OAS assists faculty in understanding and implementing accommodations tailored to the unique needs of each student. Accommodations are determined on a case-by-case basis through an individualized and interactive process that considers the student’s specific needs and the essential requirements of the course.

Key areas of faculty collaboration include:

• Interactive Process: Engaging with faculty to explore flexible and effective ways to implement accommodations while maintaining academic integrity.
• Guidance and Resources: Providing tools, training, and strategies to ensure classroom materials, activities, and assessments are accessible.
• Proactive Communication: Offering consultation to address potential barriers and develop proactive solutions that benefit all learners.

The interactive process is a cornerstone of OAS’s work with faculty. This collaborative dialogue helps:

• Identify reasonable accommodations that align with the essential course requirements.
• Ensure accommodations provide students with disabilities equal access without fundamentally altering the nature of the course.
• Support faculty in balancing academic rigor with the legal and ethical obligations to provide accessibility.

Examples of accommodations may include, but are not limited to:

• Extended time on exams or assignments.
• Administering exams through the Exam Proctoring Center
• Accessible course materials, such as captioned videos or text-to-speech-compatible files.
• Note-taking assistance or the use of assistive technologies.

OAS welcomes inquiries, feedback, and requests for consultation. Faculty are encouraged to:

• Contact OAS early in the semester to discuss potential accommodation needs for their courses.
• Provide input during the accommodation planning process to address course-specific considerations.
• Share any concerns or suggestions to enhance accessibility and inclusivity in their teaching practices.

As you create and manage courses in Brightspace, you have an accessibility checker at your disposal: Ally. This tool measures the accessibility of the materials you create and post, and offers tips for improving the accessibility of your course materials.

It's important to note that Ally and all other automated accessibility checkers will only pick up 25-30% of digital accessibility errors. It is up to individual faculty to make sure materials and courses are fully accessible.

The Center for Teaching & Learning

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is an invaluable resource for faculty wanting to learn more about working directly with Ally in Brightspace.

Every instructor is responsible for making and using fully accessible documents and readings in all their courses. Each document uploaded to Brightspace must be fully accessible. Brightspace provides an accessibility checker ("Ally"), and both CTL and OAS are available to help with remediating individual documents and readings. This includes .pdfs.

For .pdfs that come from external sources (such as journal publishers):

1. Make sure to use external sources that explicitly state that their .pdfs meet the PDF/UA1 accessibility standard.
2. If an external .pdf is not accessible, go back to the publisher, and ask them to either remediate the document, or to provide a remediated, fully accessible version.

For .pdfs that faculty create for courses (such as scanned readings):

1. Use OAS' Optical Character Recognition (OCR) scanning services to create .pdfs. When OAS creates an OCR .pdf, we check through its accessibility to ensure it meets the PDF/UA1 accessibility standard.

The Office of Accessibility Services currently provides a number of digital accessibility services free for UVM faculty. These include:

• Captioning and Transcription Services
• Audio Description Services
• PDF Remediation Services
• Accessible Document Conversion

Accessibility Consultations

If you are interested in a one-on-one consultation about accessibility, or have specific digital accessibility questions, please email UVM Web & Digital Accessibility Specialist Audrey Homan at choman@uvm.edu, or reach out using our online contact form.

Beginning in Spring 2026, the Office of Accessibility Services has begun scheduling workshops for faculty on digital accessibility. The full current schedule is available here.

To be informed as soon as these workshops become available, please subscribe to the OAS Newsletter, via our contact form.

To register for a specific workshop and request accommodations, use this registration form.