During Ethics and Compliance Week, we champion digital accessibility as a key component of our ethical values of Responsibility, Integrity, Community, and Excellence. Rice’s commitment to digital accessibility is not merely a technical or legal exercise, but a vibrant expression of our dedication to belonging, inclusion, and a culture of care.  

For Rice, this work is paramount, driven by both legal and ethical imperatives. We are proactively moving toward meeting new federal digital accessibility regulations that require adherence to the international World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines at Level  2.1 AA standards for information and communication technologies by May 2026. Achieving this standard establishes a foundation ensuring that people with disabilities can fully and equally participate across Rice. Our community has been called to action through the Digital Accessibility Campus Initiative, formally established in October.  

Embracing Shared Responsibility and Culture Change 

Creating a digitally inclusive environment is a shared commitment that touches every corner of our campus. Accessibility is not one person’s job; it is everyone's responsibility.   

With our highly connected society, engagement with digital information and technologies occurs constantly across Rice. Right now, we have people with disabilities working in our departments, learning in our classrooms, and engaging in our public events. Statistically speaking, the World Health Organization estimates that 1.3 billion people, 1 in 6 or 16% of the population, experience disability (2023, March, Disability key facts). Disability can be apparent, such as a wheelchair rider, or non-apparent, like someone who experiences anxiety or depression. Some of us are born with disabilities, acquire them later in life and all of us will experience them as we age. Consider your students, colleagues, family, and friends. Disability occurs across race, socio-economic status, and other social groups. This intersectionality reminds us that disabled people often experience multiple modalities of marginalization in their everyday lives.  

The journey requires cultural awareness, appreciation, sensitivity, and support for all aspects of disability and accessibility. It is a continuous effort to learn new behaviors and habits to build the culture of empowerment and care that will create an accessible Rice. 

Empower Your Journey: Learning & Engagement 

Understanding the cultural and social aspects of disability helps us understand why accessibility standards and best practices are needed. When we think about the digital landscape of Rice and the federal requirements of web accessibility, the following key areas are identified: 

• Websites: All public-facing and internal university websites 

• Electronic Documents: Conventional files such as PDFs, forms, and surveys 

• Online Courses: Materials within learning management systems like Canvas and edX. 

• Media: Social media platforms, posts, and university videos 

• On-Campus Technology: Kiosks and digital signage 

• Procurement and Contracts: Ensuring all new software, applications, and services we acquire are accessible from day one 

• Information Communication Technologies (ICTs): A broad category including all software and digital tools used across the University. 

Many employees at Rice are creators of digital content, managers or admins of websites, or decision-makers in technology usage and purchasing, and are essential partners in ensuring that all digital tools and content are usable by everyone. Our collective goal is to shift our focus to including accessibility as part of our everyday processes, preventing barriers with inaccessible content or technologies before they arise. This initiative is not only about meeting compliance; it's about going beyond compliance and creating better, more inclusive experiences for our entire community. 

The Digital Accessibility website is your go-to hub for learning to build an accessible, inclusive Rice. Here’s how you can get started and become an active participant in building an inclusive Rice: 

• Learn accessibility concepts and skills: sign up and attend relevant training webinars, workshops, and consultations provided through our partnership with Level Access and led by our own accessibility team. 

• Create accessible digital content: integrate standards and best practices for creating accessible documents, multimedia, websites, forms, social media, and communications from the start. Review how-to guides to ensure the content you create and share is accessible. 

• Assess your current digital content: review the content you make available on websites, courses, digital signage, etc. Remove or archive content that is out of date or no longer needed. Test the accessibility of the items and begin to document priority for fixing/remediating. 

• Take Accountability: advocacy, teamwork, collaboration, and a willingness to drive change is needed across campus. Consider building team or performance goals around training participation, percentage of accessible documents created, website accessibility issues reduced and more.  

This commitment is more than meeting regulations; it’s about embodying Rice's core values to deliver on the promise of a culture of care.  

Visit the Connect with the Team page on the Digital Accessibility website for any questions.  

Trisha Whiteman is the Digital Accessibility Coordinator