Digital Accessibility Certification

The NYC DOE offers three types of certification for NYC DOE staff: “Digital Accessibility Basics for All Staff”, “Digital Accessibility for Webmasters and Application Developers”, and “Digital Accessibility for Video Creators”. All Webmasters are required to complete BOTH the “Digital Accessibility Basics” and “Digital Accessibility for Webmasters and Application Developers” certifications.

NYC DOE staff can access the classes via OTIS(Open external link), to ensure they get the classes for free. Details on how to do that–and who to reach out to with access issues–can be found on the InfoHub’s On-Demand Digital Accessibility Courses employee page (i.e. you’ll need to be signed into the employee side of the InfoHub for the link to work).

Digital Accessibility Basics for All Staff (close to 3.5 hours)

Staff who have earned this certificate have completed–and passed–the following classes on OTIS.Teq.com:

1. Introduction to Digital Accessibility(Open external link) (20 minutes)
2. Formatting for Digital Accessibility(Open external link) (20 minutes)
3. Using Screen Readers(Open external link) (26 minutes)
4. Color Contrast(Open external link) (31 minutes)
5. The Art of Alt Text(Open external link) (13 minutes)
6. The Science of Alt Text(Open external link) (19 minutes)
7. Creating Meaningful Hyperlinks(Open external link) (18 minutes)
8. Writing in Plain Language(Open external link) (17 minutes)
9. Writing for Effective Translation(Open external link) (33 minutes)
10. Accessible Presentations(Open external link) (23 minutes)

Webmasters and Application Developers (close to 1.6 hours) 

To earn this certificate, you must complete the Digital Accessibility Basics (Approximately 3.5 hours) certification above, as well as the following classes:

1. Best Practices for Accessible Websites(Open external link) (14 minutes)
2. Testing Website Accessibility(Open external link) (21 minutes)
3. Manual Testing for Website Accessibility(Open external link) - (28 minutes) 
4. Getting the Most Out of the WAVE Extensio(Open external link)n - (33 minutes) 

Video Creators 

This certificate can be earned on its own. However, to meet the requirements for Webmaster certification, you MUST complete the other two certificates–earning this certificate does NOT meet that requirement.

Digital Accessibility for Video Creators (Approximately 1.5 hours)

1. Video Captioning(Open external link) (26 minutes)
2. Translated Video Captioning(Open external link) (18 minutes)
3. Making Accessible Screencasts Using Screencastify(Open external link) (36 minutes)