What Is Accessibility?

“Accessible means that individuals with disabilities are able to independently acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services within the same timeframe as individuals without disabilities, with substantially equivalent ease of use.” –University of Montana Office of Civil Rights settlement agreement, 2012

What if Accessibility is Not Built-in?

Simply put, if accessibility is not part of the course design, the institution is at risk for discrimination. Additionally, fixing inaccessible the content is significantly more expensive. Please see the Remediating Inaccessible Documents Infographic below.

Alternate Description of Infographic

• On average, there are 15 pages per document at UW. This data is taken from DRS’s File Accessibility Evaluation Google Doc, which spans Winter 2014 – Spring 2016.
• DRS converts 100 pages an hour for non-STEM content.
• On average, there are 213,821 documents that are uploaded in Canvas each quarter. This is based from data produced by Blackboard Ally from Fall 2015 to Winter 2018.
• Multiplying the average number of pages/doc by the number of doc/quarter, it was determined that there are 3,207,315 pages of content in Canvas each quarter.
• Using the conversion rate of 100 pages/hr for non-STEM content, that would take 32,073 hours of labor to remediate all the content per quarter.
• It would take 802 people one standard work week (40 hours each person), to convert the average amount of content in Canvas. The one week turnaround time is important due to the quarter system.
• If these 802 people are paid $15/hr (Seattle minimum wage), labor costs would be about $481,097 each quarter.