Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    College Advising
    Serving Higher Ed
    Chronicle Festival 2025
Sign In
News

Cal State’s Strong Push for Accessible Technology Gets Results

By Josh Keller December 12, 2010
Cal State’s Strong Push for Accessible Technology Gets Results 1
David Wallace for The Chronicle
San Francisco

When Apple launched iTunes U in 2006, dozens of prominent colleges joined the service and posted free course lectures, campus tours, and other materials. Stanford, Duke, and MIT praised the software’s ability to distribute high-quality education to the public.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

When Apple launched iTunes U in 2006, dozens of prominent colleges joined the service and posted free course lectures, campus tours, and other materials. Stanford, Duke, and MIT praised the software’s ability to distribute high-quality education to the public.

But California State University balked.

Officials at Cal State were troubled that the iTunes software was impossible for many disabled people to use. Blind students and faculty couldn’t use screen-reader programs with it. Closed captioning for deaf users was not properly supported. Officials approached Apple. “We got a lot of glad-handing from them” but few substantial fixes, says Deborah Kaplan, who until this year directed Cal State’s Accessible Technology Initiative.

So Cal State asked its 23 campuses not to use iTunes U in most situations until these basic issues were solved.

Over the past five years, Cal State has waged one of higher education’s most aggressive campaigns for accessible technology. It has adopted stringent standards for vendors and employees. Along with other groups, it has helped force Apple, Google, and Blackboard to improve their software or lose the ability to reach Cal State’s 430,000 students.

But the system has also struggled, in ways that reflect problems that all colleges face on the Web. Recent budget cuts have reduced the number of staff members who train employees and convert materials to accessible formats. Ms. Kaplan left in July for another job and has yet to be replaced. These cuts hurt, especially because Web use has advanced to the point where anybody on campus can upload large numbers of documents and Web pages that may or may not be accessible.

Cal State’s dealings with Apple a few years ago, however, show the positive effects that a large university can have. In February 2008, still unhappy with iTunes and iTunes U, the system’s chief information officer and others flew to Apple headquarters to press the company to make more significant changes. In the conversation, Ms. Kaplan recalled, Apple officials noted that no other campus had raised such forceful concerns. (Apple declined to comment for this article.)

“We have an unusual responsibility, given our size, to throw our weight around occasionally,” says Mark Turner, director of the system’s Center for Accessible Media.

Those discussions were followed by additional pressure on Apple from the National Federation of the Blind and the attorney general of Massachusetts. Apple responded by rolling out changes that made iTunes much more accessible to blind, low-vision, and deaf users. The company has since become a leader in making its products accessible, advocates say.

But Cal State has had to pull back on some ambitious goals of its own as its budgets fell victim to the state’s fiscal woes. During the time it was negotiating with Apple three years ago, the system had vowed to make all materials on all campuses meet federal accessibility standards by 2012. This year, though, the system shelved that plan. Officials at several campuses had complained it wasn’t realistic with available resources.

“I don’t think it was really understood how broad and sweeping those requirements were, what was really involved in a system as big and as diverse as CSU,” says Ms. Kaplan, who is now a senior adviser on technology accessibility at the U.S. Social Security Administration.

Suggestions, Not Mandates

Cal State officials say they realize they were pushing too fast. Instead of trying to require complete compliance, they are now focusing their efforts on encouraging continual improvement on each campus and helping campus officials share best practices.

ADVERTISEMENT

Public colleges in most states are required to show that their technology is accessible under state laws based on Section 508 of the federal Rehabilitation Act or related standards. But Cal State’s strategy shift illustrates how difficult it is for colleges to ensure full compliance. The challenges have multiplied in recent years, as the use of technology in the classroom has grown and digital media have become more complex.

How, for example, can officials explain accessible ways to format a Word document to every person—professor, student, and administrator—who can upload materials to a course Web site? How does a campus prevent faculty members from playing uncaptioned videos in class? How can it police a Web site with a half-million pages?

Short answer: It can’t.

“Every content producer, every tech person and manager and maintenance worker—this goes from the student workers who make eight bucks an hour to full professors—every one of them has to understand what accessible technology is and what 508 is,” says Eugene R. Chelberg, an associate vice president for student affairs at San Francisco State University. “Well, boom, that’s not going to happen.”

ADVERTISEMENT

That, he says, is because disability officials simply don’t have the resources to talk to everybody about each new technology used on campus. Even if they did, changing people’s habits when they use computers can be a long, frustrating struggle, he adds.

So instead, Cal State officials say they are focusing on big-ticket items. In 2008 the system raised the minimum price at which a technology contract must be vetted for accessibility, from $2,500 to $15,000. Inexpensive programs are often used by small groups, while expensive programs like learning-management systems or billing software are often used campuswide.

San Francisco State, for its part, has worked on improving its most-trafficked Web sites first and then moving down the list, Mr. Chelberg says. And instead of explaining to everybody how to make an accessible document independently, officials are building a system that makes it easy for a wide variety of people to produce such material.

For instance, when a group on campus redesigns its Web site, the university asks it to use a template that gives the site an accessible foundation, he says. Sites created with the template will have image descriptions used by screen readers, for instance. The university also created syllabus-building software that helps faculty members put their syllabi into accessible formats.

Academe’s ‘Balancing Act’

Mark Turner, the accessible-media official, says what the Cal State system has learned is when to handle things centrally and when to avoid “micromanaging the implementation.” The system typically handles an issue centrally if it saves money, helps establish common reporting objectives or other priorities, or provides leverage over outside vendors or companies that resist spending money to make their work accessible.

ADVERTISEMENT

But at times, the twin goals of avoiding micromanagement and gaining systemwide leverage conflict. Take textbooks, Mr. Turner says. Because faculty members, not institutions, choose which textbook to use, colleges find it difficult to band together and demand versions that can be read by screen readers or other assistive technology.

As a result, publishers have been slow to make both paper and electronic textbooks accessible, he says.

But requiring professors who teach similar courses to all use the same textbook would be a nonstarter. Faculty members have complained that efforts to coordinate textbook selection infringe upon their academic freedom.

Acknowledging those valid concerns while meeting federal statutes like the Americans With Disabilities Act is a “balancing act,” Mr. Turner says. “One of the gentle conversations that needed to happen in our case was to recognize that things like academic freedom exist in the context of a variety of laws,” he says. “Academic freedom is not something that provides a pass from, say, ADA.”

That conversation is critical, he says, because if professors don’t insist on accessible texts, publishers won’t provide them. “When leverage fails, access support wanes.”

We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Technology
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Related Content

Blind Students Demand Access to Online Course Materials
How Cal State Makes Course Materials Accessible

More News

Vector illustration of large open scissors  with several workers in seats dangling by white lines
Iced Out
Duke Administrators Accused of Bypassing Shared-Governance Process in Offering Buyouts
Illustration showing money being funnelled into the top of a microscope.
'A New Era'
Higher-Ed Associations Pitch an Alternative to Trump’s Cap on Research Funding
Illustration showing classical columns of various heights, each turning into a stack of coins
Endowment funds
The Nation’s Wealthiest Small Colleges Just Won a Big Tax Exemption
WASHINGTON, DISTICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES - 2025/04/14: A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator holding a sign with Release Mahmud Khalil written on it, stands in front of the ICE building while joining in a protest. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rally in front of the ICE building, demanding freedom for Mahmoud Khalil and all those targeted for speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Protesters demand an end to U.S. complicity and solidarity with the resistance in Gaza. (Photo by Probal Rashid/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Campus Activism
An Anonymous Group’s List of Purported Critics of Israel Helped Steer a U.S. Crackdown on Student Activists

From The Review

John T. Scopes as he stood before the judges stand and was sentenced, July 2025.
The Review | Essay
100 Years Ago, the Scopes Monkey Trial Discovered Academic Freedom
By John K. Wilson
Vector illustration of a suited man with a pair of scissors for a tie and an American flag button on his lapel.
The Review | Opinion
A Damaging Endowment Tax Crosses the Finish Line
By Phillip Levine
University of Virginia President Jim Ryan keeps his emotions in check during a news conference, Monday, Nov. 14, 2022 in Charlottesville. Va. Authorities say three people have been killed and two others were wounded in a shooting at the University of Virginia and a student is in custody. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
The Review | Opinion
Jim Ryan’s Resignation Is a Warning
By Robert Zaretsky

Upcoming Events

07-31-Turbulent-Workday_assets v2_Plain.png
Keeping Your Institution Moving Forward in Turbulent Times
Ascendium_Housing_Plain.png
What It Really Takes to Serve Students’ Basic Needs: Housing
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin