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Digital Accessibility

Real Students Real Barriers

Neglecting to create accessible digital content creates significant barriers for students with disabilities at our university. 

Straight from a Student

Video thumbnail with Sarah sitting in a computer lab with her hands on the table.
Sarah Massengale talks about digital accessibility.

Sarah Massengale is a USC alum who is blind. She talks about how accessibility issues, such as missing or unhelpful image descriptions, created obstacles for her as a blind student.

Sarah uses a type of assistive technology called a screen reader, which can read out digital content through synthesized speech or braille. Without alternative text added to images, Sarah is not able to access the visual information that these images provide.


Diverse Student Experiences

We have a diverse community of students here at USC, and not every student with a disability faces the same types of barriers. For example:

  • A student who is deaf, hard of hearing, or has an auditory processing disorder will not be able to access video content without accurate captioning and transcription.
  • A student who is colorblind or has low vision may not be able to read a website if the text does not have sufficient color contrast against its background.
  • A student with ADHD may get distracted reading walls of text if there are not descriptive headings to break up the content into more manageable chunks.

Challenge the conventional. Create the exceptional. No Limits.

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