Faculty listings procedure and policy
To: FDU Faculty
From: Angelo Carfagna, Associate VP, Communications
The statement below addresses an issue that surfaced in our effort to support FDU faculty with Faculty Profile pages on the new FDU website. We need to provide faculty the option to supplement their profiles by linking to additional information at non-FDU websites, without compromising the University’s compliance with requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. University Counsel Edward Silver, after discussion with the University’s ADA compliance auditor, Siteimprove Inc., has provided this guidance for cases where Faculty Profile pages link to non-FDU sites. Provost Small has further approved the guidance and direction.
If your existing Faculty Profile would be enhanced by such links, we encourage you to update it by submitting a note in the appropriate field of a Faculty Information Form. If you have not yet submitted that form to create a Faculty Profile page, please consider joining the hundreds of your colleagues who have already done so.
If you have questions about Faculty Profiles, or about aspects of accessibility on University websites, please contact Bill Kennedy, director of web operations (kennedy@fdu.edu), or myself.
Thank you.
Links from Faculty Profile Pages to Non-FDU Websites
FDU provides a uniform format for faculty profile information so that students, prospects, and colleagues have information about background, interests and current teaching of the faculty. Some faculty may prefer to offer additional information including publications, notes for current students, other academic pursuits, and volunteer activities. When a faculty profile includes links to non-FDU websites, faculty should be aware of the points below.
1. Non-FDU websites include third party websites (e.g. LinkedIn, Google Scholar) to which FDU employees may provide information, and self-maintained websites operated by FDU employees or offices.
2. FDU expects self-maintained websites that are linked to from the FDU website to be accessible to the same WCAG 2.0 Level AA standard as the FDU website itself, and to provide contact information identifying the individual(s) responsible for the content and the accessibility of the content. FDU employees must advise the University of any complaint received about content or accessibility, and be ready to assist visitors to the site in resolving complaints. Failure to resolve complaints may require that FDU’s website no longer links to a self-maintained website.
3. FDU expects third party websites that are linked to from the FDU website to be held to accessibility standards appropriate to their use. FDU Web Operations maintains a page at Accessibility of Third-Party Websites that provides two lists. One is a list of websites that have been reviewed and are known to be acceptable for linking from FDU website pages. Note that this is not exhaustive, but is provided as a suggestion of sites that faculty may prefer to use rather than assuming the burden of accessibility compliance with a self-maintained site. The second list shows some websites that are known to have accessibility problems and that should not be linked to from faculty profile pages or other pages of the FDU website. Note that this list is not exhaustive either, but it provides examples of problem conditions FDU content authors should be aware of.
4. FDU faculty who wish to link to non-FDU websites are encouraged to become familiar with accessibility standards. FDU Web Operations maintains a page at Tools and Training Regarding Accessibility to support this. The page includes training sessions in ADA issues and automated website evaluation tools that help to assess ADA compliance levels of sites and pages.
5. The following disclaimer will be added to faculty profile pages:
Important Note: Faculty profiles may include links to one or more non-FDU websites, including websites self-maintained by faculty to provide additional information about their publications, scholarly pursuits, and other information of interest. If you click on these links, you will be leaving the FDU-maintained website and will be directed to a site that is not under the control of FDU. FDU is not responsible for the content or accessibility of linked non-FDU websites. If, however, you experience a problem with the content or accessibility of a linked website, please contact us using the information on our Accessibility page.