Recommendations for May 2025
Prepared by:
- Shannon Garcia, Program Manager, Disability Resources for Students, Student Life
- Marcus Hirsch, Director, Academic Strategy & Affairs Information Services
- Priya Keefe, Project Management & Business Operations Analyst, Academic Strategy & Affairs Information Services
- Marisa Nickle, Senior Director, Strategy & Academic Initiatives, Academic Strategy & Affairs
- Adiam Tesfay, Director, Disability Resources for Students, Student Life
Table of Contents
- Background
- Current State of DRS
- Approaches to Focusing DRS’s Efforts in the Future
Background
Recently, the Department of Justice (DOJ) issued new standards that require the University’s web content, including academic course content, to be accessible by April 24, 2026. To address this need, the University created a task force and multiple action teams. The Course Content Accessibility Action Team met to identify and prioritize key areas. One of those areas is the processes of Disability Resources for Students (DRS).
An individual and retroactive approach will not allow UW to comply with the law. We know the future approach will need to be multi-pronged and minimize the burden on faculty. The DOJ’s ruling requires enterprise-wide and local unit efforts to ensure content complies with the technical standards. This proactive approach means UW will:
- Create course content that is accessible to all students from the first day of class.
- Remediate inaccessible existing course content that will be used in courses after April 24, 2026.
- Archive inaccessible course content that will not be used after April 24, 2026.
The legal obligation in higher education is that all students have equal access to education. Disability Resources for Students (DRS) is a unit within the Division of Student Life at the University of Washington. DRS is dedicated to ensuring access and inclusion for all students with disabilities on all three campuses enrolled in undergraduate, graduate, professional, evening degree and access programs. DRS serves over 7,000 students with either temporary or permanent physical, health, learning, sensory, or psychological disabilities. Among DRS’s core functions are:
- Partner with students with disabilities to establish services for their access and inclusion on campus.
- Manage, coordinate, implement and evaluate accommodation/service programs.
- Serve as a resource to students/faculty/staff to ensure effective provision of services.
- Provide educational and resource support to the campus community to increase awareness regarding how to create and sustain access and inclusion for students with disabilities in all aspects of the university.
- Provide resource and referral information to the campus community and prospective student and their families.
While DRS cannot be responsible for the overall accessibility of course content because they do not create the curriculum and are not the subject matter experts, DRS staff are the experts in the accessibility of various media. The function of DRS is to remove accessibility barriers for specific students.
Scope of this Report
This report conveys options for meeting the mandate from the Department of Justice (DOJ) by focusing the accessibility efforts of the Accessible Text & Technology (ATT) team of DRS. The ATT team provides alternate format accommodations for students with conditions that affect their ability to access information in standard print materials. Common alternate formats include large print, braille, and electronic documents.
This report does not address workflows for accommodations for multimedia recordings or academic testing.
Current State of DRS
The University’s current approach to digital accessibility in courses includes both UW-wide proactive approaches to encouraging faculty to improve accessibility and individual, retroactive approaches to remediation. Some proactive remediations are initiated by faculty and performed by UW-IT Accessible Technology Services (ATS). In contrast, Disability Resources for Students (DRS) works retroactively to provide file remediation for individual students with disabilities who initiate and request accommodations.
Current Data
- Approximately 50% of the students DRS serves are transfer students and 50% are first year students.
- DRS serves 10% of the undergrad student population and 9% of the graduate student population.
- Four to five percent (4–5%) of enrolled UW students need accommodations. The Tacoma campus has the highest percentage of students needing accommodation.
- Between 2018 and 2024, there was a 52% increase of DRS notifications to individual faculty members.
- Approximately 94% of alternate format accommodation requests with DRS are for print disabilities other than blind-low vision (e.g., dyslexia, traumatic brain injury, ADHD, etc.)
- Approximately 5% of alternate format accommodation requests with DRS are for visual conditions.
- There is also an emerging category of student accommodation for reduced screen time. These comprise approximately 2% of the total requests, as of spring of 2025. These students currently do not qualify for help via other organizations.
- Each quarter, the Accessible Text & Technology (ATT) team of DRS typically processes approximately 1,500 requests for 1,200 separate courses, on behalf of 400 students with print disabilities. Specifically, during the 2023–2024 academic year, ATT served 521 students requiring accessible course materials and processed over 4,500 accommodation requests across 3,450 courses.
- During the 2023–2024 academic year, DRS charged the budget $2 million for accommodation services they provided (not specific to any one type of file or accommodation). Of the $2 million charged, $966,339 was used to provide assistive technology and alternate format accommodations to students with visual and print-related disabilities.
- ATT supports across all three campuses and employs one full time employee (FTE) and approximately 25 to 40 part-time workers on the Seattle campus. These positions are filled by students and non-students and are funded by an operations budget and an accommodations budget.
- ATT reaches out to instructors with a survey that will help them understand course assignments (and, therefore, the number and type of files that might need remediation). In the Winter 2025 survey, approximately 41% of instructors responded (472 responses to 1,167 courses).
Current Resources and Workflows
Textbook Adoption Process via UW Bookstore (Seattle)
A summary of the workflow, from the UW Bookstore’s perspective, follows.
- Every quarter, the UW Bookstore sends a request to instructors to submit their course materials.
- Instructors submit text information to the bookstore online (via Verba Collect), in person, over the phone, or by email.
- Then the UW Bookstore adds the textbook adoptions to their enterprise resource ERP system, NetSuite, and it is automatically transferred to the UW time schedule and the UW Bookstore’s website.
- a. Book adoption information is shown on the time schedule beginning ten days before the adoption deadline, and is automatically updated as more adoptions are received from instructors.
- After students register for classes, they can review course information and required textbooks in the MyUW tool.
- Every week, the UW Bookstore sends the textbook adoption list to UW librarians, DRS leadership, and ATT leadership.
Note: UW currently has a pilot of the Day One Access program for digital materials (texts). This program allows students to access digital materials from the first day of class, at a cost that is 50–80% less than printed textbooks.
Course Accommodation Process via DRS
A summary of the workflow, from ATT’s perspective, follows. Additionally, for a visual representation of the workflow and pain points, please request that from Priya Keefe at asahelp@uw.edu.
- DRS approves the student for accessible materials and meets with the student for orientation and assessment.
- For accommodations to be active, students have to opt-in for accommodations for each class, each quarter. Accommodations are not retroactive.
- Students determine which readings need remediation and submit them through the MyDRS portal.
- If needed, DRS checks the time schedule / UW Bookstore for information on required readings that will help them locate the materials.
- a. If needed, DRS retrieves content via course Canvas sites.
- b. DRS may need to partner with students and instructional personnel to obtain missing information (e.g., ATT sends a survey to instructors).
- c. Custom versions of textbooks may require additional communication.
- DRS attempts to locate a pre-existing accessible version of required readings by checking repositories and/or asking publishers for an electronic version.
- DRS remediates the materials in-house if no pre-existing accessible version is found, or if existing versions present access barriers for the specific student in question.
- Before distributing materials, DRS reviews and proofreads them for quality.
- a. If needed, DRS carries out additional steps for Braille and tactile graphics requests.
- 8. Finally, DRS notifies the student that converted materials are ready for download.
- a. Note: DRS may distribute the book in its entirety or in sections, depending on the timeliness of receiving book information.
Current Issues
Description of Issues
According to ATT, the most common challenges (in order of frequency) are:
- Skeleton Crew – ATT operates on a skeleton crew. A hiring freeze would decimate DRS’s ability to provide alternate format accommodations for students.
- Incomplete or Missing Bookstore Information – Lack of book details or insufficient information in the accommodation request, causing delays in book sourcing.
- Delayed Communication from Instructors – Timely responses from instructors are sometimes unavailable, which may slow down the accommodation process.
- Challenges in Book Sourcing and Availability – When neither the e-version nor a physical copy is readily available, additional search efforts are required. Missing or insufficient textbook details further hinder sourcing across various platforms, including UW Libraries (physical and digital), VitalSource, BookShare, Kindle, RedShelf, and bookstores.
- a. Example: Uncited scans uploaded to Canvas (prevents source verification and fair use assessment, requiring extensive staff time to locate accessible versions)
- Source is a Poor-Quality Scan – Scans provided by instructors are incomplete (missing pages) or of low quality, requiring additional remediation and quality control work.
- a. Example: Many of the larger and more difficult PDFs to remediate are large-scale scans of course texts. Instructors provide these to students with the intention of saving them money on textbooks; however, low-quality scans can be difficult for anyone to read.
- Accessibility Issues in Digital Books – Files from publishers or alternative sources often have residual access controls or other accessibility barriers. Both require remediation and quality checks, extending processing time before distribution to students.
- Quality Control Backlog – A backlog in the quality control process delays book processing and distribution to students.
Current Data on the Issues
- 1It can take between one and five weeks to receive and implement accommodations with DRS (sometimes more). This is based on a number of potential factors, including but not limited to: the nature of a student’s academic accommodation requests, the availability of appropriate supporting documentation, and scheduling appointments during peak periods of a quarter.
- When DRS processes student requests each quarter, approximately 60% of courses are missing information on required readings in the current system of record (the time schedule); this significantly delays ATT’s ability to source textbooks and other readings.
- Possible entries for textbook information in the time schedule include:
- a. The title of the textbook and name of author (but not necessarily the edition)
- b. “Review instructor for additional materials”
- c. “Check Canvas for additional materials”
- d. “eBooks available through UW Libraries – review instructor for more information”
- e. “Course pack required – review instructor for more information”
- f. “Course pack to be purchased @ UBS – check back later”
- The best-case process flow where everything goes as expected, leading to a successful outcome (“happy path”) is estimated to be only 20–30% of ATT’s total workload.
- The time-consuming nature of both determining which readings are assigned (title, author, publisher, date) and obtaining editable copies of those readings requires ATT to begin processing accommodation requests four to five weeks before the first day of class (typically around week nine of the previous quarter).
- Broadly stated, ebooks are more accessible than physical books.
- In April of 2024, the DRS Advisory Council agreed that improving DRS staffing is a near-term priority; staffing needs include support, addressing a backlog of inaccessible content, and improving the ratio of staff to students.
Analysis of Issues
In the current state, ATT begins preparing to deliver accessible content to students six weeks before the quarter begins. This timing is influenced by the parts of the remediation process that are currently onerous for ATT staff. However, information on assigned readings is often not available to DRS or students six weeks before the quarter begins. As a result, students may register for courses without understanding the associated textbook costs. This also means that students typically make accommodation requests of DRS without knowledge of course content, resulting in some erroneous requests that DRS staff have to spend time researching.
When textbook information is received early from instructors, DRS can notify students of accessible retail options before they purchase their texts – eliminating the need for remediation. Even when this isn’t possible, timely submission of course material information greatly improves ATT’s ability to remediate these files in a timely manner for students with accommodation requests. Clarifying that these course content deadlines are policy, not guidelines, would enable the DRS team to source or create accessible files in advance, reducing the risk of delayed or unmet accommodations. Another objective in collecting course adoption information is to allow students to review textbook costs associated with a course before the quarter begins, so they can plan and budget accordingly, as required by the textbook provision of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA).
Currently, instructors may add required textbooks to a syllabus or email an Amazon link directly to the class without informing the UW Bookstore about the required texts. Instructors may bypass the UW Bookstore in a genuine attempt to save students money on books. While submitting book adoptions to the bookstore does not require students to purchase from the bookstore, it does enable the UW Bookstore to purchase inventory for those students who pay for texts with their scholarship funds. Without the information on which texts to order, the bookstore has to spend time tracking that information down and ordering the textbooks; this delay may mean students do not receive their texts until the second week of classes or later.
The cost of textbooks drives student behavior and, consequently, instructor behavior. Instructors and academic units need to better understand the reasons information on required readings is needed in the system that is available to bookstores and students. Misunderstandings about the process can lead to a disconnect. For example, well-meaning instructors may select a response (e.g., “Check Canvas for additional materials”) to indicate that no textbook purchase is required. This is insufficient, however, to indicate to DRS whether there are required readings that may need remediation if students have accommodations. Issues of perception and decentralization result in units or organizations being siloed and working out their own ways of dealing with pain points in the process of acquiring course content and making it accessible. There is a need for a UW strategy on how to approach sharing information on assigned course content between the academic departments, bookstores, DRS, and librarians.
Currently, instructors rely on various faculty notification letters from DRS to let them know which classes will need accessible digital materials. The ATT team sends a letter within a few days after the student enters their accessible materials requests in the MyDRS portal. A couple weeks before instruction begins, the main DRS office sends each instructor a letter with details about each accommodation a student has activated. Nevertheless, instructors have indicated that the letters are not received with enough time for them to understand the students’ needs and their effects on course content.
Some of ATT’s current processes are an outgrowth of dysfunction in other areas of the workflow, including required readings missing from the time schedule, unattributed readings in Canvas courses, and large, poor-quality scanned PDFs. One such practice is the survey ATT sends to instructors seeking additional information on required readings. When instructors complete the survey in a timely manner, it makes remediation work easier and students have a better experience. However, it is believed that the extra labor of creating, taking, and interpreting the survey may become unnecessary if data is in the time schedule six weeks before the quarter.
One strategic workflow change that could improve instructors’ experience is if DRS can share remediated content directly with instructors for them to re-use and distribute to an entire class. DRS retains all previously remediated materials. In the current state, DRS can distribute these archived accessible materials to students as needed. Although content remediated for individual students may not meet all WCAG 2.1 AA requirements, it is superior to starting remediation over from scratch. For this new practice to work, DRS would need a practical way to share previously-remediated content with instructors. The DRS repository of remediated texts is not currently searchable by instructors. At the very least, sharing a list of available remediated materials with instructors could improve the experience of students, instructors, and DRS.
Although not as large a pain point as understanding which reading materials are assigned, another pain point in ATT’s remediation process involves sourcing textbooks directly from publishers. The amount of friction depends on the publisher. As part of the process, ATT may receive textbook files from publishers. DRS’s current workload does not allow them to do quality control on publisher files. However, improvements to the accommodations and remediation workflow could allow ATT to do quality control on publisher files in the future.
Challenges to Resolving Issues
The suggested deadlines for instructors to submit textbook adoptions to the UW Bookstore are quite early: often four months before the fall quarter begins and two months or more before the other quarters. These deadlines occur during the previous quarter, when instructors are focused on the demands of that quarter. For large classes that reuse a specific textbook for multiple quarters, submitting the textbook information by the adoption deadlines is not difficult. For disciplines and classes where content frequently changes, submitting textbooks and syllabi six weeks before the quarter begins is a challenge due to instructors’ workload.
While there are working system integrations and manual processes that transfer data between the Seattle time schedule, the Seattle UW Bookstore, and the MyDRS tool, the Tacoma campus has outsourced their bookstore operations to the Follett Higher Education Group. It is possible to integrate the MyDRS system with the Tacoma bookstore’s system, but having no clear owner of this process makes progress difficult. Solving this access issue would be high-value because the Tacoma campus has the largest percentage of enrolled students with accommodations.
A staffing-related challenge to providing the instructor of record, syllabi, and required readings six weeks before the term is that Teaching Assistants (TAs) may not select their courses until four weeks before the quarter begins. Contracts for adjunct instructors generally do not start until two weeks before the quarter. There may be a culture at UW of assigning textbook decisions to instructors who are not on the payroll six weeks before the quarter. This historical practice, however, creates barriers in fulfilling student accommodations. Furthermore, the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA) requires that information regarding textbooks and supplemental materials be provided to students at the time of registration.
Misunderstandings about the accommodations process and insufficient communication can lead to a disconnect between instructors and DRS staff. DRS receives general questions and requests about course accessibility that they do not have the capacity to support. Help tickets to UW-IT Help Desk that are actually requests that require training or proactive consultation (not functions of DRS) are frequently misrouted; this exacerbates the misunderstanding of DRS’s function and damages DRS’s working relationships with instructors.
Students can apply for accommodations via DRS at any time during the quarter. This means they may be making remediation requests at any time during the quarter. Untimely accommodation requests from students may result in a delay in fulfilling the request, the substitution of earlier or alternate editions in order to quickly meet the request, or the inability to fulfill the request(s).
DRS sends Faculty Notification Letters (FNLs) out around three to four weeks before a quarter starts if a student: 1) is registered for classes AND 2) has activated DRS accommodations by then. If a student registers and activates accommodations after DRS sends the first batch of faculty notification letters, DRS sends the FNLs approximately weekly, or more frequently. Several possible factors can affect the timing of FNLs:
- Some instructors are not on the UW payroll during the summer and cannot check their UW emails during this time.
- Adjunct instructors may not have UW email access until one or two weeks before the quarter.
- Students can apply for accommodations via DRS at any time during the quarter. Faculty notification letters can only be sent after a student is registered for classes and activates accommodations.
- Although students with alternate format accommodations get priority registration for classes, not every student is registered six weeks prior to the start of quarter.
This report suggests that UW explore options for sharing DRS’ repository of remediated content remediated with instructors so they can re-use them. There needs to be a role for the collection curation of the materials DRS has made accessible, but, in the past, UW Libraries was not interested in performing this role. Furthermore, it is possible that U.S Copyright law, including the Chafee Amendment, may prevent distributing remediated content to instructors.
Current Training/Education
The University of Washington offers several resources and initiatives aimed at improving accessibility in teaching and learning. These have been documented elsewhere, including in the Accessible Course PDF report.
Current Policy and Recommendations
- All accessible materials accommodations are bundled with Priority Registration, which allows students to register for courses on Day 1 of Registration Period I.
- a. This gives DRS staff, instructors, and students maximum lead time to coordinate and prepare materials before classes.
Current Technology/Tools
- Accessible Information Management (AIM), aka MyDRS
- Microsoft Forms
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft SharePoint
- ServiceNow for tickets via Print DRS email.
- Dropbox
- Book sourcing systems like VitalSource, Kindle, UW Bookstore
- Email (mostly, but not exclusively, via AIM/myDRS)
Approaches to Focusing DRS’s Efforts in the Future
In the future state, when digital materials in all UW courses have substantial ADA compliance from the first day of class, accommodation requests for print disabilities will be rare. In this future state, ATT staff can use their skills in complex remediation for accommodations for visual conditions and reduced screen time.
Options for Self-Service by Units
Unit Workstreams and Staffing
- Utilize instructor and TA onboarding to shift the university culture around accessibility by:
- a. Setting clear expectations for instructors on their accessibility duties.
- b. Informing instructors where, how, and when they can help proactively making content accessible.
- c. Introducing instructors to working with DRS on retroactively making content accessible via accommodations.
Unit Training/Education
While not directly in the scope of this report, if training and education were to be provided and to instructors and departmental staff who then, in turn, handled the easier tasks of making their course content accessible, DRS staff would be able to then focus on the more difficult tasks. The goal is to minimize the burden on instructors and leverage DRS’ advanced skills and knowledge of digital accessibility. Refer to the suggestions documented elsewhere, in the reports from subject matter expert working groups.
Options for Central Support
Central Workflows and Staffing
Adjust workstreams to encourage earlier and more complete information is available to DRS and to students. As a result, students can make accommodation requests informed by knowledge of course content and reduce erroneous requests. DRS staff would then spend less time searching for course information and existing staff could devote more time to remediation and specialization.
Options for workflow improvement identified to select processes:
1. Adopt texts that are born-accessible –
- a. ATT enthusiastically supports expanding the Day One Access program from a pilot to a recommended approach for all courses, where possible, because it resolves multiple accessibility and process issues simultaneously. Expanding the Day One Access program would have the following benefits:
- i. VitalSource’s digital materials are accessible to a large number of students – 95% of accommodation requests.
- ii. This would allow ATT to focus on sourcing and remediating texts for other courses.
- iii. It would remove friction from the process of obtaining any needed publisher files for the 5% of students who use screen readers.
- b. When expanding the Day One Access program, explore opt-out billing models; opt-out models result in higher student participation, around 96%.
- c. ATT also strongly supports wider adoption of accessible Open Educational Resources (OERs) for similar reasons; these materials have the added benefit of improving overall course material affordability for all students. For example, OpenStax resources meet or exceed the current WCAG standards.
- i. Note: VitalSource is currently developing a digital homework program for the OpenStax titles, which may add to the appeal of OpenStax titles for instructors.
- d. Leveraging existing and new digital books licensed by UW Libraries as primary course materials is also supported by ATT; this is another direct path to substantial compliance and increased efficiency without externalizing financial burden to students.
2. Submit textbook information six weeks before the quarter begins –
- a. Identify a system of record (ideally, the time schedules) for instructor of record, textbook information, and syllabi for all three campuses.
- b. Identify a process for instructors/departments to submit textbook information to the bookstores for all three campuses by the adoption deadlines.
- c. Identify a process for displaying book adoption information for all three campuses to students and DRS six weeks before classes start.
3. Ease communication between other units and DRS –
- a. Create a contact list of departmental staff responsible for collecting textbook information from faculty and submitting it to the bookstore so that DRS can quickly resolve issues with the person responsible (or delegate) and vice versa. These responsible staff members can also submit textbook information for classes taught by adjunct instructors/TAs whose contracts are not active six weeks before the quarter.
- b. Explore options for sending faculty notification letters of accommodations to instructors (or delegates) earlier than the current practice.
- c. Identify areas to strengthen in the way information flows between academic departments, bookstores, DRS, and UW Libraries. Suggest workflows that leverage the strengths of each unit/organization and speak to a specific strategy on sharing course information:
- i. Libraries for curating existing accessible texts
- ii. Bookstore for sourcing texts and vendor management
- iii. DRS for complex remediation
4. Decrease reactive remediation based on accommodation requests –
- a. Decrease, wherever possible, the amount of remediation by avoiding duplication and using previously remediated documents.
- i. Research options for distributing remediated content both directly to the student and to the instructor so that it is available for re-use in future offerings of the course, as needed.
- ii. Work with peers in higher education and publishers to determine if/how we might share remediated texts and documents across institutions. Two current options that may be able to be scaled include:
- Sharing with other Washington State institutions to pool remediated content, (currently happens on an ad hoc basis).
- Strengthen communication lines with the Access Text Network (ATN), which allows publishers to provide centralized access to accessible texts.
- b. Leverage the complex remediation skills of central support units for handling lower-frequency but more technically complex accessibility issues.
5. Proactive creation of accessible course content –
- a. Empower instructors to take responsibility for accessibility actions that are high-frequency and technically straightforward so more course content will be “born accessible.”
- b. As part of the three-year ADA roadmap, consider co-locating DRS and ATS colleagues to alleviate friction in handoffs between the two teams.
- i. Caveat: This is not recommended for the first year of the ADA roadmap; it is not a viable option at DRS’s current workload. More analysis of DRS and ATS workflows and the scope of their work is needed to understand whether this is a viable solution, as the scope of their operations and the people they serve may not have sufficient overlap.
6. Staff appropriately –
- a. Given that students with accommodations are a population known to be affected by the DOJ mandate, it follows that it should be a priority to ensure Disability Resources for Students is adequately staffed to provide prompt accommodations and clear communication.
- b. Explore support models for complex content requiring subject matter expertise, e.g. hub and spoke, liaisons, or other models.
Workflows to Avoid
It is not recommended to design a workflow that places the burden on faculty for determining whether a student complaint about accessibility stems from a disability or merely a personal preference. DRS currently mediates between faculty and students to perform this assessment and DRS staff have the skills to do this case management.
Central Tools/Technology
- Leverage integrations or automation to improve how information flows between systems or between people and systems. For example:
- a. With automation and the Ally accessibility checker, identify content in Canvas courses that needs to be remediated and download it for remediation. DRS staff members are currently using the Ally Course Accessibility Report to flag files with major and severe issues.
- b. DRS does two rounds of remediation on content. Automate the first remediation pass and assign people to do quality control afterward. Note: the ability to use automation on PDF files depends on having good-quality scans.
- c. Integrate systems to automate the transfer of textbook adoptions from the Tacoma bookstore’s system to the time schedule and MyDRS.
- d. Re-evaluate the possible responses regarding textbook adoptions in the Verba Collect system to eliminate ambiguity and prevent misunderstandings between DRS, instructors, and students.
Note: UW was an early adopter of Accessible Information Management (AIM), aka MyDRS, circa 2014, and the vendor gives DRS white-glove treatment. Most issues that arise are because of UW processes, not because DRS has outgrown the AIM system. Therefore, this report makes no suggestions for improvements to the MyDRS system.
Central Training/Education
Communications should reinforce that the role of DRS is to serve as a resource to students, faculty, and staff to ensure effective provision of accommodation services (not to provide general training on accessibility). The goal would be to direct people to where they can receive help on a variety of accessibility-related concerns, and to alleviate misconceptions regarding DRS’s role. Areas of communication to evaluate could include:
- Reinforcing the appropriate triage of accessibility-related UW Connect tickets for first tier UW-IT help desk staff (e.g., via a decision tree on how to route accessibility-related tickets).
- Assessing the content on DRS’s website and removing any content that is misleading or aspirational, but not currently feasible (e.g., the core functions of DRS).
- Instructors and academic units need to better understand the reasons information on required readings is needed in the system that is available to bookstores and students.
- Others to be determined.
Options for Policies
- Make departments across all three campuses responsible for ensuring the instructor of record and syllabus is visible to students and DRS six weeks prior to the start of classes.
- Make departments across all three campuses responsible for submitting required textbook information to the bookstores by the deadline.
Policies to Avoid
It is not recommended to require students to opt-out of accommodations, rather than opt-in. To have equal access, college students need to be active participants in their own education. Furthermore, if students aren’t engaging in the process, they might not actually want the accommodations on which DRS is spending time and effort, and there could be a return to a 10% download rate by the students.
Implementation
Options for Data and Analytics
Data and analytics can help UW address, prioritize and track progress on institutional goals.
- Provide departmental staff responsible for textbooks and/or digital accessibility access to pull reports from relevant systems for their unit’s compliance with the ADA rules. For example, Canvas Ally reports for courses in the department and reports that show what information is missing from the time schedule.
- Expand data available in Business Intelligence (BI) reports on accommodations and automatically send them to academic departments as early as is feasible so departments can review which classes have registered students with accommodations.
- Others to be determined.
Options for Approach (e.g, Phasing, Prioritization, Implementation)
The options in this report focus on goals that will improve the effectiveness and efficiency of ATT’s work in providing students with documented accommodations accessible course content.
DRS staff would like leadership to recognize and keep in mind that aggressive, short-term remediation efforts could be detrimental to long-term compliance goals.
Conclusion
This report conveys options for meeting the mandate from the Department of Justice (DOJ) by focusing the accessibility efforts of the Accessible Text & Technology (ATT) team of DRS. Solving some of the problems presented in this report will release DRS resources to remediate files needing a quicker turnaround and to focus on more complex accommodation needs.
References
Additional Details and Data
- DRS is bringing content to the point at which it works for the student with their disability – this is not making every piece of content WCAG compliant.
- Continuum College’s centralized accessibility for non-degree seeking students has been recommended as a model for study. Most students at Continuum College don’t need to request accommodations because the centralized accessibility process is working well.
- In Winter of 2025, 12.3% of course sections across all three campuses required ATT to remediate content (1,143 out of 9,244 in total).
- Nineteen days is the median time to fulfill an Enhanced Formats request for students with vision conditions who need to receive course content in an electronic format that is compatible with screen-reading and/or refreshable Braille software. The student may also need essential course-related diagrams, figures, and/or maps to be provided as tactile graphics.
- Over the past five years, DRS needed to engage UW-IT ATS for Braille preparation and embossing for approximately three requests.