Gina Coburn, Ph.D.
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Accessibility Leadership · 2020–Present

Accessibility as a System, Not a Checklist

Standards leadership across WCAG, Section 508, and Universal Design for Learning

  • Accessibility
  • WCAG
  • Section 508
  • UDL
  • Design standards
  • Enablement
My role
Accessibility lead: defining the standards, translating them into practical guidance and defaults, and enabling stakeholders to meet them across the initiative.
Audience
Faculty and staff creating digital resources (mostly non-specialists), and — most importantly — the disabled learners and colleagues those resources have to work for.
Perceivable — contrast, text scaling, alt textOperable — keyboard, focus, reduced motionUnderstandable — plain language, clear statesRobust — semantic, standards-basedDesigned-in from the first layer up
Abstract representation — no proprietary UI shown

Context

Through a federally funded Title V grant, I serve as accessibility lead — setting standards for Section 508, WCAG, and Universal Design for Learning across digital resources and online learning materials used by faculty and staff.

Problem

Accessibility usually fails as a last-minute audit: a bottleneck, applied inconsistently, resented as compliance. The problem was to make it a system contributors could design with from the start — durable, teachable, and scalable across many hands.

Constraints

  • Many contributors with a wide range of accessibility knowledge.
  • Multiple overlapping standards (WCAG, 508, UDL) that need to be actionable, not just cited.
  • Accessibility had to raise quality without becoming a gate that stops work.

Approach

  • Reframed accessibility as design input, not a final audit — moved it upstream into templates and defaults.
  • Translated WCAG/508/UDL into plain, actionable practices contributors could apply without becoming specialists.
  • Built accessibility into shared resources so the accessible choice is the default choice.
  • Paired standards with enablement so quality didn’t depend on a single gatekeeper.

Key decisions

  • Standards had to be usable by non-experts, or they wouldn’t be used at all.
  • UDL framing (multiple means of engagement/representation/expression) drove design decisions, not just compliance checks.
  • Prioritized durable systems (templates, defaults, guidance) over one-off fixes.

Accessibility & ethics

This case study is the accessibility work — the throughline of my practice. It’s why every other project here treats accessibility as a first-class design constraint rather than a finishing step.

Outcome

  • Reusable accessibility standards and guidance adopted across a federally funded initiative.
  • Accessibility shifted from a review bottleneck toward a built-in default across many contributors.
  • A lens I carry into product work — designing for the full range of global users, including those with disabilities.

Reflection

The goal isn’t passing an audit — it’s building systems where the accessible path is the easy path. That mindset makes products better for everyone, not just users with disabilities.

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