Imagine you are a prospective first-generation college student, seeking to attend an institution of higher education in efforts to obtain economic mobility. Chances are your first steps (among many) will include visiting the websites of colleges and universities of interest.
What will you find on your online search?
Well, if you visited the Community College of Aurora’s website prior to May 2023, you would have discovered more than 5,500 webpages of content. Today, our website has fewer than 300 pages.
As educators, how can we possibly expect to increase our enrollments, promote the mission of our institutions, effectively communicate our academic offerings, and engage prospective (and current) college students inclusively with college websites that function more like online file cabinets? It is time to stop this foolishness.
Embracing Accessibility by Design
For far too long, college and university websites have been designed with the assumption that published information is accessible information. This is not true. Accessible, by definition, means “capable of being reached; easy to speak or deal with; capable of being understood or appreciated; or easily used or accessed by people with disabilities.”
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