Hello to you, our CMS content mangers!
You may have heard about MSU's push to improve web accessibility across the entire montana.edu website. On May 2, 2018, MSU entered into a voluntary resolution agreement with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR), stating that MSU will ensure all newly created web content meets current web accessibility standards, and existing content is remediated to these standards as well.
Making websites accessible means removing barriers in ways that most users would not even notice; for example including closed captioning on videos for the hearing impaired, text descriptions of photos for the visually impaired, and making links accessible for those who cannot use a mouse. Providing an equitable means of accessing digital content to all users is an important commitment as we continue to eliminate accessibility barriers and build our culture of inclusion.
Creating new web content that is accessible
By March 1, 2019 all web content managers must have taken on-line training on creating accessible content and be able to use MSU's web accessibility scanner. The on-line training course is ready for you to take at your leisure. It is 40 minutes long, contains a short quiz afterwards, and will activate the accessibility scanner in your Content Management System (CMS) account. The scanner will help you create accessible content in the CMS and assist in remediation of any non-accessible content where needed.
The new training course is available
here:
Creating Accessible MSU Web Content (or CMS 115)
This course serves to fill content managers' web accessibility requirement under MSU's voluntary resolution agreement with the Office for Civil Rights. After March 1, 2018, you must have taken this course and completed the quiz in order to create, edit or publish content on any MSU webpage.
Remediation of existing web content
Until July 2020, Web & Digital Communications will have student employees performing the bulk of the accessibility remediation work on existing content on websites, defined as web content created or updated after June 1, 2014. Our team will be reaching out to CMS managers in the coming weeks and months to initiate this process and will prioritize student-facing websites first as well as CMS managers who have taken CMS 115, the on-line accessibility training described above. Once you have taken the training, let us know via support ticket and we'll move you up in the queue.
Questions? Connect with our team in a support ticket. We have more detailed information about our Accessibility Plan in our Help Center.
Thanks!
Brett
Davis, Director
Justin Arndt, Assistant Director
Web & Digital Communications
P.S. If you need a quick definition of Web Accessibility: Web accessibility ensures that all persons, regardless of disability, have access to the same information and functionality available on our websites in the same time frame and with equivalent ease of use. Accessible web content ensures an equitable experience for all visitors, including current students, prospectives, parents, university employees, and the public.