Project Justification: 

Universities must comply with Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which requires that all current and newly created digital content meets updated accessibility standards by April 2026. The Charlton College of Business (CCB) does not currently include accessible communication training as a standard part of its course curriculum. We believe that offering students basic tools and resources to learn to create and deliver accessible presentations will create a more inclusive learning environment as well as provide students with an added marketable skill to benefit them in their future career paths. 

Project Characteristics and Requirements:

• Our project sponsored is Soheil Sibdari, PhD, Associate Professor within the CCB. We will be further supported by an accessibility stakeholder (TBD) within the UMass Dartmouth campus or UMass President’s Office. 

• Our project is completed online and asynchronously without the need for financial budget or special software. 

• The total time budgeted for this project is 143.5 hours between February 22 – April 24, 2025. This includes approximately 45 hours per project team member or approximately 5.6 hours per team member per week. In addition, we estimate a total of 2 hours of project sponsor feedback time and 5.5 hours for a UMass accessibility stakeholder to review all project deliverables prior to submission. 

Product User Acceptance Criteria:

The 3 Product-related deliverables below shall meet the updated Americans with Disabilities Act – Title II standards for the accessibility of digital content and will require vetting by a UMass accessibility professional involved with the UMass Digital Accessibility Project (either within UMassD or the UMPO) prior to presenting to the Project Sponsor (PM) for final sign-off. 

Summary of Project Deliverables:

Project management-related deliverables: 

Business case, charter, team contract, scope statement, WBS, schedule, cost baseline, status reports, final project presentation, final project report, lessons-learned report, and any other documents required to manage the project.

Product-related deliverables:  

• Accessible PowerPoint (PPT) Template: This PPT template will be created using the UMass Dartmouth and Charlton College of Business (CCB) branding and contain a title slide and between 5-10 accessible content slide options for students to easily choose a variety of configurations for their presentations. Examples include a slide with a video placeholder, slide with text and photo configurations, slide with accessible chart/graph, slide with single or multiple text blocks, project team slide, and reference/resources slide.  

• List of Accessibility Resources: Our team will compile a Word document with a variety of accessibility resources from both within and external to the UMass system. A brief description of these resources will be provided in the Word document and further explained in a prerecorded video presentation. As well as being delivered to the project sponsor in Word format, these resources will also be posted on a dedicated accessibility resources page on our Google site. 

• Pre-recorded presentation: This video presentation will review the accessible PPT template and list of accessibility resources in further detail. The presentation itself will be accessible and include subtitles and/or transcript for the hearing-impaired community.