In 2017, Detroit Mercy received a formal complaint from the U.S. Department of Education (DoE), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) regarding website accessibility for individuals with disabilities.
As part of the University’s resolution agreement with the DoE, the institution is required to make websites and files uploaded to these websites accessible to individuals with disabilities.
The Office of Marketing and Communications (MarCom) and Information Technology Services (ITS) have worked to improve the accessibility of website and ITS systems since 2017. However, thousands of inaccessible PDFs, Excel, Word and PowerPoint files have been uploaded to websites over the years and since the DoE/OCR complaint has been received.
These inaccessible files create a potential legal vulnerability for the institution and must now be remedied by those who have authored these files.
Today, faculty and staff who have created files uploaded to websites must review these files and, if necessary, revise them into accessible versions by July 30, 2022.
To do this, please follow these steps:
- Remove files that are not needed.
- Many files are better presented in more accessible formats such as webpages or online forms. Where possible, migrate the content to these formats.
- If you need to revise existing files that are online or create and upload new files to websites, please follow the guidelines to create accessible versions at www.udmercy.edu/faculty-staff/marcom/web/accessibility.php.
- If you experience problems creating accessible files, please contact MarCom at marcom@udmercy.edu.
- Please note that individuals responsible for files must make every attempt to write and revise files into accessible formats prior to contacting MarCom.
Thank you for your cooperation in this important matter.