Accessibility: Making a Plan to Do What’s Right (and Required)

As of 2017, the last full year we have data for, there were 5,567 Office of Civil Rights (OCR) investigations dealing with accessibility in K–20 institutions (Department of Education, 2019, Z-22). In 2018, ADA Title III Lawsuits in federal courts were projected to hit almost 10,000 (Vu, Launey, Ryan, & Fitz, 2018). These numbers have been increasing each year—almost exponentially for ADA lawsuits. I’ve been working with digital accessibility issues since 2007. Until recently, much of what I’ve warned about in meetings and conversations was ignored, making me feel like Cassandra from Greek myth. But in the past few years, teachers and administrators have begun to ask what we need to do, and some institutions are preparing to act. The University of Illinois Springfield (UIS) is one of those institutions, so I am offering our lessons to help others move forward.