Coming April 24th - Part 2

Faithful blog readers may recall our post from last December reporting on a new policy that all course material had to be made accessible to disabled students as of April 24th.* It was unclear then what exactly is required and how course materials, which may be printed, video, or audio, would have to be adapted.

We are now two weeks from the deadline. EdSource is carrying an article, derived from a Daily Cal piece, describing problems at Berkeley in making the adaptation. The EdSource article doesn't seem to recognize that this is a systemwide challenge, not just a Berkeley issue:

UC Berkeley faculty are scrambling to meet changes to Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, leaving them feeling both unsupported and concerned about revamping online materials, the Daily Californian reported. Professors have until April 24 to make digital course materials accessible online. Previously, according to the Daily Cal, online content accessibility standards for these materials were reserved for public resources. Additional measures to ensure accessibility have been implemented based on students’ accommodations. 

The U.S. Department of Justice sued the university in 2022 for allegedly failing to meet the standards. UC Berkeley was given 3 1/2 years to comply, the Daily Cal reported. Some professors, for example, noted that software designed to build websites — or format mathematical formulas — can’t be easily converted to compatible formats, including PDFs, or isn’t screen-reader accessible. Others have voiced concern that public materials may now be removed as a result, which happened after the 2022 lawsuit...

Full story at https://edsource.org/updates/uc-berkeley-faces-deadline-to-make-online-materials-ada-accessible.

There seems to be a UC-wide problem with not much time to fix it. 

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2025/12/coming-april-24th.html.