Quick Helpful Links
AREC Administrative Updates
Spring Break Administrative Team Schedule: The admin team’s availability and coverage schedule can be found here.
March 16–20: Spring Break for students — student employees will not be working this week.
March 16–17: Spring Break for staff — the administrative team will be out of office on these dates.
March 18–20: The administrative team will be teleworking for the remainder of the week unless an on-campus need emerges that requires us to come in. To ensure mail can still be delivered, we will leave the door to the 2200 suite unlocked tomorrow at the end of the work day.
UPDATES & REMINDERS
Title II ADA Compliance — Faculty & Grad Student Instructor Reminder
ADA Title II Digital Accessibility Deadline is April 24, 2026
Condensed Guide for AREC Faculty & Graduate Student Instructors - This is a practical overview of what to prioritize for the ADA Title II digital accessibility deadline.
Additional notes:
Italia is handling accessibility for the AREC website and AREC-managed social media and developing accessible templates (LaTeX, Adobe, Google) to make creating compliant materials easier going forward.
If you plan to host new public-facing content on the AREC website before the April dealine, please loop Italia in early.
Recommended training:
If you only have time for one training, I highly recommend the Accessibility Tutorial by Professor Jacob Coutts (Psychology & Social Data Science). It’s one of the clearest, most practical walkthroughs for instructors and covers Ally, PowerPoint accessibility, teaching dense charts and data, and captioning lectures and videos.
LaTeX / Beamer users:
We are still waiting to see if UMD will issue official guidance.
In the meantime, this is a helpful walkthrough/training from the University of Florida (working under the same ADA deadline) explains accessibility challenges and discusses Canvas and Beamer workflows.
You can skip to ~16 minutes for the start of the content and 37:38 for the Beamer section.
IMPORTANT DATES & ACTIVITIES
Spring Semester 2026
March 15–22: Spring Break
April 24: ADA Title II Deadline
April 25 (Saturday): Maryland Day
May 8: Last Day of Classes
May 9: Reading Day
May 11–18: Final Exams
May 19–22: Commencement (College & Department Ceremonies)
May 20: Main Commencement Ceremony
Additional Calendars: University Academic Calendars (2025-2026 approved calendar is available.)
|
