disabilities Act
- The Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions
- The U.S. Department of Education
- The National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements
- The U.S. Department of Education / Office of Civil Rights
- The Ohio Department of Higher Education
To ensure we continue to uphold our commitment to all students, we need your participation. Our instructional design unit will offer compliance workshops this summer as part of two Course Design Institutes to equip you with the knowledge and skills to create inclusive learning experiences for all students. Another workshop will be offered in the fall before the start of the academic year, and we will share details about this workshop in August.
Some faculty may already be familiar with the accessibility checker tool in Brightspace D2L, accessed by an eye icon in the lower right corner of the HTML editor, which is used to create or edit webpage content. This tool helps determine if content authored in Brightspace Editor meets Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Section 508 accessibility standards. However, it only checks the in-course webpages, not other documents like PDFs or Word documents. Therefore, the workshops will review this tool and other crucial compliance information.
Course Design Institute workshops will be offered during both Summer A Term and Summer B Term on Fridays. Each workshop will include four in-person four-hour sessions. Register for the Summer A workshop or the Summer B workshop.
Your participation is essential to ensure all students benefit from their educational experiences at Wright State University. If you teach any course incorporating a digital resource this training is relevant to you. If you teach an online course this training especially applies to you. Finally, it is your responsibility to ensure the course is compliant with the various standards and requirements.
The Center for Faculty Excellence will email faculty with more details about the Course Design Institute. We encourage you to register for the Course Design Institute workshops, and we thank you for your commitment to ensuring accessibility and compliance in every course.
Best,
Amy Thompson, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs
Tom Webb
Associate Vice President of Accessibility
