Stony Brook’s CELT Supports Faculty with Academic Accessibility Efforts

For years, the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) at Stony Brook University has been the place for faculty to go to improve their teaching. CELT offers workshops, seminars, an annual symposium and dozens of programs to help instructors learn about new teaching methods and incorporate them into their classes. Their doors have always been open to any instructor with a concern, a question, or an idea.

This year, CELT has upped the ante and is working with faculty on a new challenge faced by all universities and other large organizations across the country: a deadline to make all digital materials fully accessible by the end of April.

"Digital accessibility ensures that all people, regardless of their ability or reliance on assistive devices, can have equal access to information," said Vice Provost for Academic Affairs Amy Cook. "Stony Brook takes seriously its commitment to inclusion and to creating the best possible learning environment. The experts at the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching are leading our efforts to update teaching materials and support our faculty and instructors as they build accessibility into teaching and scholarship."

At a basic level, digital accessibility means that people who rely on assistive technology like screen readers can learn from a document or webpage as seamlessly as someone who does not use such devices. But in practice, digital accessibility can enhance anyone's experience of a presentation or video: many people prefer to watch videos on mute and rely on closed captions, and people who use reader view on their internet browser can still see a written description of an image or picture.

"Working with our faculty during this transition has been truly rewarding. I've learned so much about the intricacies of digital accessibility, and have had a front row seat to further explore the amazing work our faculty are doing," said Rose Tirotta-Esposito, assistant provost of educational transformation and the director of the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. "They are dedicated to our students and truly care about teaching every learner."

"Since I arrived at SBU, CELT has been collaborating with the Student Accessibility Support Center (SASC) and the Office of Equity and Access (OEA) to bring digital accessibility and the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to the forefront of our conversations with faculty. We now have that opportunity and the team is working diligently to get up to speed and support faculty through this process."

In the beginning of the fall, CELT's team of experts launched a suite of self-paced digital tutorialsfor anyone interested in learning about digital accessibility, including how to update documents, PDFs, images, slide decks, videos and other files to meet federal requirements.

In the first four months of the 2025-206 academic year, staff from CELT hosted more than 40 workshops, or two or three every week, to offer demonstrations about how to make particular files accessible and answer questions. Approximately 800 people have attended those sessions so far, and more workshops are scheduled for spring.

CELT has also offered more than 30 consultation sessions, where individuals or departments have asked CELT's accessibility experts to answer specific questions and raise awareness of the work required to meet the April deadline.

In addition to offering workshops, consultations and the self-paced resources, CELT has hired a team of student workers to help make updates to one of the most complex and ubiquitous file types: PDFs. Preferred by academics for their security and reliability, PDFs are not designed to support people with disabilities and updating one file can take hours of detail-oriented work.

Since the start of 2025, instructors asked for help in making more than 1,000 PDFs accessible. Most of them have already been updated and returned. Of those that haven't been completed, many require additional remediation to update complex images like scientific diagrams or mathematical equations, and CELT staff have identified and are working to acquire external software to support the transition.

"The student staff have been an asset to our team. Their contributions and keen eye for detail have ensured that each document is machine readable for all users," said Lindsay Bryde, CELT's senior course content accessibility specialist. "They have shown a vested interest in the success of our project and dedication to creating accessible content. They are always looking for ways to refine our workflow and make meaningful contributions to our team. Many of them have an interest in fields that will require them to know how to create accessible content and they are getting hands-on experience to take with them into their future."

As the April deadline approaches, more faculty are coming forward to request support integrating accessibility into their courses, including PDF remediation. In STEM fields, PDF remediation is particularly complex because detailed diagrams and equations are common. In January, CELT received a $10,000 grant from the State University of New York system to support remediating these files. The funding will be used to hire graduate students and others with expertise in math, chemistry and other STEM fields to support making PDFs accessible.