Thank you for your continued commitment to accessibility at UM! 

Congratulations on all the hard work! Huge thanks to all faculty and staff for their dedication and vast efforts to fulfill requirements of the Accessible Information and Communication Standard under the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA).

Accessible communications, websites, and print and digital materials ensure everyone has equal access to information, regardless of their abilities. 

Together, we’ve made great strides towards greater accessibility at UM for the May 1 provincial deadline. So far over 5,000 employees completed the mandatory training course mandatory training course in UM Learn.

UM faculty and staff worked diligently to make our print and digital materials and websites and internal sites compliant, with 587 users working in SiteImprove to fix their sites after attending the training. 

Another 300 faculty and staff also attended supplemental training sessions for Microsoft and Adobe accessibility-checker, with more scheduled in coming months. 

Thanks to that immense work by all, UM website content is nearing 90% compliant, improving our accessibility scores by more than 15 points. Continued work will remediate remaining template issues to take us above the required WCAG 2.1 level AA. 

Work included a special project to remediate the Admissions website, converting PDFs to 35 new accessible HTML pages. 

Find more information and resources: Accessibility checklist: What you need to know for May 1 .

Keeping it accessible 

All employees should continue to remediate documents and other materials as needed. 

Most used: Continue to update most-used materials and documents, including course materials and employee documents on SharePoint and Teams. Incorporating accessibility benefits everyone because it’s about creating well-structured and easy-to-use documents. 

People-facing: Documents and services you point people to often — students, prospective students, other employees, prospective employees, retirees, donors, parents, clients, customers, the public — should be accessible and include an active offer.

Learn more about active offers and alternate or accessible formats.

It’s not too late! 

Take advantage of these helpful training courses and other accessibility resources. 

Websites: Recordings of Siteimprove training sessions and support documentation will continue to be available on the Accessibility hub. 

It’s always easier to start with accessibility in mind than to remediate a document and helpful to have a basic understanding of the components that make a document accessible and inaccessible. These resources will get you up to speed.

Documents: Supplemental training sessions on creating accessible documents in Microsoft and Adobe (including PDFs) are available until July 31. Faculty and staff who create PDF documents should take at least one of these training sessions. Additional sessions may be added depending on demand.

Course materials (and more): A course content accessibility checker called Panorama is available in UM Learn for all UM employees including faculty, instructors and staff. Visit The Centre’s Panorama information page for more information. 

Find additional supports: Microsoft accessibility resources (Microsoft support) and Accessibility hub.

Resources/previous UM Today articles 

Apr. 16: Accessibility Checklist: What you need to know, including prioritization for updating documents, info on PDFs and more 

Apr. 9: What is ‘Duty to notify’ or an active offer? Accessibility requirements, including alternate or accessible formats 

Mar. 18: Mandatory training for employees will make UM more accessible for all  (UM Learn course) 

Mar. 12: Accessibility in UM’s digital spaces: Why designing for digital accessibility matters to us all  

Accessibility hub on UM Intranet 

The Accessibility hub on UM Intranet is a self-serve site resource with definitions and documentation, links to the Act, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, instructions and techniques for creating accessible content, Siteimprove training and information, and much more.   

Visit the Accessibility hub for more information about the Information and Communication Standard (AMAIC) and links to documentation and tools to support this effort.