Dear Stony Brook faculty and staff,
Stony Brook is an incredible place because of each of you. It’s an engine of social mobility, a place where rigor is expected and hard work rewarded, where all who come onto our campuses are given an equal opportunity to succeed. All of that is because of the hard work that each of you puts in every single day.
Over the past year, President Goldsmith and Stony Brook leadership have seen the same diligence and commitment to meeting federal accessibility requirements.
Updating the websites, digital materials, and mobile applications used in our programs, services, and activities by April 24, 2026 to meet the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Title II requirements has been, and will continue to be, a significant undertaking.
Offices across the university have invested many hours to create resources and training materials about the ADA requirements:
- New accessible templates for websites on the Modern Campus platform produced by University Marketing and Communications;
- Support from the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) for owners and editors of SBYou websites to change their site themes to CampusFlex, which has better accessibility features built into it;
- Self-paced trainings and resource guides produced by the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching;
- Digital Accessibility Resource Center, launched and managed by the Office of Equity and Access;
- Stony Brook Libraries have long taken a proactive role in ongoing discussions with peer institutions and publishers to ensure that scholarly materials are or will be made accessible. In addition, a ticketing system is being established to support faculty and students who require further assistance. In the meantime, please email the Libraries.
Many of you have also spent a great deal of time working to understand the requirements, attending training sessions, and learning new tools and strategies to update your course materials, websites, and other digital materials. You asked questions and, true to who we are as a community, advocated for solutions. We’re working to implement some, and exploring others. And we are making progress:
- The Department of Information Technology added Grackle Workspace to the Google Suite to support accessibility for Docs, Slides, and Sheets;
- The unversity has added MathPix to help remediate digital documents with mathematical formulas;
- CELT is training dozens of students to help remediate PDFs used in coursework, in partnership with faculty and academic departments.
One of the questions we have been hearing lately is about risk and liability. We know this concern comes from your earnest desire to do the right thing and support equitable access for all. As state employees, you are covered by New York State Public Officers Law § 17 that protects state employees and officers against personal liability where they are sued in state or federal court, individually as a result of acts or omissions which occur when the individual was acting within the scope of their state employment. We want to reassure you that this law is intended to provide a safeguard for employees acting responsibly and in good faith. We’ve added more information about this, as well as other frequently asked questions, to a Digital Accessibility FAQ.
Developing expertise in all of the standards of digital accessibility under Title II takes time, and we are all still in the learning process, figuring out the nuances of the different regulations and adjusting our work habits accordingly. And we see how diligently you are all working, and we applaud and thank you for it.
This is a significant undertaking, and we are making meaningful progress. As we continue working to make Stony Brook a fully accessible place of learning and discovery, let’s keep talking. We need to hear from you so we know when pieces are missing and how we can work together to put them in place.
Sincerely,
Carl and Bill
Carl W. Lejuez
Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
William Wertheim
Executive Vice President for Stony Brook Medicine
