Digital Accessibility

Instructional Technology and the Division of Information Technology at UMBC offer resources to support faculty and students in meeting digital accessibility requirements.

Digital accessibility ensures that everyone — including people with disabilities — can access and use digital content and tools. Building accessibility into websites, documents, and course materials from the start helps everyone. It reduces the need for last-minute fixes, improves usability across the board, and supports a wide range of users — including those with temporary or situational challenges. Accessible design is smart design.

Review available resources on UMBC’s Digital Accessibility site.

The Digital Accessibility Community of Practice (CoP) is a cross-functional group of faculty, staff, and students who are actively engaged in improving digital access in teaching, learning, and administrative environments. The DA-CoP provides a space for members to share knowledge, build skills, explore solutions, and support campus-wide efforts to meet digital accessibility standards.

Follow Digital Accessibility on myUMBC for upcoming meetings and events.

Instructors can use Ally to gauge the accessibility of their Blackboard course and organization content. Run the Ally Course Accessibility Report in order to:

  • Receive feedback on the accessibility of course and organization content, including multimedia
  • Improve content accessibility with Ally’s step-by-step instructor guides
  • Create alternative formats for content to meet the needs of students’ diverse learning styles

Students can also support their own learning needs by using Ally’s File Transformer to create alternative formats for materials.

Learn more about Ally

UMBC supports video transcription and closed captioning as part of ensuring digital accessibility for everyone. YuJa and VoiceThread offer automated captioning for faculty- or staff-created video content. Remember to review, edit, and approve automated captions or transcripts to ensure accuracy before sharing.

The following vendor accessibility statements clarify their support for UMBC technologies:

Additional vendor statements related to accessibility support for UMBC tools include:

For more information about accessibility at UMBC, consider these resources: