OIT's Digital Accessibility Team Completes Document Accessibility Pilot Project

The Department of Information Technology's Digital Accessibility Team is pleased to announce the completion of this project. Document Accessibility Champion Pilot Program. This effort was funded by a grant awarded by the Ohio Department of Development and was aimed at improving document accessibility for individuals with disabilities.

The primary goals of this grant project are to reduce the number of inaccessible PDF documents on the ohio.edu website, provide participants with a basic understanding of document accessibility, and repair as many PDFs as possible. did.

A major outcome of this project was the in-depth training provided to faculty volunteers. 21 people from 16 departments participated in the Document Accessibility Champion Cohort, achieving an impressive 97 percent completion rate.

Participants showed significant knowledge gains, with an average pre-training quiz score of 76%, but a post-training average score of 96%. This quiz measured basic understanding of key concepts. Weekly check-in meetings provided ongoing support and collaboration on the project.

Another important aspect of the project involved identifying four departments with large amounts of online documentation that needed improved accessibility. Although this process is still ongoing, the project aims to increase the number of accessible documents by deleting old inaccessible documents, converting documents to web pages, and professionally repairing inaccessible documents. I'll go.

Since the start of the project, the team has seen a 58% increase in compliant documents, a 26% decrease in non-compliant documents, and a 41% decrease in documents. Documents without tags.

A Microsoft Word plug-in was identified and procured for use by project participants for one year to facilitate the conversion of accessible Word documents to PDF. In addition, four department representatives received a portion of the grant funding to enable them to professionally repair complex documents on the department's web page.

The Digital Accessibility team is excited about the results of the Document Accessibility Pilot Project. We are on track to achieve our goals and have a positive impact on our campus community. This initiative prioritizes digital accessibility to ensure that online spaces become increasingly welcoming and inclusive for faculty, staff, and students. This initiative will advance equity and strengthen the university's digital environment by equipping the collective of web content creators with the necessary knowledge and tools.

Finally, it is important to note that this project would not have been able to seek out alternative funding for the project and the leadership of the cohort activities without the innovative thinking of Jill Bateman, the Digital Accessibility Coordinator. The Digital Accessibility team would also like to thank the cohort participants for their hard work and initiative.