Digital accessibility student guide

 Improving the accessibility of our online materials and systems is a University-wide goal to improve the experience of all staff and students at City. Our staff are working to ensure that all materials achieve digital accessibility standards. Students are encouraged to learn about how to improve their own digital accessibility practices, both to benefit their fellow students and develop employability skills. This guide will provide information on what City are doing to improve digital accessibility and also provide you with guidance on how to create digitally accessible content for:

• Assignments
• City blogs
• Forum posts
• Multimedia assignments.

The UK government has also emphasised the importance of digital accessibility. Specifically, the Equality Act (2010) protects disabled staff and students from discrimination. The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 makes explicit the need for digital materials from public bodies to be accessible. In addition to the public-facing and internal websites, University online teaching, learning, research and staff platforms are included as part of the directive. These regulations came into force in the UK on 23rd September 2018 and originate from the EU Web Accessibility Directive (2016/2102). 

Find out more about what we're doing to promote Digital Accessibility at City, University of London and the accessibility of our systems from City’s accessibility statement.

1.  The University has a Digital Accessibility Working Group focusing on improving accessibility of digital content and systems. Membership ranges across the schools, staff and student groups and professional services. 
2. The University has invested in a three-year Digital Accessibility Project to provide expertise, tools and consultancy in order to audit, improve and develop maturity in Digital Accessibility in the University. 
3. There is student representation and engagement in projects, co creation of resources, testing, and recommending tools and approaches for digitally accessible practice.
4. Training programmes and online guidance have been developed and released for all staff roles and students to ensure they are aware of the requirements and have the skills needed to create and update content 
5. We have begun to review, write, document, and make available accessibility statements for all our digital systems. 
6. A tracked support request has been set up on the University service platform for staff digital accessibility queries. 
7. In our Online Learning Environment (Moodle), we enabled an instructor content accessibility reporting tool (Ally) on all our modules in July 2022.
8. In our Online Learning Environment (Moodle), we enabled a student automated format conversion tool (Ally) on all modules in July 2022. 
9. We have an annually agreed caption correction approach for educational audio and video and a budget to support this activity. 
10. We enabled automated captions and transcripts across all our educational multimedia platforms in 2022. 
11. We have an Opt Out Lecture Recording Policy for face to face and online lectures from 2022.