With a May 11, 2027 national deadline for digital accessibility compliance approaching, Rice University is accelerating efforts to make its digital environment more accessible while continuing a broader institutional commitment to ensuring all members of the Rice community can fully participate in the university experience.
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) establish standards for making digital content accessible and are organized around four principles: Content should be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Compliance with these standards is required by federal nondiscrimination laws — the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Rice’s commitment to WCAG will require action from each community member who creates digital content, from faculty wanting to ensure student success to researchers seeking to expand the impact of their scholarship to staff wanting to improve university processes for all.
For Rice, however, meeting the applicable standard is only part of the effort.
“The regulation provides the floor, but our desire to create the right experience — that is really what sets the ceiling,” said Terrence Gee ’86, vice president of technology solutions and services (TS&S) and chief information officer. “We want to think about accessibility by design.”
Gee said Rice has had accessibility efforts underway independent of the regulatory requirements. The approaching deadline adds urgency and establishes a clear baseline, but Rice’s goal is broader: to make accessibility a consideration whenever the university creates, purchases or provides digital content and services.
A universitywide effort
Rice’s digital accessibility work extends beyond the university’s primary website modernization, which was spearheaded by the Office of Public Affairs and implemented by Siteimprove, a content compliance and performance platform. Other actions include archival strategies overseen by Fondren Library, an increase in digital accessibility tools and services managed by TS&S and essential employee and student advocacy offered by the Student Disability Resource Center, Human Resources and the Office of Equal Opportunity Services.
Rice’s approach combines centralized coordination with responsibility at the department and individual contributor levels. A cross-campus digital accessibility committee helps establish and support universitywide standards, while the university’s digital accessibility function helps translate those standards into practical guidance for the people who create content and manage digital tools.
“The information then has to be cascaded down to the content creators so that they then can have that at their disposal,” Gee said.
Making accessibility part of the process
That shift toward earlier intervention is becoming increasingly important to Rice’s approach.
TS&S is incorporating accessibility checks into the technology purchasing process as well as in the application development and release process. Rice is also putting automated technology in place to support individuals and departments in monitoring and remediating their own content and developing new guides, training and outreach to support accessible content at the creation stage.
The goal is to help content creators understand what accessible content looks like before an issue occurs, rather than relying solely on remediation after content has been published.
Prioritizing the work
Given the size and complexity of a university’s digital environment, Rice is also taking a data-informed approach to prioritizing accessibility work.
The long-term objective is to address the full portfolio of digital content that contributes to the Rice experience. At the same time, TS&S is using information about traffic and usage to identify websites, course materials and other digital resources that are accessed most frequently.
“We ultimately can touch everything,” Gee said. “Yet we also know that it is important for us to try to make as big an impact as we possibly can.”
Legacy content is part of that consideration as well. Rice, led by Fondren Library, is working to establish a common approach for determining when older material should remain readily available and when it can appropriately be archived. Content that remains readily accessible and part of the Rice experience will continue to be considered within the university’s digital accessibility efforts.
An ongoing commitment
The approaching compliance deadline gives Rice a concrete target, but the university’s digital accessibility work is intended to continue well beyond it.
Ultimately, Gee said, the effort comes back to ensuring that members of the university community can participate fully in the Rice experience.
“Digital accessibility must include the way in which people access our digital assets,” he said.
Some members require screen readers, for example, while others require closed captioning. Anticipating these needs embodies Rice LIVED. TS&S is launching the CARE for Digital Accessibility campaign in response. Over this academic year, community members will learn how to check, act, review and embed digital accessibility best practices.
As Rice moves toward the compliance deadline, faculty and staff will play an important role by incorporating accessibility into the everyday work of creating and maintaining digital content that more than both meets and exceeds expectations.
Employees are encouraged to visit digitalaccessibility.rice.edu to learn first how to check any existing digital content for any accessibility issues. TS&S also invites employees to reach out to the team for specific questions.