Center for Teaching and Learning


A Teaching Minute from the Center for Teaching & Learning

September 11, 2026

Working together to create an accessible campus

While regulations matter, accessibility is ultimately about people.

Creating an accessible campus, including all aspects of UVM’s digital presence, is a shared institutional responsibility. Equitable access to learning is rooted in Our Common Ground and helps ensure that everyone in the UVM community can participate fully.

This week’s Teaching Minute is the first of a few that we'll send to you this fall to share information and resources for creating accessible learning materials, a key part of meeting the requirements of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Preventing barriers to learning

Updates to ADA regulations shift the focus from reacting to accessibility needs to preventing barriers before they occur. Public educational institutions must now ensure digital content is accessible from the outset.

To comply with federal regulations, UVM has set an operational target for all course materials to be digitally accessible according to the international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) by April 2027.


Again, while regulations matter, accessibility is ultimately about people. Many people benefit from accessible learning environments, including people with documented disabilities, people with accessibility needs they may not yet recognize, people experiencing temporary injuries or chronic health conditions, multilingual learners, and neurodivergent individuals.

Resources and support

The UVM Office of Accessibility Services (OAS) has resources and services to help you better understand the specific WCAG requirements.

Their Accessible Standards for UVM Digital Course Materials webpage provides detailed information on topics such as:

  • Syllabus policy statements  
  • General guidelines for all types of course materials, including nested headers, text descriptions for images, color contrast considerations, captions and transcripts, list formatting, descriptive text for links to websites 
  • Guidelines for tables, charts, graphs, equations, and maps 

OAS also offers:

Here at the Center for Teaching & Learning, we also offer support and workshops to help you begin this work. This fall, we're introducing our CALM (Creating Accessible Learning Materials) workshops that explore why digital accessibility matters, introduce a framework for creating accessible courses, and share the resources that are available to support this work.

This fall, our friends at the Writing in the Disciplines office are offering a workshop, Pedagogy of Accessibility: How Accessible Documents Support Writing in Your Classes. 

In our October 23 Teaching Minute, we'll introduce new OAS tutorials and other resources for creating accessible course materials.  

Happy teaching!

The Center for Teaching & Learning
ctl@uvm.edu
Book a consult with us
www.uvm.edu/ctl