A shared responsibility: Employees to help ensure accessibility of UM information

As part of its commitment to creating an inclusive community, UM has been undertaking a comprehensive response to the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA), which became provincial law in December 2013. The purpose of the AMA is to clearly identify, prevent and remove barriers for people with disabilities.

This third standard of the Act focuses on ensuring barrier-free communication and access to information — removing and preventing barriers that exist digitally (including websites), in print or through interaction with technology or people. The deadline to meet standard requirements is May 1, 2024.

UM has created a project team, which continues to make progress towards meeting the requirements for AMAIC, the Accessibility for Manitobans Act Information and Communication standard. The team’s work is to: collaborate with stakeholders to review and update policies; work with site content authors, providing an accessibility assessment tool; and implement specific accessibility training for the university community.

To note: Compliance with the AMAIC standard is a shared responsibility, and university staff will be asked to help fulfill compliance requirements, helping make our community more inclusive. It’s important for each area to appoint site/content delegates as needed, who can participate in the Siteimprove training, and who will then complete the work by the May 1 deadline

Read on for an overview of recent and coming work.

Web accessibility compliance and training

To support our compliance with the web-related sections of the AMAIC standard, UM has purchased Siteimprove, which offers tools to help identify accessibility issues so that site owners and content authors can remove barriers and adhere to international Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) across all levels.

Many UM site owners and content authors completed their Siteimprove training in February and will receive their Siteimprove access in the coming weeks. Additional training sessions will be available in March, and recorded training will be available for future reference.

Additional information on web content compliance and remediation will be provided in coming weeks.

According to the accessible web content, section 7 of the AMA standard, UM digital content — both internet and intranet content — needs to meet or exceed accessibility guidelines by May 1, 2024 in these two ways: 

1. All content published on or after May 1 needs to be accessible.
2. Any content related to services or products needs to be accessible as/of May 1, regardless of when it was published.

As UM site owners and content authors work to remediate their content, they are advised to prioritize high-traffic pages related to products and services.

AMAIC mandatory training for all staff

By mid-March, details will be provided on mandatory training for the AMAIC standard, including how to verify that staff have completed their training.

The training will include how to identify, prevent and remove barriers to accessible communication, as well as a review of the Human Rights Code and the Accessibility for Manitobans Act. AMAIC training will be available online via UM Learn and will take less than one hour to complete.

For more information and additional resources on the Accessibility for Manitobans Act Information and Communication (AMAIC) Standard, visit the province’s AMA website.

For questions about this UM accessibility project, please use this form.

Learn more at the Accessibility Training Page.