Last updated on May 12, 2023
Service overview
The Digital Accessibility Program provides accessibility evaluation and consulting for university content or vendor products that are current contracts or are in a formal agreement with the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
Making your digital resources accessible helps UW–Madison be a more inclusive, usable place for everyone. UW–Madison also follows a policy informed by federal law to provide technology and services that are accessible to all students, faculty, and staff. Accessible digital resources are usable by people with disabilities and/or who use assistive technology.
Request response turnaround time: 2-4 weeks
Response turnaround time is 2-4 weeks depending on central funding. We appreciate your patience as we support as many university offices as possible with a limited centrally funded budget.
Benefits
- Learn how accessible a digital resource is.
- Understand how to make your digital resource more accessible.
- Get assistance communicating accessibility barriers with vendors (if applicable).
Requirements
- University use cases and task flows of how campus is or intends to use the digital resource to be evaluated.
- Access to an instance of the digital resource to be evaluated, and representative data to test with.
- Access to the vendor name, product name, vendor contact information (if applicable).
- Product VPAT, link to accessibility features and product information.
- Access to the Service Owner (name, department, division/school/college, and contact info).
Getting started
What to expect
Once you submit a request, we will contact you to gather additional information, arrange access to content or systems, and understand your desired timeline. We will:
- Work with you to access your content for evaluation
- Prepare a report of findings
- Provide recommendations for accessibility improvements
- Meet with you to review the evaluation and how to improve accessibility or communicate/advocate for improvement with the vendor (if applicable).
The Center for User Experience can evaluate any digital experience including those listed in “options” below.
How we test
We use Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, Section 255 of the Communications Act and the American Web Content Accessibility Standards 2.0 (WCAG) to test for compliance with ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, including:
- Automated and manual testing using a screen reader
- Mobile accessibility and screen magnification
- Color contrast
Have questions, feedback, or need additional Digital Accessibility consulting?
Submit a question, consulting request, or feedback regarding digital accessibility.
Options
- Websites
- Web applications
- Software being considered for procurement
- Multimedia assets
- Documents, PDFs, presentations
Pricing
- Free quick evaluation and consulting (usually 2-6 hours)
- In-depth evaluation requests are considered and available based on resources and prioritization.
Available to
- Faculty
- Researchers
- Staff
- Students