Affiliated Institution/Organization(s): University of Illinois Springfield
Session Format: Presentation
Session Tracks: AEA – Accessibility, Equity & Access
LS – Leadership & Strategy
Session Description
Digital accessibility at small and mid-sized institutions is often treated as a one-office issue, creating bottlenecks and gaps in coverage. When one team is expected to carry the full weight of campus-wide accessibility, the work becomes reactive, unsustainable, and impossible to scale. The answer isn’t a bigger office but a different model entirely. This session draws on three years of infrastructure-building at the University of Illinois Springfield, a regional university of approximately 5,000 students, to offer a practical roadmap for building sustainable digital accessibility infrastructure. Beginning with an emerging infrastructure and a small student staff team, UIS developed a distributed accessibility model that now includes a cross-functional advisory team and working groups, dedicated professional staff, a mentorship-based student staffing model, campus-wide tool investments, and active partnerships across web, online learning, instructional technology, and digital accessibility teams. Structured around three core principles – creating campus coalitions and connections, building institutional capacity through sustained education and expectation-setting, and making strategic investments that create leverage rather than just adding workload – this session balances brief content delivery with structured participant engagement. Attendees will reflect on their own institutional context and leave with a concrete starting point for building a sustainable accessibility program.
Learning Objectives
- Describe at least two models for building cross-functional accessibility partnerships at small and mid-sized institutions.
- Articulate an approach for managing institutional expectations around accessibility metrics and tool limitations.
- Identify at least three foundational infrastructure investments that create long-term accessibility leverage at under-resourced institutions.
- Apply a distributed accessibility framework to at least one current challenge at their home institution.
Session Facilitator(s)
- Carey Applegate
Bio(s)
Carey Applegate is the Director of Digital Accessibility at the University of Illinois Springfield. With nearly two decades of expertise in instructional design, educational program management, and university-level teaching, she is dedicated to promoting inclusive digital environments and advancing equity in education. Her research explores disability in higher education, crip activism rhetorics, and personal narrative as a site of knowledge production. Carey holds a doctorate in English Education from Illinois State University and is a Certified Professional in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC) through the International Association of Accessibility Professionals.