Tag Archives: accessibility

Building Inclusive Digital Environments for Research

By | June 10, 2024
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Content team concept illustration

Research is how we learn, but our findings depend upon robust data, derived from the populations we seek to serve. As teams build digital environments for research, effort must be put into ensuring that those environments support the populations of study. When constructing digital environments for research, teams must think broadly about the full research experience to include emails or SMS sent, websites, webapps or native apps provided, and any devices included or issued. In addition, it cannot be stressed enough: the work in creating these environments is never done!

ITS furthering accessibility resources at U-M

By | December 12, 2023
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Logos for U-M Information and Technology Services Accessibility and the Jaws, ZoomText, and Fusion programs

ITS maintains licenses for screen reader and magnification software as part of their provision of assistive technology to U-M faculty, staff, and students. The U-M community can now use ITS’s license to access JAWS, ZoomText, and Fusion on their U-M-owned and personal Windows computers in addition to public Sites computers.

Building the world’s first accessible AI chat interface

By | September 14, 2023
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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 »

Interns Telling Stories, Chapter 3

By | June 8, 2023
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Interns Telling Stories. A Tech Thursday newsletter from ITS

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 »

U-M leading the way in assistive technology testing, design

By | January 13, 2022
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A cartoon drawing of a short-haired woman wearing a white shirt with black sleeves and a long blue skirt working on her laptop at a desk with a vase of yellow and blue flowers to the left. The text in a dark blue box to the right says that Morphic makes technology more useable and is now on all Ann Arbor Sites Computers. The ITS logo is below that text.

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.

U-M first university press named as Benetech Global Certified Accessible publisher

By | February 10, 2021
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U-M press logo

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 »

Watch: Lessons learned from quick pivots to online education

By | December 21, 2020
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engineering via zoom

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 »

Accessibility scanner Deque Comply to become Axe Monitor

By | December 14, 2020
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ax monitor logo

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 »

One ITS in action to address accessibility

By | August 27, 2020
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Google Chat bug fix notification

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 »

Profiles in IT: Jackie Wolf—User experience advocate

By | July 10, 2020
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Jackie Wolf

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 »

Retooled computer science course goes all-COVID, all-online

By | April 22, 2020
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laptop in darkened room with surgical mask on the keyboard

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 »

Creating a place where kids of all abilities can play together

By | December 13, 2019
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two boys, one in a wheelchair, playing iGym game.

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 »

ITS and OIE partner with campus to pilot new accessibility tool in Canvas

By | December 10, 2019
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A series of icons that depict vision, hearing, and mobility represent digital and web accessibility

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 »

Tech Tip: Designing for accessibility

By | September 27, 2019
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Tech Tip

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 »

Knox Center celebrates five years in expanded location

By | September 3, 2019
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wall of Knox Center showing images of James Knox

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 »

IT helps transform medical student’s learning experience

By | August 8, 2019
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Jacob Lowy

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 »