Dear Faculty:

You have been identified as a faculty member with at least one student in one of your courses who utilizes accommodations through the Center for Students with DisABILITIES (CSD). Recently, an email was sent to you from CSD with information about how to provide accommodations in the virtual classroom.  

Your assistance is vital to fostering an inclusive learning environment in which students of all abilities can fully engage in your courses by ensuring that all your online course materials are accessible. It is all of our responsibility to ensure compliance with federal and state laws as well as the UHS Electronic and Information Resources Accessibility (EIRA) Policy. I realize this may seem like a daunting task in the midst of all the challenges you are currently facing, but we have obtained resources to assist and support you in this effort. 

You have been given access to Blackboard Ally, a tool that assists you in identifying and fixing accessibility issues with course content in Blackboard. The Office of Equal Opportunity Services posted a training video on how to utilize this tool. Blackboard Ally provides you with an accessibility score so you can monitor your progress. Our goal is for all classes to have a “green” score, which means that course content is at least 67% accessible.

The UHS EIRA Coordinator, or someone from the accessibility team, will be reaching out to you starting this week to request access to your course shell in order to resolve any accessibility issues that you are unable to fix on your own. This service will maintain the integrity of the information contained in your course materials; however, student-facing material may be reformatted to meet required accessibility standards. Should you have any questions about online accessibility, please contact the EIRA Coordinator at accessibility@uh.edu.  

I appreciate all your dedication and efforts in providing a top tier education to UH students. I hope you and your families are healthy and safe during this time.

Warm regards,

Paula Myrick Short
Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, UH System
Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, UH
provost@uh.edu | 832-842-0550

This is an official message sent by the University of Houston. To verify the validity of this message, email security@uh.edu.