What University IT Directors Wish Faculty Knew About Accessibility

There is a persistent gap in higher education between the people responsible for accessibility compliance (IT, disability services, compliance offices) and the people who create the content (faculty). Both groups are working toward the same goal, but they often have different understandings of what accessibility means, what it requires, and who is responsible.

This article attempts to bridge that gap by sharing the perspective IT directors rarely have the opportunity to communicate directly.

1. We Cannot Fix Your Content After the Fact

IT can deploy tools, configure LMS settings, and run automated scans. But we cannot open your PowerPoint, write your alt text, or restructure your PDF. The content you create is yours, and only you have the subject matter expertise to make it properly accessible.

We can give you tools that make it easier. We can flag issues. We can automate the structural fixes. But the judgment calls — what an image means, how a table should be read, whether a caption is accurate — those are yours.

2. It Is Not Just About Screen Readers

When we say "accessibility," many faculty picture a completely blind student using a screen reader. That is one scenario, but it is far from the only one.

Accessibility also serves:

• Students with low vision who zoom to 200 percent (does your layout break?)
• Students with dyslexia who use text-to-speech tools (does your document have a reading order?)
• Students with ADHD who use focus modes (are your headings structured so they can navigate efficiently?)
• Students with motor disabilities who navigate by keyboard only (can they reach every interactive element?)
• Students with hearing loss watching your lecture recordings (are the captions accurate?)
• Students with color blindness viewing your charts (is color the only differentiator?)

Twenty percent of your students have a disability. Most of them do not use screen readers.

3. "It Worked Fine for Me" Is Not a Test

Faculty sometimes test their materials by opening them on their own computer and concluding that everything looks fine. But accessibility issues are invisible when you are not using assistive technology.

A PDF with no tags looks identical to a tagged PDF when you open it in Preview or Acrobat Reader. A video without captions plays perfectly if you can hear. A low-contrast heading is readable if your vision is typical and your monitor is well-calibrated.

The only reliable way to know if your content is accessible is to check it with accessibility tools or to have someone using assistive technology try it.

4. The Volume Problem Is Real

You might think: I only have 30 documents in my course. How hard can this be? But multiply that by 200 faculty, 3 courses each, and 4 semesters, and the university is looking at 72,000 documents. When a compliance complaint arrives, it is not your 30 documents that are the problem — it is the aggregate.

This is why we push for institutional tools and processes. Individual heroics do not scale. Systematic approaches do.

5. Accessibility Training Is Not Optional

We know your time is limited. We know you have research, teaching, service, and administrative obligations. We are not asking you to become an accessibility expert. We are asking you to learn five to ten specific practices that take five minutes per document:

• Use heading styles instead of bold text
• Add alt text to images
• Use slide layouts, not blank slides
• Check color contrast
• Use built-in lists and tables

These practices make your content better for all students, not just those with disabilities. They also make your content easier to search, easier to repurpose, and easier to maintain.

6. We Are Here to Help, Not to Blame

No faculty member sets out to create inaccessible content. The tools we all use — Word, PowerPoint, Google Docs — do not make accessibility obvious. Most faculty were never trained in accessible content creation because it was not part of their graduate education or faculty orientation.

When we flag accessibility issues, we are not criticizing your teaching. We are trying to help your content reach all of your students. We would rather work with you proactively than respond to a student complaint reactively.

7. Small Changes Have Big Impact

You do not need to remediate every document you have ever created. Start with this semester's content. Start with the syllabus and the first two weeks of readings. Build the habit incrementally.

If every faculty member made their new content accessible starting today, the university's accessibility posture would improve dramatically within two semesters — without touching a single legacy document.

The Ask

We are not asking faculty to become accessibility specialists. We are asking for awareness, a few basic practices, and a willingness to use the tools and training we provide. In return, your content reaches more students more effectively, and the institution is better protected from compliance risk.

That is a good deal for everyone.