Progress Over Perfection: Building Accessible, Student-Centered Technology and Content

April 24, 2026 marks a critical digital accessibility deadline for higher education institutions nationwide, bringing increased scrutiny to how technology, course materials, and digital systems support, or hinder, the student experience. As colleges prepare to meet WCAG and Section 508 expectations, many are discovering that accessibility is not simply a compliance task, but a defining element of human-centered IT. This session reframes digital accessibility as a student-experience issue and presents a real-world case study from a community college navigating the shift from reactive accommodations to proactive, inclusive design. Participants will explore how inaccessible learning management systems, documents, videos, websites, and third-party tools create barriers that disproportionately impact neurodivergent learners, adult students, first-generation students, and those using assistive technology. Attendees will learn how WCAG 2.1 AA functions as a practical design standard, not just a legal requirement, and how human judgment must work alongside automated tools to build technology environments students can actually use. The session highlights lessons learned from institutional implementation, including common misconceptions, high-impact accessibility fixes, and the role of IT, instructional design, and procurement in shared responsibility. Through concrete examples, decision-making frameworks, and campus-tested strategies, participants will gain actionable approaches for prioritizing high-impact content, evaluating third-party tools through VPATs, making informed decisions about captions and audio descriptions, and embedding accessibility into everyday workflows without overwhelming faculty or staff. Rather than aiming for perfection, this session emphasizes sustainable progress, demonstrating how accessibility strengthens usability, improves engagement and retention, reduces emergency accommodations, and supports a more equitable and future-ready student experience. Attendees will leave better equipped to align their accessibility efforts with human-centered IT principles as the 2026 deadline approaches.