Lessons learned at the CreativePro Accessibility Summit

Headshot of Heather Jansen, Web and Digital Publishing Coordinator
Heather Jansen
Web and Digital Publishing Coordinator
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Access to information is a human right.

Vitaly Friedman 
founder, smashingmag

The Accessibility Summit, hosted by CreativePro in October, gave me incredible insight into what accessibility means and how it affects everything we do in the College of Medicine’s all-digital curriculum. 

Three important takeaways  

  • Disability = Mismatched human interactions

    Accessibility encompasses neurodivergence and physical limitations. People do not think of themselves as disabled, because they rely on accessibility all the time. (I learned that I have struggled with three disabilities. Not a shock, but it explains a lot.) 

  • Accessibility is not something we add to our digital content, but something we start with.

    Each one of us is responsible for accessibility.  

  • Our team is already designing toward accessibility.

    Including good design, consistent use of styles and templates, and having closed captions for videos. 

Digital accessibility gives students, faculty, and staff equitable and inclusive access to WSU’s digital content and technology. It means that our materials are easily accessed, navigated, and understood by all people, including those with visual, auditory, motor, and cognitive disabilities.

  • Email newsletters 
  • PowerPoint presentations 
  • Digital curriculum 
  • Social media 
  • Videos 
  • Websites 
  • SharePoint 
  • OneDrive 
  • PDFs 
  • Word documents 
  • Handbooks 
  • Policies 
  • Forms 
  • Third-party apps 

What you can do 

Universal design aims for solutions that works for the full spectrum of abilities. Guess what? Our materials are already more than 50 percent there!

Strive for progress, not perfection.

Dr. David Perlmutter 

No one person does accessibility. It will take all of us to make our content accessible, and we can start in small ways. 

Created by Amy Denman in EdTech, the PowerPoint presentation templates have digital accessibility built in. 

Learn the best practices. 
Learn the best practices for writing and adding alt-text to images.  

Accessibility is not a checklist

If you do not intentionally include, then you unintentionally exclude.

Mojolaoluwa Aderemi-Makinde
Head of Brand and Reputation, Google 

It will never be done.  If we work together and embed it into the culture of the college, we can have a digital curriculum that is easily accessed, navigated, and understood by all.  

Let’s start with awareness and intention. What is one thing you can do today to make your content more accessible to all? 

Do you have questions about accessibility in your materials?

Please get in touch! We'd be happy to help.

Warning: Copyright restrictions

This course content and all writings and materials provided to you at the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine are protected by federal copyright law and Washington State University policy. The content is copyrighted by the Washington State University Board of Regents or licensed to the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine by the copyright owner. Limited access to this content is given for personal academic study and review purposes of registered students and faculty of Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. You shall not otherwise copy, share, distribute, modify, transmit, upload, post, republish, reuse, sell, gift, rent, lend or otherwise disseminate any portion of this course content without permission in writing, signed by an individual authorized by Washington State University.

 

The Digital Publishing team makes every effort to ensure these educational materials are accessible to all learners. If you run into problems, please contact us with your concerns at medicine.digipub@wsu.edu. We will respond within 2 business days.

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