Cooling temperatures, rainy days, and the start of another academic quarter remind us that fall has arrived. It’s hard to believe six months have passed since we launched the IT Accessibility Challenge 2020 back in May. The Challenge is a university-wide campaign encouraging members of the UW community to take one or more simple actions to help make websites, online courses, digital documents, and videos more accessible to individuals with disabilities. Dozens of individuals, and four departments, took the Challenge and have been working over the last six months to improve the accessibility of their technology resources.
October marks the formal end of the six-month Challenge, and participants will be honored on October 21 in a UW Celebration of Accessibility, hosted online from 1:00 to 2:30pm. October is also National Disability Employment Awareness Month and Washington State Disability History Month so there’s plenty to celebrate. The event will feature lightning round talks from a wide variety of stakeholders from across the university who are engaged in accessibility-related work, including the Office of the ADA Coordinator, Disability Services Office, Disability Studies program, CREATE, the D Center, UW-IT Accessible Technology Services, and several IT Accessibility Challenge participants who will be reporting out on their experiences, including what they accomplished and lessons learned. The program will also feature two Capacity Building Awards, awarded by the university’s IT Accessibility Task Force in recognition for particularly outstanding efforts to improve accessibility.
This event is designed to celebrate all that we have accomplished so far at the UW in ensuring our university is accessible and welcoming to individuals with disabilities, and to share our vision and next steps as we continue to work together to improve. Please spread the word, and we hope to see you there!
- Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2020
- Time: 1:00pm – 2:30pm
- Place: Zoom (UW NetID required)
- The event will include live captioning and ASL interpreting.