February 28, 2025
Digital Accessibility task force update
Submitted by Jesse Perez Mendez and Thomas Lane
Dear K-State community,
In late December, we announced the formation of a Digital Accessibility task force to develop and build an implementation plan to lead us toward a fully compliant WCAG 2.1 AA universitywide digital accessibility strategy. Since the beginning of the new year, the task force has been hard at work:
- Assessing accessibility-related policies, both internally and among our peers.
- Identifying stakeholders and mapping out an initial communications strategy.
- Conducting a sampling audit of both academic and web content — and corresponding platforms and tools — to outline areas of deficiency and opportunity.
- Researching potential remediation tools and vendors and outlining the resources/budget required to support them.
All of these efforts are ultimately leading to the development of a documented implementation plan, which the task force is currently in the process of drafting as they are wrapping up their initial research and assessments. We are aiming to share this plan with the university community the week of March 24, just after spring break.
This forthcoming implementation plan will outline a phase of work where we will build a foundation for success, adapting policies through the appropriate governance process, selecting and onboarding necessary remediation tools and resources, and developing the trainings that will support this work. The plan will also detail when tools and trainings will become available to our community and when the bulk of our adaptive work must occur.
The task force is working quickly against an aggressive timeline, bearing in mind that our faculty and staff will require both the necessary tools and advance notice to prioritize this work accordingly. We thank them for their continued work, and we look forward to updating you as the implementation plan is completed.
As this work progresses, we invite you to continue to visit the digital accessibility initiative web page and reach out to the task force co-chairs, Ashley Bourne and Elliot Young, with any questions you have.
Go 'Cats!
Jesse Perez Mendez
Provost and executive vice president
Thomas Lane
Vice president for academic success and student affairs and dean of students