{"id":169429,"date":"2026-09-22T13:46:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T17:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/?p=169429"},"modified":"2026-09-22T13:46:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T17:46:59","slug":"accessibility-in-action-accessibility-starts-with-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/?p=169429","title":{"rendered":"Accessibility in Action: Accessibility Starts With Us"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><i>What digital accessibility means and why it matters<\/i><\/h2>\n<p>Accessibility is part of everyone&#8217;s work at NMC, not just the responsibility of IT or the Digital Accessibility Committee. This first issue of a new newsletter from <a href=\"https:\/\/employees.nmc.edu\/gov\/committees\/digital-accessibility\/index.html\">NMC&#8217;s Digital Accessibility Committee<\/a> introduces the basics of digital accessibility, explains why accessibility matters, and provides an overview of the federal accessibility requirements. We&#8217;ll also introduce <a href=\"#principles\">the four principles of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)<\/a> and <a href=\"#toolkit\">the accessibility tools available at NMC<\/a> to help you get started.<\/p>\n<p>We don\u2019t expect you to fix everything at once; we are striving for progress, not perfection, and every little bit we do helps!<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Accessibility in the News<\/h2>\n<p>The Department of Justice&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ada.gov\/resources\/2024-03-08-web-rule\/\">Title II web accessibility rule<\/a> establishes WCAG 2.1 Level AA as the technical standard for covered web content and mobile applications. It also requires us to <i>proactively<\/i> provide accessible digital content up front. This includes all NMC websites, financial aid systems, third party applications, and other essential systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3>Why It Matters<\/h3>\n<p>Accessibility is a legal requirement per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.section508.gov\/\">Section 508<\/a> and the existing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ada.gov\/law-and-regs\/regulations\/title-ii-2010-regulations\/\">Title II regulation<\/a>. But even more importantly, creating accessible content is a moral obligation that we all have. Creating with accessibility in mind means that your students, fellow employees, and even community members can interact with and understand your content regardless of their (dis)ability.<\/p>\n<h2><a id=\"principles\"><\/a>WCAG 2.1 AA Spotlight: The Four Principles: POUR<\/h2>\n<p>WCAG organizes accessibility around four principles:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Perceivable<\/b>: Can people perceive the information?<\/li>\n<li><b>Operable<\/b>: Can people operate the interface?<\/li>\n<li><b>Understandable<\/b>: Can people understand the information and how things work?<\/li>\n<li><b>Robust<\/b>: Can the content work reliably with different browsers, devices, and assistive technologies?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Examples<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Perceivable<\/b>: An employee posts a committee announcement with meaningful headings, readable text, and alternative (alt) text for an informational graphic.<\/li>\n<li><b>Operable<\/b>: A faculty member checks that students can navigate an online assignment without being forced to use a mouse.<\/li>\n<li><b>Understandable<\/b>: A department provides clear, consistent instructions for submitting a form.<\/li>\n<li><b>Robust<\/b>: A webpage or document uses standard headings, lists, and links that work with browsers and assistive technology to provide a clear structure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Practice<\/h3>\n<p>Choose one document, presentation, spreadsheet, webpage, or Canvas page you created recently and go through the following list to check accessibility:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Are images clearly described? (e.g., the red cat vs the red cat holding a bouquet of flowers on a sidewalk in a city landscape)<\/li>\n<li>Are headings used correctly?<\/li>\n<li>Is there sufficient color contrast?<\/li>\n<li>Are links meaningful?<\/li>\n<li>Can someone using a screen reader understand the structure?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you answered \u201cno\u201d or don\u2019t know how to answer any of these, use accessibility tools to fix the issue!<\/p>\n<h2><a id=\"toolkit\"><\/a>Your NMC Accessibility Toolkit<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Google Docs, Sheets &amp; Slides<\/b>: Use Grackle to evaluate Google Workspace content for accessibility issues.<\/li>\n<li><b>Microsoft Word, Excel &amp; PowerPoint<\/b>: Use the built-in Accessibility Checker to identify common accessibility problems.<\/li>\n<li><b>Adobe Acrobat Pro<\/b>: Some NMC users have access to Acrobat Pro for evaluating and remediating PDF accessibility.<\/li>\n<li><b>Canvas: <\/b>Use UDoit to evaluate Canvas course content and identify accessibility issues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These tools can help identify problems, but they don&#8217;t replace human judgment. You can find more information on these tools on <a href=\"https:\/\/employees.nmc.edu\/accessibility\/software\/index.html\">the Accessibility Toolkit page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>In Everyday Work<\/h2>\n<p>A faculty member can check an assignment before publishing it; a staff member can check a departmental form or employee guide before sharing it. The same accessibility principles apply for both situations.<\/p>\n<h2>Resources &amp; Training<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/employees.nmc.edu\/accessibility\/index.html\">Digital Accessibility website<\/a><i><\/i><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/unified.neoed.com\/training\/learner\/catalog\/course\/standardized\/93a18f1339449245d618a3f9a4504b01\/details\">The <i>Accessibility Essentials<\/i> training module<\/a> in NeoEd<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What digital accessibility means and why it matters Accessibility is part of everyone&#8217;s work at NMC, not just the responsibility of IT or the Digital Accessibility Committee. This first issue of a new newsletter from NMC&#8217;s Digital Accessibility Committee introduces the basics of digital accessibility, explains why accessibility matters, and provides an overview of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3661,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-accessibility-in-action","category-intercom"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Accessibility in Action: Accessibility Starts With Us - NMC Communiqu\u00e9<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.nmc.edu\/?p=169429\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Accessibility in Action: Accessibility Starts With Us - NMC Communiqu\u00e9\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What digital accessibility means and why it matters Accessibility is part of everyone&#8217;s work at NMC, not just the responsibility of IT or the Digital Accessibility Committee. 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