On August 21, 2023, the University of Michigan launched what we believe to be the first accessible web chat interface to send prompts to GPT-4 and other large language models — U-M GPT. This application is designed for accessibility according to international standards, optimized for usability with common assistive technology, and built without the barriers found in some… Read More »
Chapter 3 of the ITS LinkedIn Newsletter, Interns Telling Stories, by Adria Shines, Yu-Jin Choi and Josephine Anderson in collaboration with Kat Hanchon, Daki Ravinder and Achaia Murphy went live this afternoon. The new chapter features an interview with Christopher Eagle, strategist and enterprise architect for Information and Technology Services, along with a piece highlighting accessibility services through the Knox Center. The full newsletter is… Read More »
New activity translating academic research and technology, reported by Innovation Partnerships, a unit based in the Office of the Vice President for Research, ranges in scope from genetic data accessibility to internet interfaces for the visually impaired.
Learn how ITS Teaching & Learning collaborated with ITS Digital UX and DISC teams to bring a crucial Canvas app up to current technology standards and meet the needs of faculty and course administrators.
U-M will be a beta site for Morphic, a new system that makes technology significantly more usable for individuals with disabilities and others who have difficulty using standard digital setups. Morphic is now available on all Campus Computing Sites computers on the UM-Ann Arbor campus. Learn about how Morphic came to U-M, the benefits of Morphic, and how you can provide your feedback on new features as they are developed.
University of Michigan Press is now a Benetech Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) publisher, and is the first university press to receive this certification. Benetech, a nonprofit that empowers communities with software for social good, issues this accreditation to those publishers who produce EPUBs that meet a full range of accessibility features required to support readers with and without disabilities… Read More »
The Michigan IT News website and newsletter have been redesigned with input from the Michigan IT News Working Group and the ITS Communications Team.
The winter term that begins in January will be the third term in a row that instructor David Chesney’s unique software design course will be online, and he has learned from each iteration. For the past decade, the U-M electrical engineering and computer science lecturer has taught Software for Accessibility, a class he designed in which undergraduate students… Read More »
This year, Information and Technology Services has been implementing Deque Comply – a best-in-market, cloud-based enterprise accessibility scanner. The product, which is switching its name to Axe Monitor, is designed to help schools, colleges and units have a clearer understanding of the accessibility effectiveness of their websites, and to be able to assess how they are doing. The… Read More »
A key ITS area of focus is “to work as one ITS team to improve the way we serve the U-M campus.” This has the potential for significant impact. A recent dialogue between the digital accessibility and collaboration teams is an outstanding example of how ITS can benefit users far beyond our campus. Like many vendors of cloud-based… Read More »
Jackie Wolf is a web project manager and an user experience specialist for Michigan Medicine Department of Communication. Primarily she and her team build and support websites for Michigan Medicine. She also ensures that the web technology is robust, flexible, accessible, and secure. Collectively, the team gathers data to look for lessons about how frequently the content is… Read More »
A COVID-era redesign of a long-running computer science undergraduate course will put up to 120 U-M computer science and engineering students to work designing software to tackle problems related to the crisis during the 2020 spring/summer semester. Computer science and engineering lecturer David Chesney has run the class for years as an in-person offering called “Software for Accessibility.”… Read More »
While adaptive sports provide opportunities for children with mobility disabilities to participate in athletic events, these games are not designed for competitive play between kids with disabilities and those without. iGYM, an augmented reality game system created by a team of U-M researchers, is looking to change that. The current implementation of the system resembles soccer — or… Read More »
The Office for Institutional Equity (OIE), the University Library, Information Technology Services (ITS), College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts (LSA), and other campus partners are piloting the Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDOIT) in Canvas to address more content accessibility issues earlier in the course creation process. The team, collectively the Learning Materials Accessibility Team (LMAT),… Read More »
This month’s Tech Tip is a little different than my previous tips. Rather than sharing a specific tool, I wanted to share some resources created by Karwai Pun on the topic of designing for accessibility. These easy-to-read posters cover designing for many different users: those with low vision, who are hard of hearing, experience dyslexia, and more. In… Read More »
Although many features of Sites computer labs are responsive to the needs of disabled students, there are some types of accommodations that can best be provided from a customized location. This location is the James Edward Knox Adaptive Technology Computing Site, commonly known as the Knox Center, which completed its move to the second floor of the Shapiro… Read More »
First-year medical student Jacob Lowy has moderate-to-severe hearing loss in his right ear. Working together, HITS, ITS, and other units on campus leveraged IT that has transformed his experience—including adding captions to lecture videos and setting up realtime captioning (CART) during lectures. Lowy realizes that when something isn’t visible, it’s not always easy to understand. This often happens… Read More »
Watch this video that showcases a new set of Guiding Principles for Accessibility that ITS published to ensure that people with disabilities enjoy the services it offers to campus.
A new ITS webpage outlines progress to make its workplace more diverse, inclusive, and equitable: Over 450 DEI course completions by 276 staff, a new set of Guiding Principles for Accessibility, and more.
Members of the U-M Accessibility team recently took part in events for Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), May 16. The purpose of GAAD is to get everyone talking, thinking, and learning about digital (web, software, mobile, etc.) access/inclusion and how it affects not only people with disabilities, but also tech usability for everyone. In recognition of the fact… Read More »