Accessibility Support Services for Faculty

The following services are available for faculty:

Infobase Learning Cloud video service
- All TAMIU faculty, staff and students have access to closed captioned videos on various training topics, from trainings on soft skills (plagiarism, citing, interviewing skills, etc.) to technical skills (trainings on Adobe Suite, Blackboard, Word, Excel, SPSS, etc.).
- For access, Infobase Learning Cloud may be found in Uconnect or Blackboard resources.
Training guides and sessions on how to make your course content accessible.
- Accessibility Matters Online Training. Faculty teaching online are required to complete an online, self-paced workshop called "Accessibility Matters". This is assigned to faculty via TrainTraq and must be completed by deadline.
- Accessibility Roadmap Checklist (PDF). This document provides a checklist that assists a faculty member in verifying if they and their courses are accessibility-ready.
- Accessibility Roadmap Appendix (PDF). A detailed guide on how to make the following document types accessible.
  - PowerPoints
  - PDFs
  - Word Documents
- Training Sessions. Contact elearning@tamiu.edu with your request for training on how to make your course content accessible. Training sessions can be one-on-one or in a group setting.
Video captioning/transcription services.
- All videos posted online in eLearning (Blackboard) are required to be closed captioned and posted along with a transcript.
- Contact elearning@tamiu.edu with your course details to get your videos captioned/transcribed.

New Title Regulations of the ADA (2024) and Higher Education

On April 24, 2024, the Department of Justice published a final rule updating the regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This rule emphasizes the need for web content and mobile applications provided by state and local governments, including public higher education institutions, to be accessible to people with disabilities.

Accessibility Standards: Public colleges and universities must ensure that all web content and mobile apps meet specific accessibility standards (WCAG 2.1AA). This includes providing alternative text for images, ensuring compatibility with screen readers, and making interactive elements accessible. This is crucial for online course materials, library resources, and administrative services.
Scope of Application: The regulations apply to all digital services offered by public higher education institutions. This includes course registration systems, online learning platforms, financial aid information, university websites, all apps and software used by the university, and other essential services.
Implementation Timeline: Higher education institutions have 2-3 years to comply with the new requirements, dependent on the size of the community they serve. UIS has two years from the publication date of the regulations, so our compliance date is April 24, 2026. This timeline necessitates prompt action to audit and update digital content and platforms.

These regulations ask us to be very intentional about the ways that we invite people into our digital spaces – but they’re set up like this specifically because we, collectively, have not done a great job at welcoming people with disabilities into our spaces, and we need to do better. Students with disabilities are less likely to graduate from college, less likely to find employment after college, and less likely to earn the same amount of money as their abled peers. This is very much an equity issue.

How Does This Impact Your Work at TAMIU?

We will all be affected by these new guidelines. Over the next two years, we will be responsible for making sure that all our digital spaces are accessible. This impacts our website, apps, and digital content – including publicly and internally shared documents, videos, podcasts, pictures, software, etc. It also includes course content (including third-party content from publishers that we contract with and any videos that we use).

The TAMIU Office of Accessibility will coordinate efforts to implement the new Title II regulations at TAMIU. As we work together to make our digital spaces more accessible for all, we will be sharing resources and tools that are available to help you in this process.