Author: dchen334

New service for video captioning and audio description launched

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As part of UW–Madison’s ongoing efforts to meet the federal digital accessibility requirements under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the University Digital Accessibility Initiative (UDAI) is excited to announce a university-wide solution to create accessible and compliant multimedia. As of the fall 2026 term: English-language videos now have human-generated captions and computer-generated audio descriptions automatically applied to them when they are added to the university’s enterprise Kaltura MediaSpace tool and embedded into Canvas or Kaltura Media Gallery, or when the video's permissions are updated from “private” to “public” or “unlisted.” This new service makes it much easier for instructors to provide accessible video content and helps support student success.

2026-2027 University Disability Access and Inclusion Obligations and Resources

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Ensuring qualified disabled individuals have access to the university’s programs, services, activities, workspaces, and digital tools and electronic resources is everyone’s responsibility and obligation.

Digital Accessibility Spotlight #2: What Are Titles and Headings?

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Properly structured headings help people find information faster, result in better information layout for individuals with attention and cognitive disabilities, support screen reader navigation, and make content easier for everyone to use.

Digital Accessibility Spotlight: What is digital accessibility?

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In April 2024, the Department of Justice created a new rule for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requiring digital tools and electronic resources used at public universities to be accessible by meeting certain technical standards. The new rule is effective in April 2027.

Updates to procurement – digital accessibility requirements

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The U.S. Department of Justice issued a new rule under the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring all digital tools and electronic resources used in university programs, services, or activities—whether free or paid, developed internally or procured from vendors—to meet specific accessibility standards by April 26, 2027.

Campus Accessible Events guide updated and expanded

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The campus Accessible Events guide supports event planners with inclusive design tips to make their events more seamlessly accessible for everyone across in-person, virtual, and hybrid spaces. Following these best practices can also reduce the need for people with disabilities to request reasonable accommodations. A recent update to the guide expands on physical site accessibility, provides guidelines for creating and delivering accessible content, and more.

Social Media Accessibility

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The Office of Strategic Communication and the Center for User Experience are excited to announce the launch of the Social Media Accessibility page, supporting content creators in ensuring our university social media content can be read and understood by everyone. In this guide, we discuss what to keep in mind when posting to social media. …

Kaltura – Auto captioning for all new videos

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Effective May 13, UW–Madison’s Kaltura media management service will automatically add machine-generated captions (auto captions) to all new videos. Kaltura’s auto captioning process converts audio content of a video into text and displays the text at the bottom of the video screen. Source: Learn@UW Newsletter

Your Role Matters: Share the 10 Digital Accessibility Fundamentals

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As you may be aware, the U.S. Department of Justice extended the compliance deadline for the Americans with Disabilities Act’s digital accessibility rule to April 2027. While the timeline has shifted, our commitment has not. We remain focused on supporting the student experience and advancing equity and inclusion as we enter this next chapter of …

Call to action: Plan now for digital accessibility in course content for 2026-27

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Thank you for all you have done this year to provide excellent learning opportunities for our students. Your commitment to high-quality teaching makes a meaningful difference every day. As you begin planning for the next academic year, we want to share that the federal digital accessibility rule compliance deadline has been extended to April 2027. …