Is This Accessible?

Welcome to Accessibility & Inclusion in Interactive Media.

I'm Joel Salisbury. I work at UConn on digital products, design, development, and institutional technology, and I also teach in DMD. A lot of my professional work involves making decisions about how real digital systems should work for real people — which is one reason I care about accessibility as more than a checklist.

This course is about how we design, build, evaluate, and improve digital experiences so more people can actually use them.

We'll work with design, code, standards, law and policy, assistive technology, testing tools, and AI. But the course is not primarily about memorizing rules.

A question we'll return to all semester is:

When we call something accessible (or inaccessible), what evidence supports that claim?

Your team assignment is available in HuskyCT/Blackboard.

Find the other members of your team and sit together:

Be ready to briefly introduce yourself:

• Your name
• Your team
• What part of digital media/design interests you most
• What you think this course might be about
• One thing that comes to mind when you hear the word accessibility

This course is built around problems rather than long lectures.

Across the semester you will complete:

• 10 team challenges
• 3 individual quizzes
• 1 final project

Most challenges follow a similar loop:

Encounter a problem -> investigate -> make something -> test it -> defend it -> critique it

Generative AI is permitted unless an assignment says otherwise, but:

You are responsible for determining whether important claims are actually supported.

Your team has been asked to evaluate a digital experience.

For now, think about that in plain language:

Spend about 10 minutes using the experience as though you were actually trying to register for the event.

Explore it however seems natural.

When your team has an answer to the question “Is this accessible?”, raise your hand.

Be Ready to Explain

Your team should be able to answer:

1. Is it accessible?
2. What makes you say that?
3. How did you arrive at that judgment?
4. How confident are you?

Do not worry yet about producing a formal accessibility audit.

You've made an initial judgment about the Design Futures experience.

Now ask a harder question:

Was your answer based on your own experience? A technical standard? University policy? Federal law? An automated tool? AI?

Challenge 01 asks each team to investigate one of those sources of authority more carefully.

Before you leave, make sure your team has:

• identified your assigned lens;
• opened Challenge 01;
• set up a shared place for notes;
• made a plan for Session 02.