Digital Accessibility
All digital content you create and provide must be accessible. Read on to learn more about creating accessible content and resources to support accessibility remediation.
Web Accessibility Standards
The University at Buffalo requires its web content to be accessible to everyone, including individuals with physical, sensory, or cognitive impairments, as well as those who use assistive technology.
In 2024, the federal government updated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to establish guidelines for digital content accessibility. The ADA Title II regulations mandate that all digital content must meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA standards—the most widely accepted global benchmark for digital accessibility.
These regulations apply to the School of Dental Medicine and all faculty, staff, and students who create digital content.
UB and the UBSDM must comply with these regulations by April 24, 2026.
What do the regulations apply to?
ADA Title II covers:
- Websites and web applications
- Mobile apps
- Digital course materials
- Video and audio content
- Social media posts
- Electronic documents, including PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, etc.
- Web forms
Resources
Making Accessible Content
The Accessibility at UB website provides information on digital accessibility and guides to making your digital content accessible for websites, documents, videos, course content and more. Highlights include:
- Web accessibility fundamentals
- Creating accessible documents: Word, PDF, PowerPoint
- Video and audio tips: Captions, transcripts, descriptions
- Social media best practices
- Classroom and online instructions
- Procuring accessible technology
In addition, this website has comprehensive information about training resources, accessible technology, and more.
Expectations and Procedures
Email content and any attachments must be made accessible. Please follow the University at Buffalo's email accessibility guidelines.
Important: To ensure your email is approved for distribution to a list serv within an appropriate timeframe, you must ensure it meets accessibility guidelines.
PDF documents need to be made accessible.
When asking for help remediating a document, requesting that a PDF be sent via email or posted on a website, you can expect the following:
- A review of whether the document could exist in a different format (web content or email text).
- An evaluation of the complexity and length of the document.
- If deemed too complex, the document will need to be sent out for remediation at a cost.
- Or, the document will be remediated in-house.
- A request for the original Word document (source file), or that the Word document be built using accessibility practices.
Regardless of whether the document is remediated in-house or by an external provider, a minimum turnaround time of 1-2 weeks is expected.
If you request photography for your event from SDM Marketing and Communications, you can expect the best photos to be edited and uploaded, typically fewer than 20 total photos. If you need a specific photo, please specify this before the event.
If more than 20 photos are needed for your event, you will be asked to provide alt text for all of the photos to ensure they meet accessibility guidelines before being uploaded.
If you are working with a vendor for photography, ask them about providing alt text.
All web content must be made accessible.
This includes content posted to a webpage, including:
- PDFs
- Photos
- Videos
- Links
- Presentations
- Journal Articles
- Forms
With the addition of new content, depending on its scope, you can expect a minimum of a week's turnaround to ensure the content meets accessibility guidelines.
Questions?
Cass McAllister
Marketing and Digital Media Specialist
Office of the Dean
Jason Chwirut
Curriculum Management Coordinator & Media Specialist
Office of Academic Affairs