Accessibility

My skills at creating an accessible user experience has been growing since 2010. I’ve attended many conferences and even helped put on several of the Digital Collegium Accessibility Summits (2020 through 2023). In 2024 I earned my Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) from the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP).

OCR Complaint Response

I have always pushed for creating accessible digital spaces for all, but was too frequently overruled in design decisions by, though well intended, those not well versed in digital accessibility. This lead to my continual frustration and a web presence that was not optimized for everyone.

In August of 2018 the Office for Civil Rights received a complaint against over one hundred higher education institutions which included every Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) school. At that time the President of Southwest Tech gave a mandate that our school website would be 100% compliant from that time on. This was the perfect opportunity to put in place working procedures that would keep our site in line with current Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

We set our goal on WCAG 2.1 AA as our standard. A student worker and I, along with assistance from our graphic designer, reworked the site within three weeks to be compliant. The site had sustained the WCAG 2.1 AA standard through the end of my tenure at that institution.

From early September of 2018 to 2023, swtc.edu had ranked high in the WebAIM Million: “an accessibility evaluation of the home pages for the top 1,000,000 web sites”. No other Wisconsin Technical College or University of Wisconsin school had maintained this standard of excellence.