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Note: This is a hypothetical scenario illustrating how a small college might approach accessibility compliance. Numbers and outcomes are projected estimates, not actual results.
A 2,000-student, 150-course scenario: How affordable tools can make compliance achievable with managed department service from $2,249/month.
2,000
Students
95%
Cost savings vs enterprise tools
9/10
Faculty satisfaction
Consider a small liberal-arts college with a strong commitment to accessibility. When the April 2027 WCAG 2.1 deadline was announced, it could face a difficult reality:
Small colleges often face a difficult choice: enterprise accessibility tools that consume 15-25% of IT budgets, or manual remediation that requires staff they don't have.
Common challenge for small institutions
Unlike large universities with dedicated accessibility teams, the college in this scenario has one IT staff member working on accessibility part-time (20 hours/week). A workflow could look like:
Monday: Export 5 courses from Canvas (PDFs, PPT, videos)
Tuesday: Run Aelira CLI batch processing (automated, 2 hours)
Wednesday: Review AI-generated fixes (spot-check 10% of files, 3 hours)
Thursday: Manual edge cases (complex tables, unusual formatting, 4 hours)
Friday: Re-upload accessible versions to Canvas (1 hour)
Total: 10 hours/week per person = 5 courses/week completed
30 weeks
Total timeline
150
Courses completed
97/100
Avg compliance score
PDFs (syllabi, readings)
OCR + structure tagging + alt text
1,200
PowerPoint presentations
Contrast fixes + alt text + descriptions
800
Video lectures (captions)
Auto-caption cleanup + technical terms
300
Images (course materials)
AI-generated alt text descriptions
2,500+
100%
Compliance achieved
January 2026 (3 months early)
$32K
First-year cost
transparent pricing vs quote-based enterprise tools
9/10
Faculty satisfaction
"Painless" implementation
Savings: $372K vs Manual · Transparent, predictable pricing
Illustrative: "I wouldn't have to change my workflow at all. IT could handle everything."
Faculty (illustrative)
Illustrative: "A blind student could finally access course readings independently."
Faculty (illustrative)
Illustrative: "Transparent pricing that could fit a small budget, with deep remediation that handles files end to end, potentially the best ROI decision a college our size could make."
IT Director (illustrative)
Small liberal-arts college (hypothetical)
Affordable accessibility for small colleges, no enterprise budgets needed. Managed department service starts at $2,249/month with a defined processing allowance.