CANHEIT 2024

UVic’s journey toward digital accessibility

University Systems, University of Victoria

• AVP University Systems, UVic
• Board Director – BCNET, CUCCIO, Victoria Foundation, Technical Safety BC
• BSc, MBA

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Wency Lum

wencylum@uvic.ca

• Program Manager, University Systems Accessibility Acceleration Program
• Senior Project Manager
• Owner UVic Digital Accessibility Champions Community of Practice
• MA Urban Geography, BA Cultural Geography, PMP

Cara Segger

csegger@uvic.ca

About you, our audience

From a province that has accessibility legislation?

Has an accessibility office?

Has an accessibility office with the mandate to educate faculty and staff? Audit procurements?

Has an accessibility team embedded in IT?

Is an accessibility change agent at work?

Our responsibility is to ensure that our digital campus has as few barriers as possible.

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Disabled students should be able to focus on their subject matter, not on navigating high barrier systems and software.

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Disabled faculty and staff should be able to succeed in their roles. Including disabled people among the workforce is the only reliable way to ensure that our campuses are accessible. 

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Everyone benefits!

Why?

1/5 Canadians have a disability that makes it harder to use the internet.

16% of students at UVic are registered with the Centre for Accessible Learning.

Having a university degree doubles chance of employment for people with severe disabilities

Regulatory Environment

• Federal – The Accessible Canada Act (2019)
• Provincial – Accessible BC Act (2021)
• Institutional – UVic Accessibility Plan (2022)

UVic Digital Learning Strategy

Three pillars:

• Digital Literacy
• Digital Equity
• Digital Learning Environment

University Systems Timeline

1

2

3

4

ACCESSIBLE WEB TEMPLATE

2020

DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY CHAMPIONS

2022

DIGITAL ACCESSIBILITY ACCELERATION PROGRAM

2024

ACCESSIBLE ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE

2020 - 2024

University Systems Accessibility Acceleration Program

Program Goals

• assess our current state,
• educate our staff,
• and act on the results

Assess

• Gap analysis to identify areas for improvement. 
• 3rd party ‘Accessibility Maturity model’ audit of our current processes. 
• Develop critical success measures.  
• Set-up a user testing pool and process in partnership with the Center for Accessible Learning. (CAL) and The Society for Students with Disabilities (SSD). 
• Test key products and experiences. 

Educate

• Role based accessibility training for high impact roles. 
• Annual service delivery training for IT client support teams.
• Accessible development training 
• Create an Accessible Technology SharePoint site for use by disability advisors, HR work-life consultants, faculty members and other staff supporting students.  
• SME Accessibility Working Group 

Improve

• Design system with a library of accessible front-end components. 
• Expand use of Universal Template for apps we build
• Develop and launch WCAG 2AA plain language Systems IT support site 
• Integrate accessibility into our technical review process, establishing a pool of subject matter experts inside and outside of Systems.  
• Implement audit recommendations for impacted systems and priority applications 
• Measurement of outcomes against critical success measures 

Early Successes

• Accessibility Community of Practice
• Duo MFA using W3C personas
• Partnership between University Systems and Centre for Accessible Learning to green light accessibility apps
• Websites: Computer lab, Research Computing Services, Netlink ID
• Evangelizing plain language among client facing and support teams
• Blind user testers

Exercise: W3C Maturity Model

Goals

• Introduce the W3C maturity model.
• Find out where other schools are in their digital accessibility journey

Exercise: W3C Maturity Model

Seven Dimensions

• Communications
• Knowledge and Skills
• Personnel
• Culture
• Support
• ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Development Life Cycle
• Procurement

Maturity Stages

INTEGRATE

roadmap in place, well organized approach

wide buy-in

Thank You