Testing: We conducted approximately 100 accessibility tests of IT applications and websites for campus and system units. A conservative estimate of the cost of outsourcing this work to vendors is $200k.
Captioning: We captioned over 1,000 hours of media, including video content for 64 different courses, exceeding 99% accuracy rate and achieving fast turnaround time to ensure student success.
Consulting: In the consulting space, we have reached a unique place where the Buff Portal team is willing to jettison any new features that do not meet the DAO’s accessibility standards and find accessible frameworks to replace them with.
Training: We provide on-demand and online training that reached several hundred CU faculty and staff last year, including the President’s Office and DEI office, and staff at the system level. Both the reach and the recognition of our training efforts have increased considerably over the last year.
Outreach
Newsletter and Social Media: Our outreach efforts include a nationally recognized newsletter with over 650 subscribers and a newly launched LinkedIn profile that is already trending toward 150 followers.
Captioning partnerships: We have helped over 50 CU units to deliver captioned video for their needs, while adjusting our vendor contracts to ensure that any future captioning request they receive from new units will alert us, allowing us to ensure a uniformly high level of service across the campus.
Process Improvement
Automation: We have employed time-saving solutions in our captioning workflow, without sacrificing quality. We are conducting an ongoing assessment of the accuracy of AI captioning solutions and will initiate a transition from costly human-produced captions to less costly AI services as soon as we can ensure we can maintain the level of accuracy and service with the new workflows.
Research: The testing process is state of the art and is based on a proven methodology that is robust enough to produce findings worthy of presentations at academic conferences and publication in peer-reviewed academic journals (in 2022 our staff delivered four presentations and co-authored a scholarly article “Tech Tools in Pandemic-Transformed Information Literacy Instruction: Pushing for Digital Accessibility.”)
