Trainings available across OSU for content creators to learn digital accessibility requirements

To help ensure content is compliant with the Department of Justice’s upcoming digital accessibility requirements, units across Oregon State University are providing training and resources for employees who create or post digital content.

“Accessibility is a shared responsibility, so all faculty and staff should be attending trainings to learn about key concepts related to accessibility that they can apply in their own work,” said Katherine McAlvage, Educational Ventures associate director of faculty development and support. “Everyone can build some really basic accessibility measures into their workflows for creating or updating content, and in time, those actions truly become muscle memory.”

 For more background information and some basic accessibility tips, see our previous story. For a list of upcoming trainings, scroll to the bottom of this story.

The new federal rule goes into effect in April and is an expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed in 1990 and led to major changes in physical infrastructure so people with disabilities could freely access public spaces. The digital accessibility rule aims to do the same for digital spaces.

Representatives from Academic Technologies, the Center for Teaching and Learning, Compliance and Ethics, Ecampus, Equal Opportunity and Access, University Information Technology, OSU Libraries, Student Affairs and more have been working together to ensure different types of online content and processes are in compliance.

Trainings in 2025 covered specific programs like Canvas, or specific facets of accessibility like alternative text for images. But for 2026, training is pivoting to more specialized education to individual departments.

“There is no shortage of trainings available online, synchronous and asynchronous, about digital accessibility. We’ve experienced that attending staff or departmental meetings has been the most engaging method of ‘training’ so we’re trying to prioritize that with our limited resources,” said Gabe Merrell, director of access and deputy ADA coordinator in EOA.

Merrell pointed to OSU’s digital accessibility website as a repository of digital accessibility fundamentals, with explanations and links to further training. The site includes background information and how-to guides on basic topics like use of color, links and alt text, as well as platform-specific resources for programs including Drupal, Kaltura, PowerPoint and Word. The steering group plans to develop more materials for that site as the year progresses, he said.

While OSU does not currently have a single point of contact for digital accessibility questions, employees can reach out to Merrell, Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Ashley Holmes or Deputy Chief Executive of Compliance and Ethics Susan Freccia with digital accessibility questions or requests for further training.

Another resource are the weekly drop-in office hours via Zoom with trainers from OSU Libraries, UIT and Ecampus available to help answer questions, 1-2 p.m. every Thursday.

Outside of OSU trainings, accessibility leaders advocate LinkedIn Learning for digital accessibility education, which employees can access via University Human Resources. One educator they highlighted was Chad Chelius, who has created in-depth sessions on how to create or remediate PDFs to be accessible. (PDFs are considered one of the worst file formats for digital accessibility and should be avoided if there are other options for displaying content like web pages.)

The Center for Teaching and Learning provides pedagogical support primarily for on-campus academic faculty, while Ecampus supports online faculty. Both units have expertise in inclusive learning strategies like Universal Design for Learning, which means developing curricula to be inclusive for all students from the start, rather than retrofitting materials later, Holmes said.

“We need faculty to bring their disciplinary expertise and practices to the process of redesigning their course materials to be accessible,” she said. “We can suggest strategies, but there's not a ‘one size fits all’ approach with digital accessibility, and each discipline may have specific needs that differ.”

Updating and checking all OSU digital content for accessibility is a massive undertaking, so leaders want anyone creating content to prioritize making sure anything they are creating new is accessible.

“Fix things when you need to fix them, but really focus on how do you start accessible with everything you’re creating from scratch,” Merrell said. “We just want folks to make simple, good-faith efforts to make their materials as accessible as they can now, and over time, we’ll start to make sure that all our materials are accessible from the start.”

It will take time, and no one expects perfection right off the bat, leaders say.

“We’re upskilling the entire university right now. Everyone’s going through a learning curve, and that comes with panic, plateaus, regressions, etc.,” said Sagan Wallace, accessibility manager with OSU Libraries. “But we’re also an educational university, so I think we can all give ourselves as much grace as we would give a student who’s new to this. Give that to yourself as you learn.”

Just as the original ADA led to changes that improve physical access for everyone, such as curb cuts in the sidewalk that help strollers as well as wheelchairs, digital accessibility improves everyone’s access to digital content, regardless of ability, Merrell said.

“Texting was developed for folks who were deaf to communicate with each other, and now all of us use it every day. Same with closed captions on videos,” he said. “Regulation and new laws can feel scary, but maybe they’ll push us to innovate. There will be really fun, interesting solutions, and hopefully OSU can play a part in coming up with those solutions and innovative ideas.”

Upcoming digital accessibility trainings will have the “Accessibility” tag in the OSU calendar; here are the events scheduled for winter term so far: