USF Digital Accessibility Initiative FAQ

Nationally, about 20.5% of undergraduates report having a disability, along with 10.7% of graduate students. Among those students, the most commonly reported conditions are ADD and ADHD, learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, and blindness or low vision.

The number that matters most for teaching is a different one: only around 37% of students with disabilities tell their institution. Student Disability Services knows about some of your students. It does not know about all of them.

Building accessibly is how cura personalis reaches students we may never know needed it.

Sources: NCES (2019–20); ACHA-NCHA (2024).

In May 2024, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services updated Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 - which protects individuals with disabilities from disability-based discrimination - for the first time in nearly fifty years. The rule applies to any organization receiving HHS federal funding, which includes USF, and it sets specific technical standards for digital accessibility: WCAG 2.1 Levels A and AA, covering websites, mobile apps, course content, and kiosks.

The rule has been in effect since July 8, 2024. The non-discrimination duty applies today. May 11, 2027 is the deadline for meeting the technical standard, extended by a year from the original deadline of May 2026.

You are being asked to complete a single three-hour digital accessibility training by November 2, 2026 and to make your spring 2027 course content accessible by January 15, 2027.

Yes, all faculty (full-time and part-time) are required to complete digital accessibility training by Nov. 2, 2026, to ensure that USF’s website, mobile app, and course content are digitally accessible in accordance with U.S. Department of Health and Human Services regulations.

Librarians are also required to complete this training. Many have already gone through the training over the summer and have since begun remediation work on their online and course related materials.

If you are on leave through the deadline or not teaching in spring 2027, ask your school's point person rather than assuming you're exempt.

Both the synchronous and asynchronous versions of the training are provided by Digital Learning & Innovation (formerly ETS) and cover:

Faculty can register for synchronous training now on the Accessibility Intensive Program website. More dates will be added to the calendar as sessions fill. 

The Steering Committee, in partnership with the Provost, chose this date to align with other required training and also to ensure faculty have ample time to remediate their course materials by the January deadline.

We scheduled the internal timeline, rather than compressing all the work into the final weeks before the federal deadline goes into effect on May 11, 2027. Once faculty complete the training and remediation work, our team will use the spring semester to review materials and confirm we meet compliance standards before the May deadline. Starting in January gives us the lead time necessary for that review process, including time to flag any outstanding issues and work with faculty on corrections. USF is taking a sequence approach with training and remediation occurring in time with each upcoming semester's scheduled courses so as to not address all courses offered at once.

Through Workday, the same way other mandatory HR and ITS training is delivered. If you've completed one of those, the process will be familiar.

No. Attendance is tracked centrally and reported to your school, college, or the library. There is nothing for you to submit, and nothing to keep hold of in case you're asked for it later.

Yes. Similar to other required training, adjunct faculty may enter a maximum of three hours in USFWorks after completing the training in order to be compensated. You may contact your school's point person if you need further instructions.

No. The Universal Design for Learning session from the Working Group on Universal Access is focused on UDL. It doesn't cover the technical tool training you need to remediate existing content and build accessibly going forward, so it doesn't substitute for the three-hour session.

We encourage you to attend the UDL training, as well  if you can. It's a valuable training, and a good opportunity to connect with colleagues who care about UDL and accessibility and have been involved with this work for many years.

Anything digital students use to take part in your course: Canvas materials and eLearning modules; PDFs, Word documents, slide decks, and video; Google docs, sheets and presentations; live Zoom sessions and webinars; third-party content provided through USF contracts and licensing; and authenticated platforms such as student portals.

• Alternative text for images
• Captions and transcripts for multimedia
• Keyboard navigability
• Logical heading structures
• Color contrast and readability
• Accessible document formatting for PDFs and Word files

None of it is hard in isolation. The work is in the volume, which is why we have worked to provide additional support for those who need it most.

Some are. The exemptions cover archived web content, pre-existing documents that aren't being edited, third-party content outside USF's control, individualized password-protected documents, and pre-existing social media posts.

There are fewer exempt materials than you may think. A reading you scanned years ago and still assign is active course material, not an archive. If you think something specific qualifies, raise it rather than deciding on your own.

You are not expected to remediate course materials that are no longer in use. Only actively used course materials need to be remediated. New course materials should also be developed accessibly going forward.

We will be appointing a project manager who will design and assess how compliance with WCAG will be measured.  For the first steps of our work on courses, our focus is on community education in the necessary knowledge and skills (i.e., what is digital accessibility, how to build accessible course content, and how to address existing areas that require remediation to be accessible). UDOIT can support faculty in measuring Canvas compliance, including PDFs, Word docs, and PowerPoints, but doesn’t account for Google docs and video. A percentage is one of the things we're working to determine, benchmarking with other AJCUs.

Yes, the compliance start date of January 2027 is correct. We moved up USF’s internal timeline, rather than compressing all the work into the final weeks before the federal deadline goes into effect on May 11, 2027. Once faculty complete the training and remediation work, our team will use the spring semester to review materials and confirm we meet compliance standards before the May deadline. Starting in January gives us the lead time necessary for that review process, including time to flag any outstanding issues and work with faculty on corrections. USF is taking a sequence approach with training and remediation occurring in time with each upcoming semester's scheduled courses so as to not address all courses offered at once.

No. A Digital Accessibility Project Manager and a handful of support staff are being recruited specifically to support faculty remediation, with the project manager and a PDF remediation tool expected in place by mid-October.

Once the team of support staff is hired and trained, under the supervision of the Digital Accessibility Project Manager and in partnership with the school/college/library point person, the support staff  will be deployed to support remediation efforts.

Faculty should not plan to rely on these resources initially, but can reach out to their point person if they are feeling overwhelmed, or if their course is otherwise flagged in the auditing process. Support will be prioritized based on a number of factors including availability and complexity of remediation work.

PDFs are the hardest category to make accessible, especially scanned PDFs, which are images of text as far as a screen reader is concerned. Several PDF remediation products have been reviewed in the last two months by a team of USF staff who have experience in this area, with an approved tool expected in place by mid- to late-October. 

In the meantime, please use an accessible source format where you can – a structured Word file or Canvas page is likely to be more accessible than a remediated PDF. Check whether an accessible version already exists, since many publishers and library holdings have one. If a scanned PDF is central to your course, make sure to leave ample time to remediate it once a PDF remediation tool is available.

Not on their own. Panopto generates captions automatically, but automatic speech recognition mishandles technical vocabulary, names, accents, and crosstalk. Reviewing and correcting captions is part of the training, and part of the work.

This is a federal civil rights requirement, not an optional best practice. The Office for Civil Rights can open a compliance review without anyone filing a complaint, which is why this isn't a wait-and-see matter.

The goal right now is documented, good-faith progress, not day-one perfection. A school that can show an active plan, training participation, and remediation in motion is in a fundamentally different position from one that can't. What's being asked of you is to be part of that record: complete the training, start on your spring courses, and ask for help where you need it.

In addition to the required training, there are a number of existing resources available at USF. Most of this has been in place for a while.

We are also building additional layers of support for faculty whose courses require more significant remediation work.In addition to the DLI (formerly ETS), we are identifying a group of trained support staff with capacities who can provide hands-on help to faculty once faculty members have completed their training and made initial progress on remediating their own materials. Our goal is to ensure faculty aren't navigating this process alone, particularly for courses with a high volume of students or materials with more complex accessibility needs.

Every school has one. They sit on the Digital Accessibility Steering Committee, so they know how the initiative is being run, what is coming next, and how remediation support is being allocated in your school. Bring questions to them first.