Accessibility Remediation Process

The ComArts Accessibility Team (part of MSU IT) serves the staff and faculty of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at MSU. Many of the team's responsibilities include a remediation initiative, where team members review professors' courses and rectify inaccessible content. This typically involves addressing contrast issues, refining heading structures, adding alternative text, tagging PDFs, and captioning videos. Professors are required to ensure accessibility of their class content, and our team provides resources and assistance to help them achieve this accessibility.

Michigan State later purchased a tool called Spartan Ally to help this process. Spartan Ally automatically assesses each course and all content within, assigning a percentage value (representing the accessibility level of the course). It also offers guidance on resolving issues, visible to both team members and professors.

Process Overview

Data Analysis - Excel, quantitative data, Spartan Ally data

Discrepancy Identification - Mathematical analysis

Data Inadequacy - Process review

Problem Identification - Issue Identification, efficiency

Brainstorming

Proposed Solutions - Excel Automation, New training, New consultation expectations

Stakeholder Engagement - presentation

Knowledge Sharing - Education, trainings

Challenge

Role

Spartan Ally requires renewal annually. Moreover, as a team, we aimed to demonstrate our progress in enhancing course accessibility, now quantifiable with Spartan Ally. I was entrusted with crafting a presentation about our team's efforts, utilizing Spartan Ally's data to present to the Assistant Dean of the college.

Data Analysis

I led the data analysis, new initiatives creation, implementation, and presentation.

Upon closer inspection, I recognized that the data wasn't as compelling as desired, posing a challenge to achieve the intended goal. The data lacked the persuasive impact necessary for presentation to the Assistant Dean. This approach wouldn't effectively support our objective of showcasing improved accessibility, rendering the initial presentation unsuitable for the intended purpose.

Discrepancy Identification

As part of a more comprehensive analysis, I began performing calculations to assess our progress. This evaluation revealed that our current pace wasn't yielding a meaningful impact and that we were falling behind in terms of accessibility improvements. For example, Out of 245 courses in spring 2022, 60 were under 50%.

Addressing Data Inadequacy

During a more comprehensive analysis, I initiated calculations to gauge our progress. This evaluation uncovered that our current pace wasn't resulting in a meaningful impact, and we were falling behind in terms of accessibility improvements. Additionally, the team has fully remediated 24 courses since Spring 2020, 9 partially. When there are 245 courses total in one semester, we would not be able to keep pace to make a meaningful impact.

Problem Identification

I instigated a process review to explore how we could harness the capabilities of the Spartan Ally tool to achieve higher scores and more compelling results. Two core issues were identified:

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Course Prioritization: Rethinking the way we prioritize courses for accessibility improvements. I discovered that our prioritization criteria included courses with a large number of students, fully online courses, and courses from 2020. However, each had its drawbacks:

Large Number of Students: While this approach seemed promising, there was no clear indication of its impact on accessibility improvements.
Online Courses: The shift to online content due to COVID had made both in-person and hybrid classes heavily reliant on online materials for accessibility.
2020 Courses: The initial list was compiled in 2020, and while it reflected thoughtful planning, many courses were outdated, no longer available, or taught by different professors using varied curricula.

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Ineffective Remediation: Recognizing the necessity for more efficient and effective strategies in remediating content to match the growing demand. Our team was struggling to keep up, as the manual process of reviewing courses took weeks to months and was resulting in falling behind the demand.

Brainstorming

The brainstorming process concluded with 3 options that were eventually presented to the stakeholders and assistant dean.

Proposed Solutions

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2

Creation of a New Spreadsheet

We've revamped our approach to prioritization, now factoring in the Lowest Ally Score combined with the Number of Pieces of Content.

Rationale:

Lowest Ally Score: We've shifted focus to address content with the lowest accessibility scores. It's more effective to allocate our time to content with significant accessibility issues, such as those below 50%. Elevating such content from 50% to 95% creates a more impactful improvement, aiding visibility and aligning with our reporting goals. This approach underscores the utility of Spartan Ally and the meaningful impact of our team's efforts.
Number of Pieces of Content: In some instances, courses contain only a handful of pieces, like a syllabus. While low scores across few pieces are concerning, addressing these is easier for students to manage. For instance, reaching out for accommodation on three documents is more manageable than on 103. In contrast, a course with 100 pieces at 60% signifies a broader issue. Correcting such cases is pivotal as professors with significant content volumes risk propagating accessibility errors throughout their materials.

Empowering Professors with Spartan Ally

By training professors to use Spartan Ally, they can independently address recurring accessibility issues. For instance, professors might grasp consistent heading structures but lack knowledge on alt text significance. Instead of our team manually adding alternative text, my proposed solution involves a team member inspecting a chosen course, identifying patterns of accessibility issues, and compiling a report detailing the specific issue, its importance, and rectification steps.

Consultation Approach:

The team member sets up a consultation with the professor, explaining the issue and sharing the report.
The professor works on rectifying the content, supported by our resources and assistance.
The team member maintains engagement, ensuring accountability and providing guidance.
Concurrently, the team member addresses intricate issues requiring specialized skills.

The team member would also being working on the course, but on more difficult issues that take more training. One issue could be tagging PDFs which is tedious and uses a paid software most professors don’t own. They could also fix issues that aren’t a pattern where the professor may have just slipped up and forgotten such as forgetting to add a transcript for one video.

Combining Metrics: By combining these metrics, I devised an Excel formula that highlights which courses to remediate promptly, ensuring we maximize our impact.

Stakeholder Engagement

With the solutions in place, the next step was to create a persuasive presentation to convince stakeholders, including the Assistant Dean, of the effectiveness of these proposed changes and their potential impact on accessibility improvements. I also included the requested data, but expanded upon it, emphasizing that the data alone held limited weight. I harnessed the data as evidence to support the need for substantial modifications to our system.

Knowledge Sharing

Furthermore, I assumed the responsibility of onboarding new team members into this revitalized process. This encompassed educating them about the entire accessibility remediation workflow and designating a team member to oversee the process. I selected this team member based on her drive to enact impactful changes in her past roles, making her a fitting choice for ownership