Digital Accessibility at Southern Miss
Digital Accessibility at Southern Miss
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The University of Southern Mississippi is committed to making our course materials, documents, and websites accessible to everyone. We want every student, faculty member, and staff member to have a rewarding experience with our digital content, regardless of ability or the technology they use. Below, we explain what digital accessibility means, what the law requires of us, and how you can help.
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See something that is not accessible? We ask that you please let us know. Reporting it helps the whole university improve. You can submit our web accessibility issue form. |
What Is Digital Accessibility?
Digital accessibility means designing course content, documents, presentations, and websites so that everyone can perceive, navigate, and use them, regardless of ability, device, or connection speed. We want our materials to work for students and colleagues who use screen readers, keyboard-only navigation, captions, magnification, or voice control, as well as anyone working from a phone, recovering from an injury, or learning in a second language.
Accessibility is proactive. Accommodations are reactive.
For years, higher education treated accessibility as something to arrange after a student asked for it. We believe a better approach builds accessibility in from the start: applying a heading style correctly, describing an image in alt text, and adding a caption before a video is posted. When we build materials this way, they work for everyone the first time, including students with permanent disabilities, students with temporary conditions such as a concussion or a broken arm, multilingual learners, and anyone reading on a small screen.
In practice, this shows up in everyday choices we can all make: using Word’s built-in heading styles instead of just bolding text, writing a link as “review the syllabus” instead of “click here,” adding alt text to a graph before it goes into a Canvas module, and checking color contrast before a flyer goes to print.
The Laws & the Deadline
As a public university, we are guided in everything we build by federal civil rights law and by the standards we have adopted in our Accessible Technology Policy. Three frameworks work together:
Framework |
What It Covers |
| Americans with Disabilities Act | Requires state and local government entities, including public universities like ours, to make web content, mobile apps, course materials, and other digital services accessible to people with disabilities. |
| Rehabilitation Act | Requires that electronic and information technology we procure, develop, or use be accessible. |
| Web Content Accessibility Guidelines | The technical standard we have adopted for measuring whether our digital content meets these legal obligations. |
2024 |
April 2027 |
April 26, 2027 |
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| DOJ finalizes the ADA Title II rule | One-year extension is granted | Our new compliance deadline |
Policies
Mark your calendar: April 26, 2027
The U.S. Department of Justice’s ADA Title II rule originally set an April 2026 compliance date for large public entities like us. In April 2026, the DOJ issued an interim final rule extending that date by one year. Our compliance deadline for digital content, course materials, documents, and websites is now April 26, 2027.
This extension gives us more time to do this work well, but it does not change our standard. Every course, page, and document built or updated between now and then should meet WCAG 2.2 AA, and we encourage you to start now rather than wait until the deadline.
If content genuinely cannot be made accessible, our Accessible Technology Policy provides two options: submitting a request for an exemption or providing the content in an alternate format within five business days of the request. Additional cost is not a valid reason for an exemption.
You can read more about our commitments in our Accessible Technology Policy and our Web Accessibility Statement. For the latest on how the federal rule affects the university, see our ADA Accessibility page.
How Are We Doing?
We are striving to achieve and maintain WCAG 2.2 Level AA across our course materials, documents, and websites. We are committed to regularly monitoring our digital content and making updates when issues are discovered or brought to our attention, so that we can be inclusive of everyone and provide high-quality access to content.
We are aware that some existing content, particularly older PDFs and legacy pages, may not yet be fully accessible. We are working to bring everything to a consistent standard, and we welcome your patience as we do. If you reach a page or document that is not accessible to you, please let us know using the resources below.
Resources & Contacts
We would like to hear from you. Here is how to reach us.
- Center for Faculty Development: Course design consultations and support. 601.266.4196.
- Student Accessibility Services: Accommodations and alternate formats for students. 601.266.5024.
- Office of General Counsel: ADA policy questions 601.266.4466.
- Mississippi Relay Service: For individuals with hearing impairments. 1.800.582.2233 (TTY).
- Accessible Technology Policy: Our official standards for procurement, development, and web content.
- Web Accessibility Statement: Our public commitment to an accessible website.
This page summarizes federal accessibility requirements as of July 2026 for general guidance. It is not legal advice. For our official policy language, please refer to the Accessible Technology Policy and Web Accessibility Statement linked above.
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