Even before new federal accessibility standards took shape under the 2024 Department of Justice Title II ruling, the University of Washington’s School of Public Health was already working to build a culture of digital inclusion.
Through collaboration across IT, faculty leadership, and student support, the school has been quietly modeling what it means to make accessibility part of everyday practice—not just a compliance requirement.
In this conversation, we spoke with Chelsea Elkins (Access and Advocacy Coordinator), Kevin Rimlinger (Head of IT), and Liz Kirk (Associate Dean for Education) about how their efforts began, what’s worked, and what they’ve learned along the way.
- Chelsea, could you start by describing your role and how accessibility became part of your work?
- Chelsea: I’m the School of Public Health’s Access and Advocacy Coordinator, supporting students with disability-related needs and accessibility needs. That includes helping students navigate the Disability Resources for Students (DRS) accommodation process, but it also means working with staff and instructors. Early on, I started partnering with Kevin and Liz to promote digital accessibility for the staff and faculty side of the school.
- Liz, as a faculty leader, how have you been involved in this effort?
- Liz: I’m the Associate Dean for Education and a teaching professor in Food Systems, Nutrition, and Health. My role is really about communication and coordination and making sure the great work that Chelsea and Kevin are doing is visible to all faculty. I also help ensure we’re integrating accessibility goals into our teaching practices.
- Kevin, what’s been your focus from the IT perspective?
- Kevin: I came to the School of Public Health about two years ago to lead departmental IT teams toward more school level shared IT services. Accessibility was already part of the conversation before I arrived. Our web technician, Tim Knight, was deeply involved with accessibility evaluations—first with earlier tools and then with DubBot—to make sure our external websites met standards.
- We prioritized accessibility in two areas: first, our public-facing sites, because that’s what the world sees; and second, our digital course materials, which are created by people who aren’t accessibility experts. We wanted to help them feel supported and confident rather than overwhelmed.
- It sounds like the school was advancing digital accessibility well before the university’s initiative accelerated. When did your team begin formal training and outreach?
- Chelsea: That started in early 2023. So yes, before the DOJ ruling came out. Liz and I teamed up with our instructional TAs to create our first-ever digital accessibility workshop for instructors. From there, an instructor connected me with Mary-Colleen Jenkins from UW IT’s Accessible Technology Services, and that partnership really expanded what we were able to do.
We’ve offered 60- and 90-minute sessions on topics like universal design and creating accessible PDFs, and we also started doing what we call “mini-lessons,” which are 15-minute trainings on things like using headings, writing alt text, or creating accessible tables. The idea is to make learning manageable and flexible. And we’ve expanded from faculty to include staff and TAs, since everyone contributes to digital content.
- What impact have these sessions had?
- Liz: They’ve been really important. At the beginning of this academic year, Kevin and Chelsea went on what we call a “roadshow” visiting departmental faculty meetings to talk about accessibility. That outreach required buy-in from chairs and leadership, and it made a difference. It raised awareness and showed that accessibility is a shared priority, not an add-on.
- Accessibility as a shared priority: How have you gotten that message across?
- Kevin: We wanted to make it clear that accessibility isn’t just one person’s job. It’s a shared responsibility. We started messaging accessibility as part of effective communication and not just a compliance task. And we emphasized “progress over perfection” which we’ve heard again and again from Mary-Colleen. People tend to focus on the hardest problems first, like making complex formulas accessible. But we tell them: start with the easy wins, such as headings, alt text, link clarity—and build from there.
- Honestly, even if I didn’t care about accessibility, these practices make my job easier as a communicator. It’s hard to sell a message when you are advocating a process change that seems to add work, but it’s true: Accessibility just makes everything work better—for everyone.
- That theme—progress over perfection—seems powerful. How do you help people get started?
- Chelsea: We encourage small steps. It’s okay to start simple, and it’s okay if things aren’t perfect. That mindset has been key. It also helps that we have strong leadership support. Liz was the first to host our workshops, and Dean Hilary Godwin has been behind this from the start. Her support helped us get in front of department chairs and faculty. When leadership is visibly engaged, people understand that this work matters.
- How does this connect with the school’s public health mission?
- Liz: It’s completely aligned. We do this to help all our students. Accessibility ensures that everyone can fully participate and engage with the material. That’s part of who we are as a school—preparing students for the world by removing barriers to engagement.
- Kevin, you mentioned that accessibility makes things work better for everyone. Can you say more about that?
- Kevin: The first time I attended one of Chelsea’s sessions, I realized how simple many of these practices are. Using proper headings, meaningful link text, good contrast—those things make your communication clearer and your materials more portable.
- Chelsea, you mentioned universal design. How does that fit in with your goals?
- Chelsea: Universal Design is definitely part of what we’re moving toward. The technical aspects of digital accessibility are important, but we’re also thinking about teaching and pedagogy and how we can design courses so that common accommodations are already built in.
For example, if instructors find they’re giving the same accommodations every quarter, maybe there’s a way to design the course differently, so those supports are already there. It won’t cover everything, but it can go a long way toward inclusion.
Liz: That’s something we’ve been discussing at the school-wide curriculum committee, too. We’re not all the way there yet, but many instructors are moving in that direction by designing their courses, materials, and Canvas pages to be less challenging for everyone.
- As we move toward the 2026 digital accessibility deadline, what’s next for your school?
- Kevin: Keeping the message front and center. Our Canvas accessibility scores are improving; we’ve bumped our school average to just over 70 percent, but it’s a moving target. As new materials are added, the scores change. Accessibility isn’t a one-and-done thing; it’s ongoing. We’ll need to keep nudging and reminding people and continue making the message visible everywhere.
Chelsea: There are so many campus resources from the Digital Accessibility Initiative to Accessible Technology Services and our subject librarians. Within departments, there’s also a lot of expertise. It’s about connecting people to the right support.
Liz: For faculty, I’d say take accessibility into your normal lecture prep. Every time you update materials, that’s your chance to improve accessibility. Once it becomes part of the process, it stops feeling like extra work.
Learn More
Explore resources and training through UW’s Digital Accessibility portal and Accessible Technology Services.