Access For All
Cal Poly is committed to creating a culture of access for an inclusive learning environment. This means ensuring that all campus electronic and information technology resources, including course materials, are fully accessible to all students, including students with disabilities.
The CTLT provides workshops and resources to help faculty create accessible course content, including electronic documents, videos and Canvas content. Research shows that all learners benefit from educational materials that are well designed with accessibility in mind.
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Accessible Course Materials Overview
Accessible course materials are required by federal law, CSU policy, Cal Poly University policy and Cal Poly's Academic Senate policy. Course materials that are accessible is also compelling evidence of our collective commitment to an inclusive and equitable campus as well as to success for all students.
The CTLT is committed to supporting Cal Poly's adherence to laws and policies by providing support and resources for accessible course materials. Student learning is maximized when new course materials are created to be accessible and accessibility issues in older materials are fixed.
What happened?
Recent increased attention at Cal Poly (and most all universities) to accessibility stems from a new rule, Title II, issued by Department of Justice in August 2024. It sets an April 24, 2026, deadline for universities to ensure that all instructional materials are accessible. Accessibility has long been required by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
The federal laws mean that all digital instructional materials in the Canvas system, such as Word documents, PDF files, images, videos, and electronic textbooks, must be fully accessible. In addition, all websites, electronic files, and software that faculty require students to access and use outside of the Canvas system must be reviewed and certified as fully accessible. This work is an essential part of campus wide efforts to enhance student equity, retention, and success.
In response to the DOJ rule, the CSU Chancellor’s Office notified each campus of current expectations for accessibility and has been expanding resources to help campuses meet these goals.
How is Cal Poly Responding?
Cal Poly has responded by expanding accessibility support services and adopting new software tools, including:
- TidyUp: This is a software tool embedded in Canvas (links are in every course section navigation menu) that helps faculty efficiently remove outdated files no longer in use in Canvas courses -- and that likely are worsening accessibility scores.
- Access4All Accessibility Report: This new software tool is embedded in Canvas and identifies accessibility issues in course materials (replaces Ally). It also provides guidance to remediate inaccessible Canvas content.
- PDF Remediation Service: The MIDAS service ("Making Instructional Documents Accessible to Students") was launched in Spring 2025 to remediate PDFs that are currently used in courses and are too complex for faculty to fix.
- CTLT Accessibility Workshops and Resources: The CTLT continues to offer accessibility skills workshops and online, self-paced tutorials for faculty to learn to create course materials that are accessible (instead of having to fix them afterward). Most workshops come with stipends.
The CTLT is also providing colleges and departments with regular status reports each quarter summarizing accessibility scores and updates on the most frequent accessibility issues. The "Access4All" institutional dashboard provides detailed data on accessibility from the university level down to individual course sections, essential to track progress and identify areas needing attention and support.
What Is My Responsibility?
Achieving accessibility compliance requires a shared commitment from support staff and faculty working in collaboration. Here is what support staff are doing:
Here is what faculty can do:
- Cull outdated course materials.
The highest initial priority for all faculty is removing older, outdated course materials from Canvas shells that are lowering accessibility scores and obscuring the work to be done. Cal Poly recently resubscribed to the “TidyUp” tool that is embedded in Canvas, which identifies your. unused files quickly and easily so that you can remove them from Canvas. The result is frequently notable (sometimes significant) improvements in accessibility scores and clarity about the types of accessibility issues needing attention for current course materials. - Fix basic accessibility issues.
What is happening?
What does this mean?
What should I do?
Key Findings:
Current Accessibility Levels: BCSM instructional materials currently show departmental Ally scores in the low-40% to the low 70% range, similar to other colleges at Cal Poly and mostly unchanged from prior quarters. Accessibility levels are unchanged in most departments since the initial implementation of Ally in 2020, posing challenges to meet the 2026 compliance deadline.
Top Accessibility Issues: Missing image descriptions (“alt tags”) and inaccessible PDFs remain the most common issues.
Planning and Support: Cal Poly is expanding resources, including establishing a document remediation service to fix inaccessible PDFs and increasing accessibility training for faculty. The Chancellor’s Office is providing PDF remediation software tools and developing a remediation framework for CSU campuses.
Recommendations:
· Leadership Advocacy: Emphasize the importance of accessibility as a priority for student inclusion and success and ensure college-wide engagement.
· Interim Goals: Departments should establish interim accessibility goals with clear progress timelines.
· Leveraging Tools and Training: Encourage usage of tools like TidyUp and Ally and faculty participation in CTLT workshops to identify and fix issues.
· Data-Driven Support: Use Ally dashboard data to recognize high-performing instructors, identify areas for improvement, and focus resources strategically.
Next Steps: BCSM must prioritize a coordinated initiative involving leadership, faculty, and support resources to make significant progress toward the April 2026 federal deadline. Ongoing communication and recognition of achievements will be vital to sustaining momentum and meeting compliance goals.
What is Universal Design?
Universal design is a concept that recognizes, respects, values and attempts to accommodate the broadest possible spectrum of human ability in the design of all products, environments and information systems. (Inclusive Design Research Center, North Carolina State University)
Universal Design for Learning in Higher Education
UDL on Campus: Course Design: Learn how to incorporate principles of Universal Design in your course design, syllabus, activities and assessments.
