Digital Accessibility Officer

Overview

The campus Digital Accessibility Officer leads all Utah State University digital accessibility efforts, including oversight across all university colleges and divisions for compliance with University, state, and federal accessibility standards and regulations. The position promotes and implements accessibility measures and oversees the development and implementation of digital accessibility solutions and training resources.

Responsibilities

• Develop and administer University policies, procedures, processes, and systems related to digital accessibility and ensure all standards are clearly understood and implemented.
• Establish and maintain effective relationships across divisions, departments, business areas, and vendors. Be a champion of accessibility principles. Participate with committees and advise senior leadership on relevant issues.
• Collaborate with partners to identify and prioritize existing and emerging organizational risks, develop mitigation strategies, and implement digital accessibility best practices. Respond to requests for information and data regarding digital accessibility activity.
• Develop and support digital accessibility training efforts and knowledge bases to support all the University’s content creators and digital resource managers. Provide and oversee coaching, leadership, consultation, and the development of training and knowledge base materials.
• Act as system administrator for all enterprise accessibility systems, including tools that support captioning, web accessibility, learning management system accessibility, and University-wide desktop assistive technology tools. Oversee tool user administration, training, and support.
• Conduct periodic accessibility audits of digital resource collections and enterprise systems. Monitor data to measure the effectiveness of accessibility initiatives and provide reports that clearly summarize findings to relative stakeholders. Ensure that risks associated with University activities around digital accessibility are identified, measured, monitored, and managed.
• Evaluate digital assets, applications and services being developed, considered for acquisition, or implemented.
• Hire, train, supervise, and evaluate Digital Accessibility Services staff.
• Manage a department budget, including operational costs and service reimbursement from other campus organizations.
• Manage the development and maintenance of custom software tools created to support internal accessibility efforts.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in a related field, with at least one year of experience implementing digital accessibility practices; OR bachelor’s degree with at least three years of relevant professional experience.
• Strong commitment to accessibility and disability inclusion and understanding of principles of universal and inclusive design.
• Strong communicator, relationship builder and collaborator. Effective oral, written, and interpersonal communication and negotiation skills.
• Strong leadership skills and sense of accountability/ Ability to self-start, plan, and implement large projects, work with limited supervision, and meet deadlines.
• Familiarity with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 Standards.
• Experience with basic web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and their impact on assistive technologies.

Preferred Qualifications:

• In-depth understanding of digital accessibility guidelines and standards including the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504, Section 508, and WCAG as they apply to higher education.
• Working knowledge of leading assistive technologies such as screen readers, speech recognition, screen magnification, alternative input devices, and speech to text software.
• Experience reviewing Accessibility Conformance Reports (ACRs) and auditing third-party vendor technology to identify and prioritize identified necessary fixes.
• Experience with working collaboratively with product teams and vendors to develop, maintain, and implement accessible digital experiences.
• Experience implementing advocacy programs and innovating on behalf of and with people with disabilities
• Experience working with any of the following types of systems: learning management systems, student information systems, multimedia management systems, content management systems, databases.
• Experience conducting system analysis; planning, designing, analyzing, testing, and implementing accessibility solutions.
• Experience remediating digital assets to be accessible including PDF, spreadsheets, presentations, videos, audio files, images, word processing documents, and web pages.
• Certification in accessibili