Part of Approaching a State Web Accessibility Mandate
Bradley Dilger, Associate Professor of English
As I said, I’m a professor of English at Western Illinois University. My broad research interests are technical communication and networked writing. In many ways, web accessibility is the combination of those.
I’ve contributed to Western’s web accessibility efforts in several ways. For three years, I’ve been a member of our Web Accessibility Committee, addressing accessibility through service. This academic year, I have a half time reassignment to focus on web accessibility, working through our office of Equal Opportunity and Access (EOA). In this regard, I collaborate often with Richard, Rebecca, and other developers and administrators at Western.
Your handout notes four core areas where I’ve focused my work, complementing the efforts of others. I’ll begin with my last bullet, which is the most important. No matter what the audience or regulatory exigence, I think it’s critical to approach accessibility as improvement, not achieving compliance. Why? I don’t want to be access.cop. I can’t. Someone might be able to, but I think all of us agree that’s counterproductive, given a law with little if any teeth and no funding. It’s better to ask someone to work with you to solve a common problem then to order them to fix their own problems. Also, we don’t want to give the impression that there’s a line to cross, and that unless you can cross that line, accessibility isn’t worth thinking about. Quite the opposite: everyone can do something; nearly every page can be better in some way. By the same token, it’s best to reinforce the notion of continual learning: as technology changes, our approach and method changes. Our goal for web accessibility, then, is improvement: more accessible, better designed, more compliant.
Secondly, as the handout notes, I’ve made connections between organizations. Richard and I collaborate often in this regard through our work on the web accessibility committee. In addition, I’ve sat down with directors of Disability Support Services, our faculty development unit (Center for Innovation in Teaching and Research, or CITR), the Helpdesk, EOA, and Distance Learning, interviewing these administrators and support staff to learn their knowledge of the Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Awareness Act (IITAA), what problems they have, what help they need, and what help they can provide to other constituencies. Here my position as a faculty member is critical: I present web accessibility as a research problem, and I come to them offering help. I have some scholarly expertise, so I’m credible. Both are critical trust-builders.
I try to use my position as a faculty member synergistically. I have made web accessibility the focus of a several courses, in group and individual experiential learning projects. I’ve included it in classes when relevant, which gives me a chance to talk about efforts at Western as part of course content. For example, in a technical communication class, I frequently turned to accessibility standards as examples when discussing audience, cross-referencing, and other writing strategies. In a class where we redesigned the First Year Experience web site, we spent a week discussing accessibility. In this manner, I’ve been able to more effectively use my time, and provided real-world examples for my students as well.
Additionally, I’ve made sure that my department recognizes that my technology committee service, and scholarly work like this presentation, fits our criteria for tenure and promotion. This didn’t take long, but was critical: if the work didn’t count, I’m not sure I’d be able to do it. In this regard, faculty need support from administrators and others who can write letters and vouch for the rigor of the work being done.
Third item: connecting with other faculty. Again, a large part of the issue is trust: because I’m a faculty member, when I approach a colleague, they are more likely to take me seriously. I’ve interviewed faculty across campus, from a variety of disciplines, to determine levels of expertise and awareness we’re dealing with at Western. In some cases, this has nothing to do with web accessibility: I’ve just asked questions about how they teach. In others, I’ve spoken with folks who have been told that they need to think about web accessibility and are panicking. Not surprisingly, I’ve found that as a general rule, awareness and practical skills are limited. I’ve also been able to identify areas like captioning multimedia or creating PDFs which are potential trouble spots—then work with Rebecca, Richard, and others to address them.
Why reach out to faculty? Several reasons. The first is obvious: teaching remains the primary mission of our institution, and as more course materials are delivered by the web—whether in online courses, to replace paper distribution, or as supplements—the need for web accessibility grows. The second reason emerged when I surveyed department chairs to find who maintained their web sites: 13 of our 40 academic departments web pages are maintained by faculty. So there’s a huge potential impact here, and an opportunity—as long as we shape our resources in a manner which fits that reality. That is, at Western we have recognized the line between faculty and developers is quite blurred. In fact, there’s no line, but considerable overlap. So I encourage those of you dealing with similar issues to do some ground-level survey work: find out who your audience is, and tailor your message and actions to them.
Fourth, based on my communications with campus units, I’ve developed a series of workshops, targeting faculty, which complement the work Rebecca is doing. In much the same way she has tried to get the word out and back that up with best practices, I’ve stayed involved with CITR and other units. For example, I’ve offered both short and in-depth workshops on web accessibility for online course materials which include some application-specific help. Working with CITR, I’ve also helped them target areas in application-specific training where they brush up against web accessibility. I’ve identified resources they can use, such as the Functional Accessibility Evaluator, in these courses. In concert with our idea of an ethos of improvement, these workshops have avoided proscription, focusing on best practices rather than long lists of “don’ts.” Frankly, there are enough of those on the web today.
I want to conclude by noting two goals for my future work which I think generalize. First, I want to find other faculty who are also interested in the web and can collaborate to learn about accessibility. I have some colleagues at other schools, but would like to find more at Western who can work with me in the same way Rebecca and her colleagues in CAIT help each other. Second, I want to involve students more often, both those who use assistive technology and in general. This will provide more opportunities to test the faculty perspective which I believe is so important for web accessibility.