Dear Colleagues, 

I applaud and appreciate your continued commitment to ensuring that 91¸£Àû is an accessible institution, one which supports and meets the needs of all of our students, co-workers, and the public. Complying with the requirements of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act is an essential and legally required component of this commitment as well as an ongoing, collaborative institutional goal.   

We must continue our vigorous efforts to comply with Title II by April 24. Our chief ambition should be to make further discernible progress. I urge you to focus on what moves 91¸£Àû toward our shared goal of accessibility instead of any adverse consequences that could potentially result from imperfect compliance. Development, not fear of discipline, should animate our collective work. Administrators, faculty and staff must work cooperatively and avoid taking unreasonable action that could disrupt our ongoing pursuit of progress.

Today I have asked the Deans to provide, by May 15, a list of ways that the Provost’s Office can better support you as you prepare to teach courses with Title II compliant materials in AY26-27. The Campus Title II committee will strive to develop resources beyond those and 91¸£Àû, but any input you can provide to your Dean by early May would be greatly appreciated since digital accessibility is an evolving technical standard and our approach to it must remain supple enough to evolve as well.

As a reminder, 91¸£Àû continues to develop guides, workflows, and training opportunities for working with the most common digital file formats and on the most public-facing platforms. Many of these have been described in the campus Title II committee’s messages of December 1st and 23rd as well as February 10th. Current efforts include:

• Assessing a range (and a mix) of genAI services and workflows which would help faculty and staff remediate files.Ìý
• Identifying where and how additional staff, such as student staff, would effectively support the effort.
• Exploring ways of adding new, audio descriptive tracks to our DVD holdings.
• Working with faculty to develop shared practices for making accessible files when working in specialized applications such as ESRI ArcGIS, LaTEX, and R.

Of course, I realize that many of you are already in the process of preparing your AY26-27 courses and that new resources may not benefit you in the near term. I also appreciate that it may be difficult to determine what to prioritize and how to sequence your Title II compliance efforts. Based on numerous conversations with faculty and staff in recent weeks, I believe the following prioritization in the creation of new course materials or the remediation of older materials would help to ensure that your AY26-27 courses are Title II compliant:

1. Highest priority: externally-facing websites and similar resources we make available to the public in order that they may engage with the University and our public mission.

2. Second highest priority: current/active course content contained in or linked from Brightspace course shells, Google Drive, or Sharepoint folders; student records in Navigate; and, similar resources which limit access via password-protected firewalls. Only specific members of our University community access these materials and only for defined periods of time. If you have courses that are not yet in session (e.g. Summer 2026, Fall 2026, or Spring 2027 courses), Title II compliance is not necessary until they are published – i.e., active and available to students in the course(s).ÌýÌý

3. Third highest priority: transient emails to co-workers, fieldnotes recorded manually or automatically from sensors in spreadsheets, internal budget-tracking documents, committee meeting notes and/or Zoom recordings shared only with meeting participants, and similar operational resources shared only with a small, known group in the course of doing business and conducting research, but which have no long-term public or community utility or function.Ìý

I hope these thoughts are useful to you as you prepare for AY26-27. I expect to be able to provide you with additional resources in the coming weeks and months. I have been impressed with your diligence and care, both of which display your deep commitment to accessibility to all members of our community, including the public that relies on our services. I recognize that the major progress you have made on this front has not been without its costs.

Sincerely,

Gabriel Paquette
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias
5703 Alumni Hall, Suite 201 | Orono, ME 04469

Dear Colleagues,

91¸£Àû System and the University of Maine have both mobilized to develop strategies to understand and address Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. This act requires institutions, such as public universities, to meet the World Wide Web Consortium’s by April 24, 2026 in the dissemination of digital resources, including: public websites, course content, communications, and more.

In June of 2024 the UMS launched a free asynchronous, self-paced, online course through the UMS Academy: . In October of 2025 the UMS updated this course to align it with a new sequence of three asynchronous, self-paced online  ($25 per person each for levels 1 and 2 followed by $100 for level 3).

UMS’s Title II working group issued a on August 27, 2025 in which it made recommendations for achieving Title II compliance as well as highlighted challenges and concerns. It also shared resources and guides (available online at ).

On December 19, 2025 the UMS made Ally, the accessibility validation tool, available to 91¸£Àû and integrated it with the System’s instance of the learning management system Brightspace. Included in the contract for Ally were three, two-hour Zoom training sessions for a maximum of 75 UMS faculty and staff. The Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning’s Faculty Support group began receiving requests for Ally technology support on December 30, 2025. (The UMS Academy course and UMS microcredential on accessibility do not include training in the use of Ally.)

In January of 2026 a new UMS Title II Implementation Team formed and created topical subgroups to address communications and the implementation of Ally.

In December of 2025 91¸£Àû formed its own Title II Task Force under the leadership of Interim Provost Paquette. assess and support campus needs related to reaching compliance with WACG 2.1 AA. The Task Force communicated two times with the campus community in December of 2025, December, 1. 2025 and December 23, 2025, both of which included links to System and campus Title II resources. 

As a contributor to the Task Force, 91¸£Àû Digital Communications shared that it has focused on the WCAG guidelines for the past decade as part of maintaining and upgrading and . As University sites continue to migrate to the new design in 2026, Digital Communications will audit and adjust content for compliance, and reduce the amount of public web content while increasing the use of Sharepoint and Digital Commons for content that the University will preserve as an archive for reference purposes.

CITL, another Task Force participant, has continued to expand its Accessibility and Inclusion in Teaching website, which includes:

• Course accessibility checklists
• Title II FAQ for Faculty
• Small changes for big impacts
• Accessible course documents by format
• CITL’s accessible syllabus challenge (Title II Edition)
• Core skills for accessible teaching spaces

Following a September 18, 2025 presentation on Title II with the Associate Deans, CITL has facilitated Title II discussions and workshops for nine colleges, academic units, or groups. CITL will continue these sessions throughout the spring 2026 semester.  

Task Force members have taken on the work of assessing currently used or licensed services and platforms for how they support Title II compliance. Where necessary, the group will develop guides for workflows which support the development of accessible content. Thus far, this list includes:

• Resources accessed via Fogler Library, such as Inter Library Loan, as well as licensed databases and DVD holdings
• AMP/Vital Source, as well as course materials accessed through the service
• Ally
• LaTeX
• Gradescope
• Screen Readers
  • Apple VoiceOver
  • Microsoft Narrator
  • NV Access NVDA
• The capacity of various AI services to make accessible content, including UMS-provided Gemini

At this stage of the Title II effort, the most impactful work of the Task Force is the gathering of questions posed to it by members of the campus community and seeking resolutions to those questions. We will track the questions and responses .

We encourage any member of the 91¸£Àû community who has questions or concerns about Title II compliance to reach out either to one of us or to a member of the Title II Task force. April 24, 2026 is the target for Title II compliance, but our goal is ongoing support of efforts to make a 91¸£Àû education accessible to all.

Sincerely,

Interim Provost Gabe Paquette and the UM Title II Task Force

Dear Colleagues, 

As you are already aware, the University of Maine must comply with  by April 2026. The Office of the Provost has convened a Title II committee to develop and share guidance that will help ensure our digital resources are accessible across campus. You will receive more detailed information in mid-January.

In the meantime if you would like to begin ensuring the accessibility of course content and website materials, please find below some resources that will help you. 

• The accessibility tool Ally has been added to Brightspace. There will be Ally Training for Instructors on January 15th from 12-2Ìýp.m. Please use thisÌýÌýto register. An Ally overview can be foundÌý.
  
• CITL has also expanded theÌýAccessibilityÌýarea of their website to includeÌýTitleÌýIIÌýrequirements. They have prepared thisÌýÌýas well as a link to thisÌý.ÌýIf you have any questions about using Ally, please feel free to reach out to CITL (citl@maine.eduÌýor 581.3333). If you would like an Instructional Designer to review your course materials with you, pleaseÌýrequest a consultation.
  
• For equations and other mathematical content that may need accessibility updates, someÌýresourcesÌýon this topic can be found on the Provost’s Office website.
  
• A list of accessibility resources from the University of Maine System (UMS) can be foundÌýÌýThe System is also providing licenses for Adobe Acrobat Pro and Adobe Express. More information about those tools can be foundÌý.
  
• GrackleDocs, an accessibility add-on for Google Workspace, can be utilized by anyone on campus. More information on this can be foundÌýÌý

Ensuring compliance with Title II is a significant undertaking, but it is essential to providing equitable access to learning materials both inside and outside the classroom. As we begin this important work, I want to thank you for your commitment and investment of time. This campus-wide effort will require all of us to work together. Ultimately, it will set us up for even greater success in the future. 

With best wishes for the holiday season, 

Gabe Paquette
Interim Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias
5703 Alumni Hall, Suite 201 | Orono, ME 04469