Update: SMHS website accessibility and PDFs

A massive thank you, again, to everyone @SMHS who has spent time helping our public website better meet the federal guidelines on accessibility.

As the April deadline approaches, please take time to review UND’s recommendations for how to make our web pages more accessible (particularly the “PDFs” portion of this web page). Note too that not all “accessibility checker” platforms are the same: these checkers (from Microsoft Office and Blackboard to Adobe and Equidox) vary in scope and quality and might not always do what they say they do.

If you have questions, reach out to Judy Risch, digital access coordinator with UND’s Civil Rights & Title IX Office, at judith.risch@UND.edu.

Over the next week, Brian Schill will email SMHS faculty and staff an updated spreadsheet of PDF files still on the SMHS website that have been flagged as inaccessible. Please review these PDFs one final time and determine if they’re files you have already sufficiently addressed (even if they’re being flagged), if the content can still be converted into a web page, or if they’re obsolete files than can simply be deleted.

Obviously certain PDF files cannot be made “accessible” easily and cannot be converted into web pages (e.g., forms requiring signature). In this case, ask yourself if these forms can be made into docusign documents, for example, or otherwise kept on-hand in your offices but not linked via your website (that is, you can provide them to users upon request via email or another online platform accessible to NDUS faculty/staff like SharePoint).

Thanks for everything you all are doing on this issue and know that UND is far ahead of where most other state agencies are in this process.