As a way to educate and engage the SUNY Oswego community in digital accessibility practices, a campus workgroup is hosting its second Accessibility Challenge this January. Students, faculty, staff and administrators are encouraged to participate to ensure that digital content created by all campus members is accessible to everyone. This will be done through a series of challenges where participants will receive step-by-step guidance via email “on how making minor changes to your presentations can have a big impact on accessibility,” according to their site. Additional resources will also be provided for future reference.
“With many aspects of our lives continuing to function in virtual environments, understanding digital accessibility is more critical than ever,” reads the Accessibility Challenge website. “Materials that are available online aren't immediately accessible. We use a wide variety of technologies to consume digital content from mobile phones to braille displays to audio interfaces and screen readers. Digital content is accessible only when it is machine-readable and follows accessibility principles.”
Topics covered via the Challenge include:
- Creating headings, subheadings, and lists
- Providing text equivalents for images
- Embedding descriptive links
- Providing captions and transcripts for multimedia
- Writing accessible emails
- Using color carefully
- Writing in plain language
- Making PDFs more accessible
- Using automated accessibility checkers
- Creating accessible tables, graphs, and mathematic notations
Learn more about Oswego’s Accessibility Challenge here.
