State of Digital Accessibility
An executive summary of Texas Tech University's compliance progress under the DOJ Title II WCAG 2.1 AA mandate.
Introduction
In April 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requiring all state and local governments, including public universities, to ensure their digital content conforms to WCAG 2.1 Level AA by April 24, 2026. For Texas Tech University, this mandate reaches every corner of the institution: websites, learning platforms, digital documents, multimedia, mobile applications, and the third-party tools used to deliver services and information to students, faculty, staff, and the public.
In response, Texas Tech established a Digital Accessibility Committee, chaired by the Vice Provost for Texas Tech Online. Composed of representatives from TTU Online, Information Technology, University Libraries, Student Disability Services, Instructional Technology, Academic Affairs, Staff Senate, Marketing and Communications, and Compliance, the Committee set out to build an institutional accessibility program capable of meeting the deadline and sustaining compliance well beyond it.
This report documents the scope, scale, and outcomes of that effort. The sections that follow detail Texas Tech's progress across each major compliance domain: vendor and procurement reviews, website and web application remediation, course content accessibility, training and outreach, PDF remediation tool development, and campus communications. Together, these efforts demonstrate that the university has made meaningful, measurable progress toward a more accessible and inclusive digital environment, while also establishing the people, tools, processes, and infrastructure necessary to sustain continuous improvement.
Vendor & VPAT Analysis
Since this initiative launched in late September 2025, there has been significant progress in identifying and evaluating the extensive volume of software used across Texas Tech’s educational and research missions, much of which had not previously undergone formal vendor review or VPAT assessment. All purchases with a digital component now include the accessibility team in the purchasing workflow. The team conducts an assessment of each vendor considering the number and type of users, whether the product is used in a classroom or research setting, and other contextual factors to determine whether a VPAT is appropriate to request from the vendor.
When a VPAT aligned with WCAG 2.1 AA is provided, the team evaluates it using an internal scorecard that is also utilized by other Texas institutions. When a product does not pass due to significant compliance gaps, the team engages the vendor to request remediation of the platform. Vendors that provide a remediation roadmap or commit to delivering an updated VPAT may receive conditional approval, with the team conducting ongoing monitoring every 60 days. Full approval is granted when the VPAT meets the internal scorecard threshold, achieving an accessibility score of 90% or higher. Faculty-selected research tools intended for individual use are automatically approved, but VPATs are still collected and maintained on file for documentation and compliance purposes. Every vendor interaction — including VPAT analysis, communications between departments and procurement, and remediation meetings — is documented in a centralized tracking system, ensuring full audit readiness and the ability to retrieve any vendor record within seconds. As the vendor procurement process matures, the team will proactively evaluate vendors on behalf of faculty and staff and develop a curated library of accessible options, streamlining selection and improving purchasing efficiency across campus.
Vendors Evaluated by Month
VPAT processing launched in late September 2025, and prior to this initiative, VPATs were not formally assessed at Texas Tech. April 2025 figures reflect a mid-month reporting cutoff and are not yet complete.
Evaluation Summary
Exemptions
Websites & Web Applications
Current Site Score Distribution — April 2026
Score Improvement — May 2025 → April 2026
| Category | May 2025 | April 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas Tech & Departmental Sites | 36.1 | 87.0 | +50.9 pts |
| External / Other Sites | 61.3 | 62.0 | +0.7 pts |
| All Sites (Combined) | 36.7 | 79.0 | +42.3 pts |
WCAG 2.1 AA Score Trend — 12 Months
WCAG 2.1 AA scores May 2025 through April 2026. Texas Tech & Departmental Sites: 36.1, 36.7, 36.8, 41.6, 69.0, 73.4, 75.3, 76.6, 79.6, 81.0, 83.6, 87.0. All Sites Combined: 36.7, 37.3, 37.4, 42.1, 64.2, 65.7, 67.8, 68.9, 71.0, 72.5, 74.6, 79.0. External / Other Sites: 61.3, 61.2, 60.4, 59.4, 42.8, 45.6, 46.4, 46.7, 47.2, 48.4, 52.1, 62.0.
To continue to improve Texas Tech/departmental site scores, Texas Tech is partnering with our CMS vendor to push accessibility fixes applied throughout the shared global template. These changes will propagate automatically across every site built within the OmniUpdate/Modern Campus CMS. Additionally, high priority entry pages were also selected for targeted, high-impact remediation.
Phase 1: Texas Tech provided Modern Campus with representative pages spanning the templates in use across the web ecosystem. Modern Campus allocated a dedicated project manager and design studio, analyzed the pages for widely-affecting accessibility issues, and identified a set of actionable remediation items.
Phase 2 (underway, April 2026): Modern Campus's implementation team is actively integrating identified changes into Texas Tech's CMS instance and global templates. Fixes at this level improve scores across all affected sites automatically — without requiring individual site owners to take action.
Hours remaining after global template remediation are designated for outstanding accessibility efforts to be identified as Phase 2 concludes. The scope of those hours will be reevaluated at that point.
In parallel with website monitoring, Information Technology has undertaken a systematic inventory and accessibility review of web applications across campus. This work (conducted through manual audits, vendor correspondence, and coordination with Application Development) represents significant behind-the-scenes effort to identify and prioritize applications that impact the broadest range of users.
Course Accessibility (RaiderCanvas)
Across 16,689 courses available in RaiderCanvas, our core accessibility metrics have moved in the right direction since baseline monitoring began. The average course score is up, the median is up significantly, and the number of courses falling below Texas Tech's institutional minimum has been cut nearly in half. The data below captures the scale of that progress.
Course Accessibility Progress — Baseline vs. Current
Training & Testing
From November 2025 through April 2026, Texas Tech delivered a structured accessibility training program spanning 9 distinct topics across 32 sessions with a mix of Texas Tech-hosted webinars and vendor-facilitated trainings. Sessions were open to all faculty, staff, and web editors across campus.
| Topic | Sessions | Participants | Avg Duration (min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Accessibility Information Session | 1 | 255 | 76 |
| Accessible Document Basics (Word, PowerPoint, PDF) | 5 | 391 | 83 |
| General Web Accessibility Overview | 7 | 256 | 74 |
| Silktide & Modern Campus: Remediation Workshop | 6 | 116 | 78 |
| Accessible Courses in Canvas | 3 | 123 | 57 |
| Social Media Best Practices | 2 | 112 | 76 |
| Designing Accessibly in Canva | 2 | 155 | 55 |
| Texas Tech-Hosted Subtotal | 26 | 1,408 | — |
| Topic | Sessions | Participants | Avg Duration (min) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accessibility Training for Web Owners and Editors at Texas Tech Silktide | 4 | 355 | 61 |
| Getting Started with YuJa Panorama in Canvas YuJa | 2 | 66 | 72 |
| Vendor-Facilitated Subtotal | 6 | 421 | — |
Group training alone cannot address every accessibility challenge a department faces. To bridge that gap, Texas Tech established a direct consultation service through the Digital Accessibility email inbox, allowing faculty, staff, and web editors who have completed training to request personalized guidance. Since January 2026, 28 consultations have been conducted — 25 completed, 3 in active follow-up — reaching departments ranging from academic colleges to administrative offices and external partners.
Primary Consultation Topics
Silktide is the scanning and monitoring platform Texas Tech currently uses to surface accessibility findings across university websites. As part of the compliance initiative, the Accessibility Committee led a series of sessions that walked editors through their own sites' findings, built hands-on remediation skills, and clarified expectations for ongoing maintenance. Editor engagement with the platform grew substantially over this period, alongside measurable improvements in campuswide website scores. The more meaningful story behind these numbers is distributional: responsibility for accessible content now sits with a much broader set of editors across campus, and the usage data below reflects that shift.
Prior to 2025: 13 total users. Jan–Sep 2025: gradual growth to 83. Oct: 102 new; Nov: 122; Dec: 131; Jan–Apr 2026: 127 additional. Cumulative: 565.
PDF Remediation Tool
Initiative Overview
PDFs represent one of the largest and most persistent accessibility challenges across Texas Tech; spanning course content, administrative documents, and web-embedded resources. Texas Tech must remediate over 500,000 PDFs to meet DOJ Title II requirements. The PDF Remediation Tool is a custom application developed by the IT Application Development team to address this backlog at institutional scale, delivering a scalable and automated solution for producing accessibility-compliant PDFs with consistent quality.
Through disciplined planning and testing, the team identified a solution that will save the university hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to earlier alternatives while delivering a more robust, fully functional tool capable of growing with Texas Tech's needs over time.
PDF Remediation Tool
Digital Accessibility Website & Campus Communications
Texas Tech’s Digital Accessibility website, launched in December 2025, serves as the primary self-service resource hub for faculty, staff, and web editors. In addition to supporting internal users, these pages demonstrate to the public that the university takes accessibility seriously and is making a clear, good faith effort toward compliance and continuous improvement. Data below reflects activity across ttu.edu/accessibility and depts.ttu.edu/online/accessibility over a 90-day period from January 17 through April 16, 2026.
Site section traffic data: Digital Accessibility Hub — 27,097 views; Other Accessibility Pages — 5,760 views; Recorded Training — 5,837 views; Online Accessibility (depts) — 3,072 views; Policies and Standards — 850 views.
| Page | Views | Active Users | Avg Engagement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Accessibility home | 8,580 | 2,109 | 0:59 min |
| Training & Events | 7,256 | 1,870 | 2:07 min |
| Accessibility home (root) | 3,696 | 1,300 | 0:31 min |
| Online Accessibility (depts) | 2,478 | 845 | 0:51 min |
| Recorded Training library | 1,899 | 443 | 1:04 min |
| PDF Curation guidance | 1,483 | 436 | 1:52 min |
| Accessibility Topics index | 1,233 | 437 | 0:36 min |
| Document Accessibility (recorded) | 1,090 | 282 | 6:50 min |
From August 2025 through April 2026, the Digital Accessibility Committee conducted a structured email communications campaign reaching faculty, staff, web editors, and campus leadership. Campaigns covered compliance deadlines, training announcements, vendor accessibility updates, and direct outreach to low-scoring site owners. Together, these communications drove measurable engagement and directly supported the training and remediation activity documented throughout this report.
[1] MailerLite. Email Marketing Benchmarks 2025. Retrieved April 2026 from mailerlite.com/blog/compare-your-email-performance-metrics-industry-benchmarks. Note: open rate data post-2021 reflects some inflation attributable to Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which pre-fetches email content and may record opens without a recipient actually viewing the message. Click rate is considered the more reliable engagement indicator.
Priorities for Continued Progress
The April 24, 2026 deadline marks a compliance threshold, not a finish line. The work documented in this report reflects a strong institutional foundation — but accessibility is dynamic. Sustaining what has been achieved and closing remaining gaps will require ongoing attention across all program areas.