Updates to digital accessibility coming this spring

Gatepost Archives

By Dylan Pichnarcik

Associate Editor

Framingham State faculty and librarians are required under federal law to update all digitally accessible content to adhere to ADA laws by April 24, according to Steven Courchesne, Director of Academic Technology and Instructional Design. 

On April 24, 2025, the Department of Justice updated the requirements of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires “state and local governments to make sure that their services, programs, and activities are accessible to people with disabilities.” 

“Title II applies to all services, programs, or activities of state and local governments, from adoption services to zoning regulation. This includes the services, programs, and activities that state and local governments offer online and through mobile apps,” according to the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division website. 

The initiative to bring all Canvas, SharePoint, syllabi, and digitally accessed material into adherence with ADA laws was announced at the fall All University Meeting on Dec. 20 by Courchesne. 

Faculty members and departments on campus will have until April 24, 2026 to bring all digitally accessed material into compliance with ADA laws and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

The guidelines are requirements established by the Department of Justice to help web designers and individuals create digital content that adheres to ADA guidelines and is easily accessible, according to Courchesne.  

Courchesne said accessibility initiatives are not new to campus. “It's something that my office -  the Education Technology Office - has promoted and supported for many years when we provide training to faculty who teach online.”

Courchesne said his office has supported faculty in the past with creating digitally accessible courses through workshops that outline general accessibility, and accessibility within platforms such as Canvas and word processing software, and will continue to do so. 

He said accessibility updates are something the University has handled before, citing a 2018 complaint against the University’s website through the Massachusetts Office of Civil Rights. The complaint resulted in mitigation efforts by the University to correct the website and make it more accessible. The corrections were later made, and the complaint was closed by the Office of Civil Rights. 

“When it comes to the responsibility that faculty have and that staff have, because we're thinking about making not just our course content accessible, but also anything that's on the website or anything that's in our SharePoint site - really, accessibility is meant to serve all people who are participants or users of the different platforms. So, beneficiaries of our accessibility work can also be the staff and faculty who themselves have particular accessibility needs,” Courchesne said. 

According to Courchesne, required updates will include using proper document preparation tools, creating easily accessible video content, and updating images to include alt text. 

He said when the ADA Guidelines officially go into effect on April 24, all documents must be machine-readable, which allows accessibility tools to process a document and present it to an individual who is visually impaired in an effective format.  

Courchesne said practices when creating documents in Word, Google Docs, or another word processing software must be updated by faculty members to ensure all content is “machine readable.” 

This includes using proper document structure tools, including flagging headers and other content through the document editor toolbar. 

Courchesne said this will allow machine readers and assistive technology to properly read documents. Users will also have to ensure files are accepted by optical character recognition (OCR) software. 

OCR software formats a document to be machine-readable and allows people to highlight text within a document and provide accessibility software compatibility, according to Courchesne. 

The Henry Whittemore Library has the capability of converting files to meet OCR requirements, and Courchesne encourages members of the faculty and staff to utilize the service offered at the library. 

Abelard Newell, emerging technologies and digital services librarian at the Whittemore Library, said the library has completed this task in the past and is working to create policies for faculty members utilizing the library as a resource. 

He said he believes the April 24 deadline is a challenge, “but I think the thing that we're working on is prioritizing the people's needs first and making sure that our materials are going to be accessible first and foremost on where they're most needed. So things like websites, things like documents, although those are usually machine-readable, in cases where they aren't, we want to have policies for it.”

He added, “Our services have always been focused on trying to serve people despite the obvious limitations of the building, over which we don't have a lot of control. We've always been really focused on trying to address everybody's needs here, and we're glad that [the Education Technology Office] is pushing for the official policies and direction.” 

Courchesne said a way to check if a file is formatted correctly for OCR is to see if text within a document is highlightable. If it is not, the document cannot be read by assistive technology. 

He said many files are already readable by OCR software; however, older PDFs, primary sources, and any handwritten materials will need to be updated.

Documents will also need to be coded properly by using the official document heading tabs within a word processing software toolbar, he added. 

Courchesne said for a person who is not visually impaired, navigating a document, they “can see the headings, and you can look down and say, ‘OK, this is the section of the document that's relevant to whatever my purpose is right now.” 

However, when it comes to someone who is visually impaired, “They can't use visual means of navigation to be able to interpret or find, and decide what they want to focus on,” Courchesne said.  

He added, “The alternative, if that doesn't happen, is that the person needs to simply sit and listen to the entire thing read to them from beginning to end. So it makes it very tedious for an individual who doesn't have sight to be able to navigate a document that has not been coded for headings.” 

Courchesne said any content, including photographs and video, will also need to be updated to include captioning. 

For video content, he said this can be done through the creation of a transcription, but “the better way is to actually include the closed captions, because then, you're connecting the content of the video that's visual to what is being said in an audio sense.” 

He said this would also include describing any visual elements of a video. 

When watching a video, Courchesne said any imagery associated with the audio elements' descriptions should be included to “reinforce and enhance what they're saying out loud. Then, you want the text that you capture for the person who can't hear to be connected to the visuals as well.”

He also encouraged limiting unnecessary visual elements within a document to make it easier for those who use assistive technology to navigate it. 

“Often, we can really just discard those images in terms of making them accessible by marking them as decorative so that they can skip over things that are not important,” he said. 

Photography Professor Robert Alter said providing captioning for images is going to be difficult for the courses he teaches, including the practice of photography and the history of photography. 

Alter said he is still unsure of how to provide captioning for images within his classes. 

He said a major part of the practice of photography is individual interpretation of photographs, and he does not think it's possible to provide effective captioning.  

“The whole reason that we take photographs is because it's different from writing something in words, right? If you could describe a photograph, you wouldn't need to make it. So how can I do that? I don't know. I can say, ‘Here's a picture of a streetcar in New Orleans with people sitting and looking out the window,’ but that doesn't convey anything about the emotional content of that photograph,” Alter said. 

“I think there's a major question there about how you convey something that can't be conveyed in words,” he added. 

Like Alter, Biochemistry, Chemistry, and Food Science Department Chair Sheli Waetzig said a major part of her instruction is conducted through specialized software and images that cannot easily be updated. 

She said updating all digitally accessed material is going to be a difficult task for faculty members to undertake before the April 24 deadline. 

She said the problem with updating accessibility in the STEM field “is that you are running into specialized software, which can do things like show chemical or mathematical equations. There are [scientific] structures that need to be drawn. … And so the difficulty there is that not all these hyper-specific programs have those accessibility features built in. So what then are we going to use in order to make things accessible?” she asked. 

Waetzig also questioned what is appropriate in terms of captioning images and how she is expected to go about creating effective captions without providing students with answers to questions surrounding the images. 

Waetzig said she has made accommodations for specific students in the past, but is unsure of how to universally implement accessibility changes in all of her courses. 

Additionally, Waetzig said the American Chemical Society has held meetings nationally to discuss combating this issue and providing resources to educators in the field. 

Waetzig said she “would be surprised” if most faculty on campus believed they had a reasonable amount of time to complete digital accessibility updates prior to the deadline. 

Accessibility requirements are also being updated by Christian Steinmetz, marketing manager for the Office of Marketing & Communications. 

He said he has already been working to ensure the official social media accounts for the University, including @framinghamstateu, are digitally accessible for all users.  

“My understanding is that the new law doesn't necessarily apply to social media. That said, our social media platforms are still a representation of the University, and they are aligned with our mission and values to make sure that our content is accessible for everybody,” Steinmetz said. 

He said he also plans to form a social media committee in the spring with representatives from all University accounts to discuss updating channels to be digitally accessible. 

Steinmetz said his team will continue to work on providing captions for all video content and images posted, but they “would not be able to go back and make all of the old content on social media accessible. 

“That’s unsustainable with such a huge backlog of content,” he added.

In the spring semester, the Massachusetts State College Association entered into impact bargaining with the nine state universities’ Council of Presidents, according to MSCA Framingham Chapter President Benjamin Alberti, professor of anthropology. 

According to Alberti, impact bargaining is a negotiation between university administrators and the faculty union to discuss the consequences and difficulties that come from a management decision. 

Alberti said the updated requirements are not explicitly outlined as a requirement for faculty to undertake in the union's contract. 

The MSCA contract outlines a requirement of a 37.5-hour work week throughout the semester.  

“Obviously, the institution wants to get it done. The reason the faculty were extremely stressed out, many of them, when this came out, was because it was presented to them, or they interpreted how it was presented to them by Steve and the [ETO] Office and by the Provost and so forth, as something you must do. ‘This is what we must do by the deadline,’ Alberti said. 

He added, “The faculty’s overwhelming response has been shock and worry. And the shock and the worry is because of the amount of work that will be required to meet the new requirements of faculty, especially if everything is required of us by April 24th.”

Alberti said the MSCA insisted on a bargaining process to determine which part of the faculty’s professional roles they would not be doing in order to work on updating their content to be accessible. 

He said the deadline is “not the institution's fault.” 

But, “We have to make sure that the way that it gets done is fair and does not put an undue burden on faculty. … The impact bargaining will be aiming toward making sure that work will be done there, which means we're not doing work elsewhere, and will not negatively impact us as we go forward.” 

Alberti said he believes communication between the faculty and the administration should have been clearer and would have lessened the panic faculty felt when it was originally announced. 

“Rather than just sticking to the hard line that this must get done, if they can recognize the reality that this won't get done, and that if they stick to that hard deadline, the faculty will just not upload materials to Canvas other than their syllabus. Students are going to suffer terribly because they won't have the materials accessible to them - to anyone -  not just people who need the additional accessibility options, which I agree with. And we'll have an awful situation,” he said. 

Additionally, faculty members and librarians are not required to complete any training on compliance. Nor are they required to complete any updates to instructional or library materials. 

“We can participate in professional development related to accessibility, and we can begin updating our digital materials. We can serve on planning committees and so forth. So, the key point is that we can't be required to do those things, but we can certainly do them in our own capacities as faculty and librarians, but it has to be voluntary while bargaining is underway,” he said. 

Provost Kristen Porter-Utley said the April 24 deadline is “daunting.” However, the workload of faculty members will be on a case-by-case basis, as different courses will require different levels of updating. 

She said faculty should be working to slowly make progress toward the goal before the deadline, which will make the workload significantly less. 

“If every single person did something associated with their professional workspace or with some aspect of their courses, if everybody did that, it would show significant progress for the institution, right? And the idea is, ‘Yes, this is the law.’ They're saying we must comply, but that's not the reason we should be doing this. … The main reason why we need to do this is for our students. And it's for students who need the materials in an accessible format and those who don't, but who would benefit,” she said. 

She said until the April 24 deadline, faculty members should be making an effort to update their digital materials, and the April deadline is a target for being fully in compliance. 

After that deadline, a student is within their rights to report the University to the Office of Civil Rights if something is not digitally accessible. 

She said if a complaint is filed against the University, internally, Administrators will work to correct the inaccessible material for the student. 

“We're serious about it. People are working to become more accessible. And when they find a flaw, they bring it to our attention and allow us to fix it,” she said. 

Dean of Student Success LaDonna Bridges said she and her staff in the Center for Academic Success and Achievement (CASA) work with students who identify themselves as needing accessibility options within their courses. 

She said CASA provides students who ask for it with disability services and do not adhere to the April 24 deadline. “We have to do it right away - right away - there is no future deadline,” Bridges said. 

She added, “We have to ensure that all [content] gets converted into a readable format. But then the spirit of the law is that everything that you're putting out there should be accessible.” 

Bridges said she believes faculty members are finding it difficult to “retrofit” previously made content. A “good faith effort” of creating new content that is accessible, along with updating major documents like syllabi, will show the efforts of the University as a whole. 

She added, “If you're doing a new syllabus, just make sure it's accessible, right? If you're updating your syllabus, make sure that it's accessible. There are reading materials that are going to take a little bit more effort. If a faculty member uses something that they pulled from their graduate education years ago, we would probably not be able to clean up that image. 

“I think that we have to remember that with this kind of work, it's the intention that you have to meet this. There is no way everything in our learning management system is going to be accessible, but you have to demonstrate that you hear what they're saying, that you do abide by the spirit of the law, and you are trying to keep moving things along, to be more accessible,” Bridges said.